They weren't socialist at all. It's a common talking point from modern fascist apologists (I'm not accusing you of being one—this nonsense leaks out into the popular culture and just gets picked up by accident, too) but it has zero basis in reality if you run down a list of what they did. It doesn't remotely look like what an even lightly-socialist-leaning government would do. Such claims are always supported by pointing at the name (LOL. LMFAO.), making things up, and maybe cherry-picking a couple things that seem socialist-ish if you squint really hard and don't put them in context. There's some early rhetoric about it, but zero action, that was just a cynical appeal to populism, usually accompanied with attempts to redefine socialism itself to mean not-socialism—they wanted the word, but not the meaning.
Of course there is no real communism, there is no real socialism, and there is no real fascism. Nevertheless if I'm talking to some guy on a street I'll understand what he means if talks about com-bloc eastern europe or asia, and I understood OP was referring to communist countries in the way in which the term is typically used.
There's a reason that Communists that don't follow Leninism or its derivatives tend to view the countries that call themselves “Communist” (all of which follow Leninism or one of its derivatives) as only rhetorically socialist in system and substantively state capitalist at best, as they are run by a narrow and self-perpetuating elites exploiting the working class through, among other means, control of the non-financial means of production.
Labor unions in communist countries were directly controlled by the Communist Party.
It's very much a "it started socialist but they were used and quickly purged from the party" situation.
1. Evidence for socialism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Nazi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
2. Evidence against socialism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrielleneingabe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freundeskreis_der_Wirtschaft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_participation_i...
See for example this pamphlet:
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken3...
All the NAZI leadership (after the knight of the long knives) openly spoke of their hatred of any kind of socialism -- philosophically and organizationally -- and of all socialists and socialists of all kinds were the first to be put in death camps. The entire moral and ethical framework -- the celebration of the nation and race above all else, the subservience to a singular leader, etc. reflect a hatred of socialist (internationalism, secularism, class solidarity instead of nationalism, helping the poor and weak, women's liberation) values which were considered "degenerate" and "Jewish"
(And unlike Stalinism/Maoism which also reflects similar outcomes in this case the goal is explicit and stated and propagandistically proclaimed rather than hidden under a layer of Bolshevik ideology)
So I'm not sure why libertarians etc (and recently Elon Musk) in the US keep repeating this assertion ("NAZIsm is socialism!) as some kind of fact. It only underscores a lack of knowledge of history, it's not some "gotcha", it's a self-own that only takes advantage of people who don't know the history.
First they came for the Communists...
Then they came for the Socialists...
Then they came for the trade unionists...
Then they came for the Jewsthe USSR came after all of those (who weren't Bolshevik aligned) but the Jews, they did let the jews live but they closed many of the synogogues and many of them had to flee to barely hospitable fringe regions to practice their religion.
(And frankly people who grew up in the Eastern Bloc in USSR-times were not taught this in history class, either. Or they got a distorted version of it)
What was established there in the late 20s and early 30s was very much a return of many of the forms of Tsarist autocracy, but with a paint job.
"Socialism in one country" and the efforts around it was the re-establishment of Great Russian Nationalism and a cult around a leader as the motive force of everything. Underneath that there was some usage of aspects of "Marxist" ideology, so it's not nearly as clear as what happened in Germany, but it's not dissimilar.
There's a reason why the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was able to be signed.
In that Marxist sense, that "socialism" has a very limited implication about a very limited set of concepts around putative public ownership of the means of production, one could call the Stalinists socialist. But by that use, then one should be aware that it's a trait of a set of ideologies that otherwise have pretty much nothing to do with each other.
And indeed, he called out the "return of many of the forms of Tsarist autocracy, but with a paint job" explicitly in describing "feudal socialism".
A later preface (by Engels, I think? I think it was one of the prefaces from after Marx death) points out that they used the word "communist" because the word socialist at the time had become largely associated with some of those ideologies that they did not want to be confused with. And of course "communism" has since become equally overloaded by ideologies so different their adherents have pretty much nothing in common.
Already before Lenin died, there was already the notion of "left" and "right" communism, as two incompatible camps that were not even single ideologies, but sets of ideologies. Hence Lenin's "'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder" that covered a range of "left" communist ideologies (because the Bolsheviks were considered "right" communists)
The reality is that "actually existing libertarianism" is just as or more liable to degrade into authoritarianism as it hands over blanket authority to the private market -- and, eventually, the form of the state that arises when said market goes into crisis. As we've seen in practice many times, and with the way a whole class of American "libertarians" have embraced the triumph of the will motive force behind Trumpism in the present day. (Or lined up behind Pinochet, etc. in the 70s)
Fully agree with you regarding the "fascists are just socialist" canard.
With respect to libertarianism, I like to taunt US libertarians by pointing out that the first liberatarian was Joseph Dejacque, a French anarcho-communist, who, of course, given his anarchist background, praised Proudhon for the view that property is theft - and requires state power to oppress those who reject it - but criticized Proudhon as a "moderate anarchist, liberal, but not libertarian" for not going far enough in his rejection of authority.
It tends to make a lot of them very upset.
With respect to people repeating this idiotic claim, it dates at least back to the 70's in various places, seemingly as a counter for groups on the right that wanted to create distance from the nazis.
Here's a large amount of reading matter to explain. Fill your boots.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe/#wiki...
Not unlike the amorphous political movement plaguing America currently.
So US Labour Day is an intentionally captured, defanged, neutered version.
Be cautious when you hear people loudly proclaiming “we’re for the working class” (Republicans) or “down with the oligarchs.” (Democrats)
This shows us that bad guys have used pro-worker language to gain public support, only to later strip away freedoms and centralize the power.
In short when a guy like Soros or Trump says they are for working class do not trust them.
but the way you reached this conclusion is that you disagree with the framing of contemporary US right-wing conservative activity as fascist?
even when Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, two private citizens who are very close to the levers of power, are on camera sieg-heiling?
even when the president of the united states pardoned paramilitary actors like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front members who actually did real violence?
even when people are being sent to a concentration camp in another country with no due process?
even when people who protest this administration's policies and actions are being targeted for professional blacklisting (lawyers, judges) or arrested and held without due process (eg, mahmoud khalil)?
if these actions are not close enough or akin to the actions of the Nazis (or other fascist movements) for the impact of these things to supersede a very pedantic definition of either term, then you must be willfully ignoring the intent behind applying those terms - they might not be "Nazis" but they're doing the things Nazis did, and that's extremely bad and worth comparison.
No, the Reich did not make International Workers' Day a holiday. It made May 1st the Day of National Work and prohibited all celebrations except those arranged by the nazi state, especially celebrations by worker organisations.
I tend to think we forget that things we enjoy today were won through, sometimes violent, struggle, and we take them for granted, what makes it easier to lose them.
To me this is one of the most important celebrations.
We have every type of revolutionary tv shows, including some fairly rediculous ones (e.g. divergent) but almost never strikes. The only exception i can really think of is that one episode of battlestar galactica (maybe give star trek ds9 half a point because they treated it in such a silly fashion).
Same reason all sorts of other stuff has gone nearly extinct.
Mainstream entertainment media is subject to the same eyeball-hour based economics as everything else and that content doesn't resonate with enough people.
(I think that’s the real reason these movies don’t get made: they’re too “Communist” for American audiences.)
https://jacobin.com/2019/06/tiananmen-square-worker-organiza...
It's also one of few depictions of strikes in US TV that treated the strikers with substantially more sympathy than their counterpart. Incidentally, this is another parallel to Babylon 5, which also had a strike, and were the negotiator that was brought in was a really unsympathetic caricature.
DS9 even managed to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, and still painted the strikers in a good light.
It speaks to the foundational values of the franchise being widely accepted that the strike episode is what is remembered as the labour thing, as if a lot of people would like the results of an egalitarian society but have been taught that the means to achieve it are somehow controversial.
In Critique of the Gotha Program he outright ridiculed what is now the German SDP for demanding that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society".
He went on to write: "Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."
Later in the same text he then reiterated the traditional socialist slogan, that explicitly also rejects equal distribution: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
For one the slogan of communist movements tend to be 'from each according to ability, to each according to need', and secondly it is more likely that a communist society would use scientific academies or committees rather than rely on inventors to accomplish technological or other achievements.
You're right though, its definitely better than the babylon 5 episode.
I also kinda like the Babylon 5 episode, but it has an entirely different feel to it, and the way it is resolved does make it weaker overall - it's the captain rather than the strikers that seal the win. The main strength of the Babylon 5 episode is that caricature of the negotiator and the visual presentation of the conflict, that feels like it is referencing an old-fashioned way of presenting conflict in US media that is made toothless by focusing on the anger while giving little play to the issues. Only in the Babylon 5 case, the extreme caricature of the negotitator gives him the more negative portrayal often given to strikers.
Although it might not be the type of movie you’re looking for, because the miners lost.
There's also Made in Dagenham. There's probably lots of french language films with workers struggle. The one that springs to mind is the hilarious satire Louise-Michel
For reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Association_(Star_Trek:_De...
On the other hand, Season 4 of For All Mankind depicted a strike of private sector workers in such an unrealistic, ham-fisted way that it couldn’t be taken seriously – much like many of the other half-assed story-lines that were crammed into the show for Seasons 3 and 4.
Who, despite all his flaws, (unlike the president, generally speaking) is not a bad person. But is very much a dictator (which was his job as the commander of a military vessel).
Everyone went back to being friends the next episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire_season_2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_and_Girls_(The_Office)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Rae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Chavez_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Waterfront
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn_(film)
But it's true the topic hasn't been en vogue for a while.
Some of them are more recent, but even the most recent movie (the Chavez one) is over a decade ago, got panned by critics and looks to be a relatively low budget film. The sort of thing people into pop culture are likely to not know about.
I think the fact you can't find anything this decade is pretty telling
I also admitted the topic hasn't been popular of late. Your comment didn't say anything about recency. It's likely that the dwindling percentage of Americans in unions has something to do with fewer recent depictions of labor struggles in TV and movies.
— Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_states_by_minimum_w...
In the biggest state with just the federal minimum wage, Texas, individual income percentile of $20k per year ($10 per hour/40 hour work weeks/50 weeks per year) is 20th percentile. That will capture all the part time workers too, so it seems the lowest priced labor in most US labor markets is disjoint from the federal US minimum wage.
https://dqydj.com/scripts/cps/2024_income_calculators/2024_i...
"Scott Bessent believes federal minimum wage should not be increased" - https://www.nbcnews.com/video/scott-bessent-believes-federal...
The Voice of America is the only media outlet I've ever heard actually celebrating Law Day. An old job of mine had a poster on the wall for Law Day that VoA had actually printed and given away for some reason.
palmotea•9mo ago
NhanH•9mo ago
amarcheschi•9mo ago
sgt•9mo ago
MarcelOlsz•9mo ago
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5zQpN28xa4
nosioptar•9mo ago
I prefer to raise awareness to the plight of the rich with music:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ej7dfPL7Kho&pp=ygUNc2F2ZSB0aGUgc...
tchalla•9mo ago
> Progressive Kristallnacht Coming? > I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316...
sgt•9mo ago
sgt•9mo ago
moomin•9mo ago
shove•9mo ago
cratermoon•9mo ago
bawolff•9mo ago
ks2048•9mo ago
That's why labor gets 1 day and owners get 364.
(Just realized that's roughly in the ballpark of CEO-to-worker wage ratio. ~290:1)
alabastervlog•9mo ago
TOGoS•9mo ago
belter•9mo ago
arbuge•9mo ago
cratermoon•9mo ago
That phrase doesn't compute. Except for "during that weekend", when of course they all jack up their rates knowing who is coming to stay.
y-curious•9mo ago
arbuge•9mo ago
y-curious•9mo ago
eli_gottlieb•9mo ago
The entire rest of the goddamn year.
arduanika•9mo ago