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Nietzsche On Socialism

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Nietzsche was not one to often discuss politics in his work, but when he did, he usually ended up detesting politics of any sorts. Here is is reasoning behind why socialism actually negates life in its practice found in a note from 1885 found in The Will to Power. Is Nietzsche right? Does a socialist country cut off itself at the roots?

Quote:

This quote from Beyond Good and Evil reminded me of Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy about the dumbing down of society to its ultimate conclusion of stupidity.

Quote:

The over-all degeneration of man down to what today appears to the socialist dolts and flatheads as their "man of the future"-as their ideal-this degeneration and diminution of man into the perfect herd animal, this animalization of man into the dwarf animal of equal rights and claims, is possible, there is no doubt of it. Anyone who has once thought through this possibility to the end knows one kind of nausea that other men don't know-but perhaps also a new task! (BGE, 203)

@Theaetetus,

Nietzsche makes good points indeed. But what about the socialization of a country to make it stronger in war? Didn't the US takes control of many industries during WW2? And one thinks of Hitler, who used Nietzsche, and his socialization in the name of a grand scheme, the restored honor and dignity of Germany.

It's tricky. One also thinks of Plato's ruling class in the Republic. I will certainly agree from the non-ruling class point of view that capitalism presupposes a more noble sort of citizen, one who makes his own way, one who owns.

@Theaetetus,

The state is for N always the "coldest of cold monsters" and for him, socialism is the Christian herd mentality made politically powerful. Because it preaches that happiness is best obtained by equality, it elevates the herd above the individual, and because it makes happiness dependent on possessions and wealth, it negates spiritual values.

@Theaetetus,

Nietzsche also seems to think that socialism makes people dumber through degeneration of goals and values. Through the project of making humanity more average by people striving to be of the common herd, N thinks that people turns into "dolts and flatheads". Socialism seems to eliminate the possibility of N's Ubermensch ideal--or at the least, less likely. N does not seem to like the prospects of wisdom within socialism. The common person is too stupid and too common to value striving beyond desires and low expectations of how people are to be.

@Theaetetus,

I've just recently got the book beyond good and evil, a newbie to philosophy all together but it's interesting to read what others have to say about him. I find that i probably will be enjoying him. Can anyone suggest other philosophers similar in taste?

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus;110668 wrote:

Nietzsche was not one to often discuss politics in his work, but when he did, he usually ended up detesting politics of any sorts. Here is is reasoning behind why socialism actually negates life in its practice found in a note from 1885 found in The Will to Power. Is Nietzsche right? Does a socialist country cut off itself at the roots?

This quote from Beyond Good and Evil reminded me of Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy about the dumbing down of society to its ultimate conclusion of stupidity.

What is wrong with equal rights...Is the presumption that people have no way to distinguish themselves other than by taking rights, and having more rights than can be justified???From my perspective, as one who has studied some anthropology, and know primitive peoples were universally communistic, in the matter of honor, all people craved distinction... Is it so impossible to accept that if people are held to equality of political rights, and equality of economic rights, that they might wish to excell in some acceptible fashion that does not render the whole society impotent...People putting themselves first put their societies last, and in doing so endanger their own existence... Individualism is social suicide...

---------- Post added 01-06-2010 at 09:52 PM ----------

NecromanticSin;117974 wrote:

I've just recently got the book beyond good and evil, a newbie to philosophy all together but it's interesting to read what others have to say about him. I find that i probably will be enjoying him. Can anyone suggest other philosophers similar in taste?

There is no one like Nietzsche...How many bad examples does the world need???

---------- Post added 01-06-2010 at 10:08 PM ----------

Theaetetus;110938 wrote:

Nietzsche also seems to think that socialism makes people dumber through degeneration of goals and values. Through the project of making humanity more average by people striving to be of the common herd, N thinks that people turns into "dolts and flatheads". Socialism seems to eliminate the possibility of N's Ubermensch ideal--or at the least, less likely. N does not seem to like the prospects of wisdom within socialism. The common person is too stupid and too common to value striving beyond desires and low expectations of how people are to be.

The Wisdom of the people is greater than individual wisdom.... We can look at all the great men who have been raised up by slave labor of some sort and celebrate... Would they have stood at all above the rest with equal opportunity and everyone working for himself... What if our geniuses did not raise our level of thought, but held down the general level to look bright...I have met some of a people who were, not so many generations back, democratic, communistic, and feared generally East of the Missisippee...There was nothing wrong with their intelligence, and some of their technology has not been improved upon...Nietzsche had a lot of prejudice, some knowledge of ancient societies, and even though he had the ability to learn more on the subject of the German Tribes or the American Indians, he would not let the truth get in the way of a good lie...

Having never seen socialism, or equality in any part of his society from where did he come by his opinion??? He seemed to hold the opinion that primitive man was more instinctual, and superior...Primitives were socialist... It was the fact that they were responsible for the defense of their own rights and their own honor, even if this was accomplished communally that made them superior, but they were no less human...

@Fido,

are you saying Nietzsche is a bad example of a philosopher?

@NecromanticSin,

NecromanticSin;117991 wrote:

are you saying Nietzsche is a bad example of a philosopher?

I think he was sloppy, and I think he drew a few significant and false conclusions... As an antimoralist he had no grasp of morals, or the basis of morals in community...He did not even grasp European history short term, and since the relics and results of Feudalism were everywhere in evidence, such ignorance is inexcusable...The Junkers, the Feudal Prussian class to which Bismark belonged even played a small part in the rise of Hitler... Kings, Kaisars, Czars and lords and holy empires were at each others throats only a few years after Nietzsche... Where was the equality he feared??? It was all class, class, and privilage...

@Fido,

Fido;117995 wrote:

I think he was sloppy, and I think he drew a few significant and false conclusions... As an antimoralist he had no grasp of morals, or the basis of morals in community...He did not even grasp European history short term, and since the relics and results of Feudalism were everywhere in evidence, such ignorance is inexcusable...The Junkers, the Feudal Prussian class to which Bismark belonged even played a small part in the rise of Hitler... Kings, Kaisars, Czars and lords and holy empires were at each others throats only a few years after Nietzsche... Where was the equality he feared??? It was all class, class, and privilage...

any philosophers you can suggest otherwise?

@NecromanticSin,

That quote sounds like something I'd hear on Fox News.

@Fido,

Fido;117995 wrote:

I think he was sloppy, and I think he drew a few significant and false conclusions...

In the quote in the OP Nietzche says he hoped for some experiments in socialism so as to see how in it, life cuts itself off from its roots.

I think he made the same mistake rightist usually do about socialism: to imagine that there's any choice regarding it. The existence of socialism in our world, including the US, is not by choice. It's simply because unrestrained greed will reduce a society to a desperate wasteland that isn't worth living in... which is exactly what the European aristocracy predicted would happen with capitalism.

So yes: it does cut life off from its roots... in as far as one of the roots of life is greed.

@NecromanticSin,

NecromanticSin;118028 wrote:

any philosophers you can suggest otherwise?

I like Kant, and Schopenhaur in that age, Heidegger for helping me understand Kant...I even appreciate Nietzsche who made an issue of the fact, contrary to the enlightenment philosophers that people are not especially reasonable, but he was not alone in this...Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, even Poe, in America were painting a picture, in a sense, as Van Gogh was in fact, of human perception and motivation beyond the frame of the rational...

As I heard for the first time in regard to ironwork, Those who can do do, and those who can't do teach... Nietzsche was a guy who could not do, and yet he offered no end of advice in regard to women as if one who knew...That too was hypocritical, but typical of sons raised by their mothers, who often hold women in contempt...

Philosophy is easy... Maintaining a normal adult relationship with a spouse for life is impossible, which means, very difficult... I don't mean to take this thread off track... I mean to say that the object of philosophy is somthing like normal, healthy social, or romantic relationships (the good life), and some success there qualifies anyone as a philosopher in my book... How does anyone tell anyone anything about life if the better part of life is unknown to them???

I wouldn't go to a skid row bum for marriage counciling, and I can't go to Nietzsche for anything...

---------- Post added 01-07-2010 at 07:44 AM ----------

Arjuna;118046 wrote:

In the quote in the OP Nietzche says he hoped for some experiments in socialism so as to see how in it, life cuts itself off from its roots.

I think he made the same mistake rightist usually do about socialism: to imagine that there's any choice regarding it. The existence of socialism in our world, including the US, is not by choice. It's simply because unrestrained greed will reduce a society to a desperate wasteland that isn't worth living in... which is exactly what the European aristocracy predicted would happen with capitalism.

So yes: it does cut life off from its roots... in as far as one of the roots of life is greed.

Primitives were communistic out of necessity... We are very socialistic, but it is the socialism of poverty, which maximizes profits for a few...The real danger for us is anarchy...Look at the trillions of dallars of infrastructure built to serve factories that have packed up an moved to some other state, or country...No one can maintain it without a tax base, so there it deteriorates...For the capitalist, having fifty states means having the state of their dreams...Socialism is no more than the government of business, and the means of production....Since capital ungoverned governs all our lives, and to keep enterprise free we must shackle people, how can anyone accuse socialism of cutting life from its roots...The root of humanity is socialism...Law which is entirely given to the protection of inequality captured by legal theft, is the enemy of every community...Law turns all people into individuals, and without their common defense of rights they find themselves victims...But that was Nietzsche's ideal world...

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