"National Socialism wants to appeal to Capitalists"

[NatSoc420]

I came across this self proclaimed "Political Science Student" who made the claim that "National Socialist Germany was trying to appeal to Capitalists" in order to get "stronger". The points they brought up were

1. Hitler "awarded" and worked with big industrialists like the Koch's.

2 Hitler and the NSDAP "only" targeted "Socialists" to be imprisoned but not Capitalists.

Someone had also brought up the USSR and it's deals with big industrialists as well but they said the USSR "wasn't Socialist" and it was "State Capitalist" and brought up the NEP (New Economic Policy) to prove their point. They also said the USSR did their deals out of trying to "disrupt" Capitalism and they didn't have a choice whereas the Nationalists "did have a choice" and did it to get powerful and "appeal" to the Capitalists. Are there any rebuttals to these claims?

[Wachtman]

One point to be remembered: at the end of W.W. I every German kingdom within the 2nd empire and the state of Austria within the former Habsburg empire (and other Austrian states of the various ethnicities) suffered a communist revolution and at least a partial if not total take-over of the government by the communists, sometimes labeling themselves as socialists, and each of these revolutionary governments had to be re-taken, which they were, mostly by German and Austrian soldiers returning home.

A violent take-over of the sitting government is sometimes known as a revolution, but is also considered high treason.

The German and Austrian empires were capitalist monarchies prior to the First World War, and there's no good reason to think they shouldn't have continued to be, and they are capitalist societies to this day.

The new German governments (Weimar, and the National Socialist 3rd Empire) could well have seen the communists as being traitors, and agitators or armed insurgents being incarcerated is not that uncommon.

[Kretschmer]

Before answering either of these questions, one must first correctly define what "Capitalism" actually is, as the vast majority of people confuse it for any economy that permits the existence of profit and private enterprise. However, this is not true at all, as made clear even in the works of Karl Marx, who separated the Liberal Capitalism of the 19th Century from the Feudalism that had preceded it. A relevant example of such separation is Marx's then-novel use of the word "bourgeoise" to refer to the upper Capitalist classes who had in large part, previously comprised the middle classes (or bourgeoise in the original sense) of Feudal society.

Liberal Capitalism as we know it today did not exist until the late 18th Century and is most accurately described as an economic system focused on supremacy over Capital that is based in the fundamental tenants of Liberalism. Capitalism, besides being individualistic and materialistic, represents a financial tyranny of the majority whose only true beneficiaries are those who manipulate and eventually subjugate said majority, precisely because it is the economic manifestation of Liberal philosophy and doctrine. Just as "the will of the people" is seen as the ultimate good in Liberalism regardless of whether it is truly in the best interest of the Nation or not, the "free market" (that being the will of market forces and finance) is seen as the ultimate good in Capitalism, whether it is highly beneficial to the Nation or utterly exploitative. Just as Liberal Democracy inevitably devolves into Tyranny, Liberal Capitalism inevitably devolves into Corporatocracy.

With the definition of Capitalism now having been established, let's now look over the two objections expressed by this political science student:

1. Big business in Germany favored Hitler and his platform over that of the KPD not because he was in their pockets, but because Hitler recognized the benefits of allowing private means of production to exist while the KPD did not. The widespread Marxist theory that Hitler applied the "Socialist" label to his movement just as a means of duping the working classes is complete nonsense and is based only in Hitler's disavowal of Marxism when asked about the label itself. Such an assumption based on his statements regarding Socialism only works if one views Marxism as the basis for all Socialism, which again is not true at all. Marxism is only one of the numerous strands of Socialism that developed from the late 18th Century onwards as a reaction to Capitalism, and National Socialism happens to be another that in much the same way as Sorelianism or National Syndicalism, repudiates the distinguishing characteristics of Marxism which serve as an internationalist, materialist, and egalitarian aberration against the Socialism that preceded Marx. The other common Marxist accusation that Hitler was used as a corporate tool is not supported by any evidence that has yet been substantiated, and is ironically enough, more of a conspiracy theory, if anything.

2. While it is true that Hitler concentrated most of his political suppression efforts towards Marxists, Social Democrats, and Anarchists, this was not because he was a corporate tool, but because for reasons explained earlier, the vast majority of Capitalists were (at least before the war) either content with Hitler or perceived him as the lesser of two evils. However, this did not mean that Capitalists were given free reign to subvert the interests of National Socialist governance, with Fritz Gerlich being a prominent example of a Liberal Capitalist who was imprisoned.