Nazi Party

The flag of Nazi Germany

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) is the full name of the group better known as the Nazis.

Scientific terminology applied to evolution

The terms fact and theory can be applied to evolution, just as they are to gravity. Misuse and misunderstanding of how those terms are applied to evolution have been used to construct arguments disputing the validity of evolution.

In the study of biological species, the facts include fossils and measurements of these fossils. The location of a fossil is an example of a fact (using the scientific meaning of the word fact). In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of evolutionary change has been observed in the laboratory. The observation of fruit fly populations changing character is also an example of a fact, using the scientific meaning of the word fact. So evolution is a fact, at least using the scientific meaning of the word fact. These facts require an explanation, just as the observations of gravity did.

In biology, there have been many attempts to explain these observations over the years. Lamarckism, Transmutationism and Orthogenesis were all non-Darwinian theories that attempted to explain the observations of species and fossils and other evidence. However, the Theory of Evolution is the explanation for all relevant observations regarding the development of life, based on a model that explains all the available data and observations. Thus, evolution is not only a fact but also a theory, just as gravity is both a fact and a theory.

Gravity	Evolution
Things falling is an observation of the pull of bodies towards each other.	Fruit flies changing generation to generation is an observation of generational organism change.
Bodies pulling towards each other is called gravity.	Organisms changing generation to generation is called evolution.
Gravity is a fact.	Evolution is a fact.
An explanation for the facts of gravity.	An explanation for the facts of evolution.
Aristotle and Galileo created explanations of the fact of gravity. These are now obsolete explanations.	Lamarckism, Transmutationism and Orthogenesis were created as explanations of the fact of evolution. These are now discredited explanations.
Newton's explanation of gravity is approximately correct but required refinement.	Darwin's explanation of evolution is approximately correct, but required refinement.
Einstein's explanation is a refinement of Newton's explanation of gravity. Einstein's explanation is currently the most accepted explanation of the fact of gravity.	The modern evolutionary synthesis is a refinement of Darwin's explanation of evolution. This modern synthesis is currently the most accepted explanation of the fact of evolution.
Einstein's explanation of the fact of gravity is called The General theory of relativity.	The explanation of the fact of evolution provided by the modern synthesis is the latest and most widely accepted Theory of Evolution.
Gravity is a fact and a theory.	Evolution is a fact and a theory.

Anti-Semitism

The Nazis were highly anti-Semitic and blamed the Jews for many of the problems in Germany, such as the defeat in World War I. The Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 which stated that:

• Young German women could not work for Jews in the domestic services.
• Jews were no longer citizens of Germany (this meant that they had no protection from the police and so were susceptible to attack)
• Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Germans/Aryans
• Jews could not marry Germans/Aryans

They made laws against Jews ("Rassengesetze", race laws) which places successively tighter restrictions on the rights of Jews to own property, use public services, live in some areas, enter public spaces and eventually required Jews wear a Star of David on their clothing. The Jews were mistreated, persecuted, and killed by the Nazis. The Nazi state also persecuted other political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, and foreign nationals. Homosexualscame under increasing scrutiny and persecution in the later years of the régime. The Nazis exterminated at least 11 million civilians by rounding them up, transporting them to concentration camps and then murdering them there. About 6 million of these were Jews (see Holocaust).

Economic planning

"With our flags is our victory"

James Burnham, a former Trotskyite who served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the World War II and later contributed to the National Review, described the Nazi regime's economic planning. Burnham pointed out how the original "workers revolution" of Marxism had in fact become a managerial revolution in all societies were Socialism had been embraced. Writing in 1940, Burnham noted,

“

Outright state ownership and operation, advancing in all fields, are particularly ascendant in the extensive areas of new enterprise opened up during the Nazi rule....virtually all economic enterprise is subject to rigid state control; and it is control which we have seen to be decisive in relation to the instruments of production. Legal forms, even income privileges, are in the end subordinate to de facto control. Even where private owners still exist in Germany, the decisions about "their" property are not in their hands. They do not decide what to make or not to make. They do not establish prices or bargain about wages. They are not at liberty to buy the raw materials they might choose nor to seek the most profitable markets. They cannot, as a rule, decide how to invest or not invest their surplus funds. In short, they are no longer owners, no longer effective capitalists... The regulation of production in Germany is no longer left to the market. What is to be produced, and how much, is decided, deliberately, by groups of men, by the state boards and bureaus and commissions. It is they that decide whether a new plant shall be built or an old plant retired, how raw materials shall be allotted and orders distributed, what quotas must be fulfilled by various branches of industry, what goods shall be put aside for export, how prices shall be fixed and credit and exchange extended. There is no requirement that these decisions of the bureaus must be based on any profit aim in the capitalist sense. If it is thought expedient, for whatever reason, to produce, for example, an ersatz rubber or wool or food, this will be done even if the production entails, from a capitalist point of view, a heavy loss. Similarly, in order to accumulate foreign exchange or to stimulate some political effect in a foreign nation, goods will be exported regardless of loss. A factory may be compelled to shut down, even though it could operate at a high profit. Banks and individuals are forced to invest their funds with no reference to the private and voluntary opinions about "risks" from a profit standpoint. It is literally true to say that the Nazi economy, already, is not a "profit economy." The workers, on their side, are no longer the "free proletarians " of capitalism. Under Nazism the workers are indeed, free from unemployment. At the same time they cannot, as individuals or through their own independent organizations, bargain for wages or change jobs at will. They are assigned to their tasks, and their labor conditions are fixed, by the decisions of the state bureaus and commissions. Millions of them are allotted to the vast state enterprises. ...With the reduction in the area of private enterprise and the increase of state enterprise, goes also a corresponding reduction in the social position of the private capitalists. So far as control over the instruments of production goes, the capitalists are already near the bottom. As to income privilege: a recent estimate by a New York statistician gives as a mere 5% the share of the German national income going to profits and interest. This is a substantial reduction from the 1933 figures, in spite of a huge increase in the total national income, which, under capitalism, would normally be accompanied by a percentage increase in profits. ...f the German capitalists' 5%, the greater part is appropriated by the state as taxes and "contributions." ... ...how seldom we find a manager among the voluntary or forced exiles from Nazi Germany! There are artists and writers among the exiles, ideologists and politicians, unassailable foes of the new regime, storekeepers and professionals and teachers, and not a few capitalists, both Jews and Christians. But almost never a manager....Germany is to-day a managerial state in an early stage. Structurally, it is less advanced along managerial lines than Russia; ...though structurally less advanced...Its industrial and technological foundation is far stronger; the rising managerial class is much larger, better trained, more able... ...The first part of the second world war, up to the fall of France in June, 1940, was in reality the continuation of the strategic extension begun in 1935. This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity.

”

See Also

• Anti-Semitism
• Adolf Hitler

External links

• Marxism, Fascism, Nazism - Brad DeLong, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley