Leftists will tell you that the Nazis were definitely far right. I say far left, but I never had all of the facts to back that up at my fingertips. This essay by Brivael Le Pogam (@brivael) makes it pretty clear. You might find these points helpful in future discussions.

Link to original post on X:

https://x.com/brivael/status/2115783076840173595?a=Wu4sR8bRQE-Yl7gYIDk&s=20

A lot of debate about my video on Hitler. I’m not backing down. I’m going to explain where I’m coming from.

For me, the zero layer of any ideology is the economy. Not the speeches, not the flags, not the uniforms. The basic question is always the same: who decides what gets produced, at what price, by whom, and who keeps the fruits of the labor?

There are only two big answers.

Capitalism: property is private, prices emerge from millions of free exchanges, each person decides what to produce, what to buy, where to invest. No one steers the whole thing. Order emerges from the bottom up.

Collectivism: a central power decides on behalf of individuals in the name of a higher interest. The class in Marx, the nation in others, the planet today. The word changes, the mechanics stay the same: the individual is subordinated to the collective, and the State decides what is “useful.”

Now, look at what Hitler did. Not what he said about himself, what he actually did.

His party is called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Its 1920 program demands the abolition of income obtained without work, the nationalization of trusts, profit-sharing in large companies, the expropriation of land without compensation for the common good. And one principle that sums it all up: the general interest before the particular interest.

Once in power:

In 1933, free unions are dissolved and replaced by the German Labor Front, a party body that oversees both workers AND bosses. That same year, the State claims the right to force companies to group into cartels. All agriculture falls under the Reich Food Estate, which sets prices, quotas, and sales channels. The law on hereditary farms prohibits hundreds of thousands of peasants from selling or mortgaging their own land.

In 1934, Schacht’s “New Plan” imposes exchange controls: you need authorization to import. Dividends are capped, and the surplus goes into State loans.

In 1935, the work book becomes mandatory. The State knows where you work and can prevent you from changing jobs.

In 1936, Hitler entrusts Göring with the Four-Year Plan, with an explicit goal: an economy ready for war in four years. On November 26, 1936, the Price Commissioner bans any price increases without authorization. The price mechanism, the very heart of the market, is snuffed out by decree.

In 1937, the Ruhr industrialists refuse to invest in an unprofitable iron ore mine. The State’s response: it creates its own giant steelworks, the Reichswerke Hermann Göring.

In 1938, the State can requisition a worker and assign them to a position.

And for those who say no? Hugo Junkers, aviation pioneer, refuses to comply. He’s forced to hand over his company and ends up under house arrest. The message sent to all the other bosses is crystal clear.

So yes, the factories still had an owner on paper. But when you don’t set your own prices, nor your wages, nor your investments, nor your imports, nor your dividends, and the State can take your business if you refuse, you’re not an owner. You’re a manager on behalf of the State. Mises called it the German model of socialism: you keep the label of private property, but strip away everything that makes it property.

Now, the “but historians say Nazism is far right.”

Two things.

First, historians and economists don’t measure the same thing. The left-right divide comes from the seating of deputies in the 1789 Assembly. Historians classify Nazism as far right on nationalism, racism, anticommunism, alliance with part of the elites. On those points, they’re right. Me, I ask a different question: who controls the economy? And the answer is the State, not the market. The two observations don’t exclude each other. Hayek already wrote it in 1944, in a chapter titled “The Socialist Roots of Nazism.”

Second, a diploma isn’t an argument. The most influential economics textbook of the 20th century, Paul Samuelson’s Nobel Prize winner, announced for decades that Soviet GDP would catch up to that of the United States. In the 1989 edition, it still presented the Soviet economy as proof that a planned economy can work, even prosper. Two years before the USSR’s collapse. Generations of credentialed economists learned that. Titles don’t immunize against ideological biases. Read the decrees, look at the dates, form your own opinion.

At bottom, there are two worldviews.

The first: freedom, property, value creation. Individuals who try, fail, start over, exchange, and an order that emerges without anyone designing it.

The second: planning. Someone, somewhere, knows better than you what you should produce, consume, earn, in the name of a higher goal. Soviet five-year plan, Nazi Four-Year Plan. Red or brown, the mechanics are the same. Only the collective invoked changes: the class or the race.

I’m not saying every plan leads to the worst. I’m saying every plan starts from the same idea: that your choices matter less than the planner’s goal.

So the next time you hear someone talk about a “plan,” whether industrial, national, or ecological, ask yourself just one question: who decides for me, and what are they going to take from me to make the plan hold?