Why Are We Socialists?
by Joseph Goebbels
We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of
all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and
to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.
Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It
promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the
political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to
breaking the present slavery and the regaining of German freedom.
Socialism therefore is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but
a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is
the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only
through a total combat brotherhood with the forward-striving energies
of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a
phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is
everything, the future, freedom, the Fatherland!
The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism's
nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in
anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism
into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with
the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these
facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as
nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive.
The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place
will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has
been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its
political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for
political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism.
The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the
political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the
number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these
are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the
socialist platform-but it is much more a matter of incorporating a
powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it
the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland. The
bourgeois does not want to recognize the strength of the working
class. Marxism has forced it into a straitjacket that will ruin it.
While the working class gradually disintegrates in the Marxist front,
bleeding itself dry, the bourgeois and Marxism have agreed on the
general lines of capitalism, and see their task now to protect and
defend it in various ways, often concealed.
We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of
necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our
people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The
worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he
produces. We have no intention of begging for that right.
Incorporating him in the state organism is not only a critical matter
for him, but for the whole nation. The question is larger than the
eight-hour day. It is a matter of forming a new state consciousness
that includes every productive citizen. Since the political powers of
the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation,
socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly
and outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and
Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the coming
workers' state. It is directed abroad at all powers that threaten our
national existence and thereby the possibility of the coming socialist
national state.
Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and
free internationally. The bourgeois and Marxism are responsible for
failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom.
No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves,
they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.
We must therefore break both groups politically. The lines of German
socialism are sharp, and our path is clear.
We are against the political bourgeois, and for genuine nationalism!
We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!
We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!
We are for the National Socialist German Workers Party!