Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (731376)	8/6/2013 10:40:59 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575840

>Left-wing and right-wing mean different things in different countries with different cultures. Even the time period makes a difference. Well, that's true. Hitler actually didn't like capitalism, but it wasn't capitalism in the way we see it now. To us, capitalism is classical liberalism -- "laissez-faire," the economics espoused by on one end, Keynes, and on the other, Hayek and Friedman. For Hitler, it was the belief that a small class of international bankers would own and run everything. A pretty narrow definition. I'm not sure that he'd define what we have in America today as capitalism. And, of course, as you've pointed out, he also detested Communism. To the extent that he'd say he was a socialist, that'd be just because the term, at the time, just meant anything that wasn't one of those two things. Which was pretty much everything. Saying you were "socialist" in Europe in the 1930s was pretty akin to saying you're for democracy in the U.S. in 2013. It encompasses a wide array of viewpoints but almost everybody says they're for it. Fact is, that it's kind of silly arguing this, because Nazism at its root wasn't really an economic ideology (which gets to your point about Hitler and corporations -- he'd call himself a socialist because that sounded good to the people, but he'd deal with the corporations because they helped the war effort -- whatever helped him get what he wanted). It was, however, a right-wing nationalistic ideology. Whereas Communism, at least under Lenin, was envisioned as a left-wing utopian theology. It was an economic ideology. It wasn't supposed to necessarily eliminate anyone based on race or affiliation with the motherland (although it did have the concept); it eliminated those that weren't ideologically compatible with its economic philosophy. Both terrible things, but they came from very different places. Communism is a left-wing extreme economic ideology and Nazism is a right wing social ideology. And it's stupid to argue about in today's context because 1. The terms we use to argue about it are mostly irrelevant today and 2. Even far right wing Republicans aren't Nazis and far left-wing Democrats aren't Communists. Can we agree on that much? -Z