Betas: 'Pinochet ONLY Killed 3,000 People!'

"Communism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century. Agosto Pinochet only killed 3,000 people!"  That's the excuse the alt-right and other fascist sympathizers cower behind.  For starters, it's a weak argument.  Let's not forget that between Italy's invasion of Africa as well as Japan's invasion of Manchuria and the end of World War II that fascism killed in 15 years almost as many victims as Communism killed in 75 years!

But alas, closeted white supremacists scream about the red menace while ignoring the others. They're like people who worry about swine flu, bird flu, West Nile virus, etc. while ignoring things like the common flu which kills way more people.  Worse yet, many Libertarians are too spineless to call these fascists what they really are (i.e. socialists hiding behind the colors of nationalism, or the kind of people which Ludwig von Mises trashed decades ago in his writings). 

Let's come up with a hypothetical character... a fictional revolutionary conservative we'll call Victus Romano.  If Victus hooks up with a transsexual prostitute in Orlando before physically removing him/her out of a helicopter, and he finds that he only has 1 wart on his dick whereas the hooker's last client has 100 warts on his dick, it doesn't matter that the other guy's herpes outbreak is way worse than Victus'.

VICTUS STILL HAS HERPES.

At this point, we're ONLY arguing about the number of sores, not the fact that he has a DISEASE.

Government is a disease. All this weak argument of "only 3,000" does is 1) distract from the main issue by making it about quantity versus quality, also distracting from the simple truth that tyranny is tyranny and democide is fucking democide; 2) It encourage confused libertarians to go full retard. Never go full retard!

The problem is these people were largely killed based on hearsay and without a trial. Even if 99% of them were communists, Pinochet still violated the individual rights of the innocent people wrongly killed. Libertarianism is about protecting individuals, not killing communists.

Unfortunately, the Pepe the Frog cult doesn't care about rights. Their idea of free speech includes every private event accommodating Richard Spencer's right to speak, but in their world, free speech doesn't exist for communists.  Communists only exist to be murdered... to somehow protect freedom.

No, the alt-right doesn't care about rights.  They only care about growing their state to protect their private property from the threat of left-wing... statists.  The government must be grown and a little bit of private property seized in order to protect us all from the boogeymen who want to... grow the government and take private property. They're Republicans who discovered the anarchy symbol, much like every 12 year old punk rock kid in the suburbs who discovers Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden.

I'm willing to bet a whole bunch of liberals probably just made your average Kek cyber worshiper feel bad for being white. I'll be here waiting when those people get tired of conforming to the pure raw ANGER radiating from the alt-right.

Also, Victus, Mexico is still not paying for your god-emperor's Wall.

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Pinochet image courtesy of Know Your Meme.  Good Night Left Side and Anti-Antifa insignia courtesy of sexually humiliated angry men.  Full permission is granted to reprint the text of this article as long as the author is credited and a link is provided back to this page.

The Armed Libertarian Revolution in Mexico (Part 1)

Part 1: A revolution of libertarian and anarchist grievances

The Mexican Revolution is likely the most important chain of events in the history of Mexico, perhaps more so than Mexico’s war of independence.  Its crowning achievement is the 1917 Constitution, still in effect today.  One of the leading attributes of the Mexican Revolution is the rise of citizen armies, what U.S. legal tradition recognizes as the ‘unorganized militia’ of able-bodied armed men organizing into military units.  Though the grievances, politics, motives, and goals of the different revolutionary factions and leaders differed, there’s much about the Revolution to be seen from a libertarian point of view.

One of the central themes of libertarian political theory is that government is at best inefficient and incapable of adequately governing and providing for the people, and at worst a predatory criminal organization.  This is why the minarchist libertarians believe in a very limited ‘night watchman’ government under a strict interpretation of the Constitution that favors the liberty of the people, and why anarchist libertarians prefer no government at all and all power to the individual.  The minarchist grievance against the thirty-five-year Porfirio Diaz regime is the lack of free elections, repression of dissident press, and crony capitalist policies favoring well-connected big businesses over independent honest businesses. 

The anarchist libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard breaks down the state to its most basic components in Anatomy of the State.  The example he gives is the bandit gang that occasionally robs an unarmed village population, which then decides they would profit more if they lived among the conquered people as rulers and collected regular payments.  The bandit chief declares himself king, his bandit leaders are the lawful nobility of the realm, and a new state is born.  This is what Columbus was to the Arawak people, what Cortez was to the Mexican Indians, and what the Mexican state was to the peasants and the Indians.

While Americans debate over the issue of women in combat, the Mexican Revolution sorted out that issue over a century ago with the ‘soldaderas’, the women soldiers of the revolutionary armies.  The soldaderas served as rear-guard militia, nurses, couriers, spies, sentries, regimental cooks, and frontline light infantry.  Without the participation of women in logistical and combat roles, the revolutionary armies wouldn’t have been able to mount prolonged resistance against the federal government and later, against the corrupt revolutionary state.  The prevalence of revolutionary wives and sweethearts, especially Francisco “Pancho” Villa’s Northern Division, is likely the reason why desertion was so low in revolutionary armies.  Women’s participation made them equal stakeholders in the Revolution, and evidence that gun rights and the natural right to self-defense aren’t restricted to one country, gender, or one special class of people.

The anarchist grievances of the Mexican Revolution include the rampant state using eminent domain to steal land from its rightful owners, federal military conscription as kidnapping, taxes as institutionalized theft, and the constant imprisonment and murder of dissidents.  One faction of outright anarchists rose up in 1911.  The Magonistas were a battalion-sized volunteer army of anarchist Mexicans and Anglo-Americans who conquered several cities and towns independently of the Maderista’s war against the Diaz regime.  Although they were anarcho-communist, their attempts to establish a micro-state in northern Baja California represent the libertarian ideals of secession and political decentralization.  Moreover, the wary and apolitical general population were likely to receive better representation and public services under the Magonistas' micro-state than under the Mexican government.

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Continued tomorrow in Part 2. 

This article was originally published in one piece by the Libertarian Party of Nevada.

'From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution' painting by David Alfaro Siquieros

'Las Soldaderas' (1938) painting by Antonio Gomez.

Is the Left Really More Evil Than the Right?

The question needs asking: is the Left really more evil than the Right?

Anyone who's slightly right-of-center has likely watched black-clad anarchists with hammer and sickle flags smashing up store fronts, starting bonfires in the streets, and brawling with the cops.  It's probably sent a chill down their spines.  I see an increasing ideological problem arising in libertarian circles: conservatives and libertarians are buying into the us-versus-them mentality to vilify the left, at the expense of giving conservatives a free pass on violent hypocrisy.  

People on the Right are rightfully concerned about violent neo-Communists, but they're ignoring the neo-Nazis.  Revolutionary and institutional fascism alike are equally willing to end lives and expropriate private property for the sake of the state, and always has, no matter how vehemently conservatives, the alt-right, and the far-right libertarian wannabes (anyone who does the "Roman" salute).  Soviet Socialism was certainly a plague on humanity, especially in the developing world, but so were the CIA and DEA. Remember, when Mises and Hayek fled Europe, it wasn't Communism they were fleeing for their lives.  So concern over militant leftism but not militant rightism is willful blindness.

Besides, the Right will always be the real evil, in my honest opinion. Liberals are all about high taxes and abortion. The radical leftists will take to the streets and break things when they don't get their way.  It was the same in Berkeley in 1968, and it was the same in Petrograd in 1917 and 1905. What else is new?  Republicans seem to have amnesia over the excessive force that was applied to Ron Paul supporters in 2012.

The police colluded with the GOP to assault and arrest Ron Paul supporters after they won the majority of delegates at the Louisiana GOP Convention.  Fingers were broken.

The police were in cahoots with the GOP to arrest Ron Paul supporters at the Missouri GOP Caucus.  When Ron Paul was winning the delegate race, the Missouri GOP revoked their credentials and had them physically removed.

Republicans in Orlando stomped on the feet of a Ron Paul supporter wearing flip flops for the high crime of holding a Ron Paul sign outside the National Convention.  

Ron Paul delegates in Orlando had their credentials stripped in mass.  I also met and spoke with a delegate who was kidnapped on Orlando's infamous Bus to Nowhere that unfortunately didn't arrive at the Convention Center in time for the Paul delegates to vote.  In addition, I've met others who claim marijuana was planted in their hotel rooms--this was back in 2012 when possession in the South was more than a slap on the wrist.

So while the Left breaks windows and blocks on-ramps, and every once in a while beats up a Donald Trump supporter, Republicans and a few libertarians with GOP Stockholm Syndrome play into the partisan game.  Libertarians and Republicans seem to find some common ground in denigrating the Left together, but all the libertarians in this situation do is buy into the statists' us-versus-them game.  

In their growing hatred of the Left, the embers of resentment fanned by hatemongers like Chris "I say cuck way too damn much" Cantwell and wackos like Alex "Cocaine tantrums" Jones.  There is no outcry from these people over the vandalized mosques and synagogues, the statistical increase in attacks against immigrants and minorities in this country,

But conservatives are the ones who were supposed to lower taxes, reign in federal spending, protect unborn life, maintain a humble foreign policy, preserve the rights of states from federal overreach according to the Bill of Rights. And what have we gotten? Boots on the ground in Syria, TrumpCare with the individual mandate intact, an Attorney General who has said on more than one occasion that he plans to prosecute legal recreational marijuana (because, according to Spicer and Sessions, when the Trump campaign said 'states rights', they only meant medical marijuana), and abortion still happens on the daily in Trump's America.

The leaders of the Right betrayed America, and most ordinary conservatives supported them the whole way.  Republicans are still making excuses to support Donald Trump, even though he's doing variations of the same crap the Obama Administration did.  This goes to show that a majority of Trump's supporters aren't really as married to their principles as they think they are.  They're not really as dedicated to the practice of conservative values as they think they are, or else they'd already have tarred and feathered 90% of the Republicans in Washington D.C. (both in the Legislative and Executive Branches).

We know the Left is "bad."  They're too wishy-washy on civil liberties and plain awful on property rights, and that leaves room for huge problems down the road. That's always been obvious.  But the Right are the snakes in the grass, who will talk in your face about 'principles over party' while they raise your taxes, fund abortion clinics, and drop more bombs on brown people (because WWJD don't matter to the "Christian" Right anymore).

So yes. The Right is evil. Perhaps the true evil, more so than the Left.  The Left is at least honest about their big government SJW utopian drivel. I can easily point to 3 books: Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and feel comfortable saying these 3 books pretty accurately summarize the Left.  We know exactly what the different Left factions believe and what they want to accomplish.

But the Right... we get volumes of propaganda from the Right about their moral superiority to liberals, even though conservatives are at this very moment giving America more of the same that we already had under Obama.they are the snakes.  The Right is the greater evil.  They're still lying to America.  Mexico's going to pay for that wall, not the American taxpayer, right?!

Yeah yeah yeah, the Left is "bad."  The Right is "worse."  Let's just break the Left-Right paradigm and focus on minimum versus maximum state presence, and maximum versus minimum individual liberty.

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Images courtesy of Old American Century.

When Rich Commies Find Out They're Profiteers

Tom Morello performing at Occupy Wall Street

I don't like to gossip about people, but anything goes when economics can be taught. Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello was turned away from the 5 Point restaurant in Seattle over the weekend. He then ranted online about them being "anti-worker" (along with some ad hominem attacks on the staff).

Morello, an outspoken far-left social activist, tweeted this hissy fit, apparently not knowing this restaurant to be one of the few small businesses in Seattle that provides higher-than-minimum wage pay and a number of employee benefits, like paid sick leave, retirement, and profit share. Benefits packages entice the best workers to a place of employment, one which can be more productive once the staff has incentives.

Furthermore, profit share is not a communist concept but a capitalist one.  Marxian communism focuses on abolishing private property and the profit motive. Shared profit upholds private property and capital, and is driven entirely by the profit motive.  These employees are shareholders, just like stockholders in a corporation, only this restaurant is much more exclusive by offering shares only to its employees.

While economic magic was happening around him, Morello and his posse ignored the fact that the restaurant was FULL, with a line outside of people still waiting to get it.  Anyone ever heard of supply and demand?  Morello actually asked to be let in ahead of everyone else and to get a special room in the back.  Due to the lack of supply for a ridiculous demand, Morello and his posse began throwing temper tantrums and were asked to leave.

It's incredible how activists for social and economic equality become the very things they hate when, as celebrities, they expect special treatment and privileges.  I can already see Fidel, fresh out of the jungle and still in muddy combat fatigues, eating lunch and smoking cigars at the Havana Hotel.  Standing next to him is Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, riding her private jet after giving a speech on reducing humanity's carbon footprint.  But I digress...

It's common knowledge that Morello is a Marxist. So what's the motivation for a wealthy celebrity to be anti-capitalist? Ludwig von Mises explains it:

There is money in show business. Popular actors and playwrights enjoy a six-figure income. They live in palatial houses with butlers and swimming pools. They certainly are not “prisoners of starvation.”  Yet Hollywood and Broadway, the world-famous centers of the entertain­ment industry, are hotbeds of communism. Authors and performers are to be found among the most bigoted supporters of Sovietism.

The essence of the entertainment industry is variety. The patrons applaud most what is new and therefore unexpected and surpris­ing. They are capricious and unaccountable. They disdain what they cherished yesterday. A tycoon of the stage or the screen must always fear the waywardness of the public. He awakes rich and famous one morning and may be forgotten the next day. He knows very well that he depends entirely on the whims and fan­cies of a crowd hankering after merriment.  [He] fears the unknown newcomers, the vigorous youths who will supplant him in the favor of the public.

It is obvious that there is no relief from what makes these stage people uneasy. Thus they catch at a straw. Communism, some of them think, will bring their deliverance. Is it not a sys­tem that makes all people happy?

Morello may have only been angry over his false sense of entitlement being shattered--the telltale sign of an out of control ego.  But maybe it was something else.  Maybe, as Morello was angrily leaving the restaurant, he realized the fact that he's not truly a member of the working class he professes to identify with.

Perhaps Morello realized he's an international celebrity with a sense of entitlement who, despite his Marxist views, has profited and accumulated great monetary wealth.  He profited not on his talent alone, but on the labor of an army of lesser-paid wage-earners--sound technicians, building contractors (who built the studio), software engineers, printers, copyright lawyers, promoters, merchandise vendors, retail cashiers--at the record label, retail and music stores, and the many venues toured by Rage Against the Machine.

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Image courtesy of David Shankbone via CC BY 3.0 license and obtained from Wikimedia Commons. Ludwig von Mises passage taken from Section 1 of The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.

Five Libertarian Ideas #17 - Civil Air Patrol, Boy Scouts, Activism, Cold War

Air Force and Coast Guard Auxiliaries

I've seen conspiratarian blog posts making the Civil Air Patrol and Coast Guard Auxiliary out to look like the Waffen-SS. That couldn't be further from the truth!

Both CAP and CGA are consistent with the non-aggression principle. Though they wear military uniforms and carry out missions on behalf of the military, both organizations are privately funded, relying mostly on member dues and charitable gifts.

Furthermore, they engage not in armed campaigns but in search and rescue operations, disaster relief, local community service, and education. Both organizations are the most benevolent manifestation of the organized militia. -4/27

Boy Scouts of America

Almost time to continue teaching Citizenship in the Community merit badge tonight. The Boy Scouts in my troop will get OUR worldview on civil rights and the true role of government. It's not just about activism; education is just as important. If the fight for liberty takes 20 years, we'll need new, young voters already on our side. -4/30

War in Ukraine

38 people are dead in an arson fire in a trade union building in Odessa in south-central Ukraine. The fire is believed to have been caused by Right Sector radicals but so far that's only speculation. It looks to me as if a greater emergency is being manufactured, and the Russians will use this to justify a full-scale invasion. -5/2

The embargo on Cuba

Wealthy joy riders in Havana; modern cars are rare in Cuba

The embargo on Cuba is damning proof of the futility of sanctions, since Fidel Castro still lives a life of wealth at the expense of the common people. I want to end Communism in Cuba by ending the embargo. I WANT Cuba to be flooded with American capitalism. I want the average Cuban who lives on $15 a month to be overwhelmed by drunk FSU students with fistfuls of money to spend, and realize in one day that Castro bamboozled Cuba for 55 years. -5/4

Liberty Letdowns and Pickups

It's been a privilege being a part of the liberty movement. Some people have chosen to be my brothers and sisters while others in the movement chose to remove me from their lives. They let me down, but the staggering amount of patriots who surround me with warm acceptance is always medicine for the soul. -5/6 

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Civil Air Patrol logo courtesy of CAP and in the public domain. Havana photo by "russavia", used via CC BY 2.0 license and obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

Tyrannical Government: The Hitler and Stalin Argument

I’m quite disappointed to realize I never fully tackled the Alex Jones guest appearance on Piers Morgan’s television program at the beginning of this year, so I’m taking this opportunity to discuss something important.  Whether they’re in favor of gun control or not, everyone who watched that interview can clearly remember Alex Jones’ outburst and what he said:

“Hitler took the guns, Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chavez took the guns … 1776 will commence again if you try to take the guns from the American people!!!”

While Jones’ point held an incredibly valid argument, he unfortunately stated some tiredly overused rhetoric that conservatives and libertarians use as an ideological defense of their Second Amendment rights.  To this very day, leftists take the totalitarian argument completely out of context, and they’re able to do so because conservatives and libertarians rarely ever add the proper context to this valid argument.

Let me attempt to give a logical and easy to understand explanation of what Jones meant.  It’s overstated that the reason the Second Amendment exists is for the American people to be able to protect themselves from “tyrannical government.”  That statement in and of itself is incredibly vague and unclear in its meaning.  What does “tyrannical government” exactly mean?

This is what it boils down to: the purpose of the Second Amendment is for the American civilian population to be armed to be able to fight a war against the federal government.  Plain and simple.

Battle of Lexington

Bear in mind that the Constitution and its appendage, the Bill of Rights, were written and ratified less than a decade after the American Revolutionary War had been won by the United States government (formerly the confederated Continental governments).  This war for independence began precisely as an armed faction of the British citizenry in North America went to war against the British government.  The war began at Lexington when a British Army battalion fired on the local militia, blatantly violating what we understand today to be the rules of engagement.

The government fired on the citizenry and the citizenry sure as hell shot back.

Many people on the left like to say that the circumstances of the American Revolution were unique, and that the federal government is not being tyrannical today the way the Crown was being.  Not so!  Anyone can take a look at the Declaration of Independence and see how many of the grievances—especially those in the second half of the list of outrages—written by the bipartisan Continental Congress in 1776 have been repeatedly committed against the American people by the federal government, under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Some on the left may indeed agree that the federal government is behaving the way the Royal Government behaved in the 1770s, but that our country’s government will never become as tyrannical as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union under Stalin.  But how can they really be sure?

Let’s first look at the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany.  The infamous fire that broke out in the Reichstag in February 1932 was the basis upon which German President Paul von Hindenberg—a supporter of Adolf Hitler’s—issues the Reichstag Fire Decree which was the “legal” basis for the German federal government to nullify many key civil rights, including a protection against warrantless arrests, indefinite detention, and seizures of personal property.

Adolf Hitler was elected in the spring of 1933.  Within one year of the seizure of state power by the Nazi regime—by democratic means, no less—all Jewish-owned businesses in Nazi Germany were marked with a yellow star or the word “Juden.”  In 1935—two years into the Nazi regime’s tenure—the passage of the Nuremburg laws stripped Germany’s Jews of their citizenship (as well as various political targets and other undesirables).  In 1936, special prison camps were built for political prisoners.  These prisons would later be known as “concentration camps.”   By 1938, the regime began enforcing stringent gun control laws, confiscating as many firearms as possible, and also began the mass incarceration of Jews into the newly built camps.

The terror and horror was in full swing within only five years.  What amazes me is how the majority of civil servants and elected officials in the German government in 1932 were ordinary people, hardly different from those serving in American government today.  Is it still completely implausible that tyranny could occur in America, creeping subtly to the surface, within just five years?

Let’s look back even further at the genesis of the Soviet Union.  The Bolsheviks occupied the Winter Palace in November 1917.  Within a few months Lenin had dissolved the Constituent Assembly (their at-the-time equivalent of a Congress or Parliament) and outlawed the other political parties.  Within two years of the October Revolution, Lenin organized the Cheka (secret police) that was sixteen times as large as the Tsar’s secret police.  He ordered the arrest and execution of at least 80,000 “enemies of the state” from the Social Democratic and Socialist Revolutionary parties.

Many people assumed this madness was simply part of the birth pangs of a new nation and part of the horrors of war (Russia was in a civil war from 1918-22).  However, it continued and progressively intensified.  Lenin’s regime did not only arrest the kulaks—landowners—but executed tens of thousands of them.  These figures do not reflect the people that were forcibly deported from the young Soviet Union.

In 1924 Lenin passed away and Stalin was selected by the Party to succeed him as Secretary.  Within five years Stalin began his “Second Revolution” to correct deviations from Marxist-Leninist doctrine which had occurred during the Civil War and New Economic Policy (NEP), to eliminate the new kulaks of the rising middle class which emerged during the first Five Year Plan under the NEP, and to purge impure elements from the Communist Party.  Though the Bolsheviks confiscated as many civilian-owned firearms as possible during the Civil War, the Second Revolution saw gun control officially implemented in 1929, immediately followed by a nationwide campaign of firearms seizure by the government.

NKVD (precursor to the KGB) records testify to 681,692 people executed during Stalin’s terror of 1936-39, though experts put the number of people murdered by their government during this time at over one million.  Let it be understood that when a government begins murdering its unarmed population, such a program is called genocide.  When a government begins murdering its armed population, such is usually the initiation of a civil war and likely government overthrow.  Nonetheless, in Russia during the end of the Tsar’s reign and early months of Bolshevik rule, just as in Germany, the majority of those serving in government were ordinary people, hardly different from American government employees and public servants.  When the regime began committing acts of tyranny, these same civil servants probably believed they were doing the right thing, entirely for the public good, just as the majority of the American Congress felt when they passed the PATRIOT Act and the various versions of NDAA.

We’ve demonstrated that atrocities in Germany began within five years of a change in government.  The long list of atrocities in the Soviet Union began within one year of the Bolsheviks taking power.  Let’s ask ourselves, is it completely implausible that a government could become tyrannical within one year?  Even after the cases of Germany and Russia—ancient lands steeped with rich histories and sophisticated culture—is it still impossible to consider that the American government could inflict tyranny on its own citizens?

It is indeed possible, though I pray it never happens.  I love my country and I consider my experiences so far in public service to have been an honor, but I also realize that I—like all of you—must remain vigilant and protest whenever the government oversteps its authority.  I fully understand that I’m 100 times more likely to be attacked by a fellow citizen than by my own government, but as long as I practice my Second Amendment right I can at least have a fighting chance to successfully defend myself.  I’m defenseless if the government disarms me.

Returning to the Alex Jones shout-a-thon on Piers Morgan’s show, it’s quite obvious that Piers set Alex up for that one.  There was no table, after all, bringing the two talking heads intimately close and thus making it more personal.  As far as setting Jones up, Morgan succeeded as Jones walked straight into the trap and began shouting.  Once Jones commenced his tantrum, he’d already lost and this victory for gun control advocates was broadcast internationally.  Because of that, it’s my hope that shedding some light on the tyrannical government argument will help my compatriots in the liberty movement present the argument accurately and in context so as to make our pro-Second Amendment position understood, not reviled.

Keep in mind and never forget that the same brilliant statesmen who brought you the rights to free speech, due process, and freedom from unlawful search and seizure are the same thinkers who brought you the right to own firearms.  They did so in consideration of the U.S. government overstepping its authority and attacking citizens, just as their government did in 1775.

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YouTube video contains footage that is the property of CNN but is used here in accordance with Fair Use Law and via Standard YouTube license.  Alex Jones image used courtesy of "911conspiracy" and Piers Morgan image courtesy of Ian Lively.  Both images hosted on Flickr, were obtained from Wikimedia Commons, and are used here via CC BY 2.0 license.  The First Blow For Liberty, Battle of Lexington by A.H. Ritchie is in the public domain.

The Three Differences Between Communism and Nazism

New Soviet People: Worker and Kolkhoz Woman

As an introductory note, let it be clearly stated that in this article the usage of the word “Communism” refers to Soviet-style socialism, or Marxism-Leninism as applied by the Soviet Union and later China.  “Nazism” refers specifically to German National Socialism in the Third Reich.

I’ve been reading a lot of Karl Marx lately, as well as a number of books and articles on the early decades of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, for a large term paper due in one of my political science classes.  The thesis of my paper is that Stalinism is the logical conclusion to Marxian socialism.  The abbreviated logic is that the many holes and open ends in Marxist theory, combined with the oppressive growth of the state under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, render the conversion from socialism to stateless communism to be impossible.  The state will not wither away as workers enjoy new freedom, but rather will grow into a totalitarian one at their expense.

“On [Dr. Goebbels’] assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith was very flight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer glasses” (from a November 1924 New York Times article, cited in The Soviet Story).

In my research I’ve found an overwhelming number of similarities and downright parallels between communism and Nazism, but what I found most striking were the three main differences between the two, which ultimately convinced me that Communism and Nazism are but two sides to the same utopian totalitarian coin.

1.      A superior human being.  Karl Marx offers in The German Ideology a glimpse of a utopia where the post-revolutionary proletariat is so productive that men are free to fish in the morning, hunt in the afternoon, and write literary and political criticisms in the evening.  From this, Trotsky expanded the utopia to include the idea of the New Soviet Man who

“will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman” (from Literature and Revolution).

Basically, the revolutionary proletarians will be such hard workers and so dedicated to the Marxian revolution that they will physically and mentally evolve into super-humans.  The Nazis, on the other hand, worshiped the Aryan as the next super-human.  In contrast to the Soviet superhero being more evolved due to class consciousness and dedication, the Aryan will advance because he is genetically (racially) superior to other humans and through selective breeding will continue to far surpass the others.

2.      Private property and state control.  In a May 1, 1927 speech Adolf Hitler said,

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

The Soviet state confiscated the overwhelming majority of private property, encompassing real estate (land), industry/businesses, and physical objects like machines and tools.  Turning these items into state property, the Communist party-state planned the economy and dictated production.  The Nazi state never did away with capitalism, nor did it abolish private property, but rather marginally tolerated them for the sake of benefiting the state.  The Nazi party-state instead planned the economy and left it to the industrialists and business people to make it happen within heavy regulations imposed by the government.  This merger between corporate and state power was the socialism Hitler was after, with the benefit of German citizens derived from the economic outputs of the corporate/state marriage.

3.      Imperial expansion.  Marx reinterpreted Hegel’s theory of dialectics (opposing forces or viewpoints) to form historical materialism, which argues that history is the story of class struggle (The Communist Manifesto, Section I).  The struggle and victory of one class over another is what makes history move from one stage to another.  The first stages were primitive communism—as practiced by the early peoples—then slave society—as practiced by the ancient empires like Rome and the Greeks—and feudalism.  The world is currently in the capitalist stage, at the end of which the proletariat will rise up and usher in the socialist stage, which will pave the way for the stateless, moneyless utopia of communism.

The Russian Revolution/Civil War and later the Chinese Revolution/Civil War solidified the idea that the proletariat was beginning to complete its historical mission.  However, beyond Russia, no other country in the world became Marxist all by itself (except tiny Cuba).  Because the proletarians were lagging in rising up, it was the job of the Soviet Union to make revolution happen worldwide.  The USSR heavily funded Mao’s Communist army in China during the Chinese Civil War.  Later, the USSR and China either sent combat troops into or provided financial and material support to every militant Marxist movement in the world.  All the European countries that became Communist after World War II made the transformation at Soviet gunpoint.

Lenin’s idea was that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would spread revolution across the world (implying that Moscow would be the world’s capital).  While Lenin and Stalin were intent on conquering the world for Communism to establish one giant Communist society, Hitler’s aim was to conquer the world and liquidate the undesirables for the benefit of the Aryan people of the worldwide Nazi German Empire

When comparing these three differences in the Soviet and National Socialist ideologies, they start to appear only superficially different.  They start to appear like… tyranny and genocide.

"Until its complete extermination or loss of national status, this racial trash always becomes the most fanatical bearer there is of counter-revolution, and it remains that. That is because its entire existence is nothing more than a protest against a great historical revolution... The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress." –Friedrich Engels (from The Magyar Struggle)

"The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way.... They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust." -Karl Marx (from The People's Paper, April 16, 1856)

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USSR postage stamp and Stalin/Hitler portrait are in the public domain and were obtained from Wikimedia Commons.  The video is from the film The Soviet Story by Edvins Snore and is used via Standard YouTube License.