Some on the left still argue that when a government begins committing genocide they shouldn’t continue to be referred to as socialist. George Watson argues otherwise. He writes: “[T]here were still, in Marx’s view, races that would have to be exterminated. That is a view he published in January–February 1849 in an article by Engels called ‘The Hungarian Struggle’ in Marx’s journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the point was recalled by socialists down to the rise of Hitler.”1
Watson continues: “The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism was already giving place to capitalism, which must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire races would be left behind after a workers’ revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age; and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.”2
Was that simply a dated, one-off view limited to Engels? Disturbingly, decades before Hitler’s deadly “eugenics” camps, many prominent socialists were quite open in their support for government-directed eugenics.3
The socialist George Bernard Shaw infamously claimed that “the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man.” Shaw went on to recommend that certain people be eliminated by “lethal chamber,” a sinister forewarning of Hitler’s camps.
As Jonathan Freedland writes, “Such thinking was not alien to the great Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who argued that those with ‘general defects’ should be denied not only the vote, but ‘civil freedom and fatherhood.’”4
Marie Stopes, a pioneer in birth control, was, as Freedland reports, “a hardline eugenicist, determined that the ‘hordes of defectives’ be reduced in number, thereby placing less of a burden on ‘the fit.’ Stopes later disinherited her son because he had married a short-sighted woman, thereby risking a less-than-perfect grandchild.”5
Likewise, Margaret Sanger, another birth control crusader and socialist, also advocated for eugenics. The same year Hitler ran for the presidency, Sanger gave a speech titled “My Way to Peace.”
Sanger argued: “The second step would be to take an inventory of the second group, such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection and segregate them on farms and open spaces.”6 Sanger’s list of “deplorables” would be allowed to leave the camps if they agreed to sterilization. Never one to worry too much about civil liberties, Sanger thought only about 15 million to 20 million Americans would need to be interned in these camps.
Father John J. Conley tells us, “The centerpiece of the [Sanger’s eugenics] program is vigorous state use of compulsory sterilization and segregation. The first class of persons targeted for sterilization is made up of people with mental or physical disability. . . . A much larger class of undesirables would be forced to choose either sterilization or placement in state work camps.”7
Makes one wonder if Hitler heard her speech. In an era where Confederate statues are seemingly taken down daily, it’s amazing that the “liberal” icon and socialist Margaret Sanger is still proudly promoted and lionized as the founder of Planned Parenthood.
The socialist advocates for eugenics were nothing if not blunt. Another prominent socialist, Britain’s Harold Laski, predicted the eugenics of the future: “The time is surely coming . . . when society will look upon the production of a weakling as a crime against itself.”8
The scientist J. B. S. Haldane, known for his socialism, channeled his inner Nietzsche to opine that “Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of ‘undermen.’”9 Haldane was also unapologetic in his support of Stalin, declaring in 1962 that Stalin was “a very great man who did a very good job.”10
The eugenicists were not only worried about undesirable genetic traits; they wrongly believed that behavioral traits were inherited. So, if you were poor or lazy, the eugenicists wanted to prevent you from reproducing. As Freedland puts it, “it was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.”11
Even the godfather of big-government debt and inflation, John Maynard Keynes, was, as Freedland notes, the director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. Keynes advocated for contraception to keep down the numbers of the working class, who were too “drunken and ignorant” to control their production of children.
Today’s left would have us forget that the pseudoscience of eugenics was once all the rage among socialists. When reminded of the repugnant views of their fellow travelers, today’s socialists might respond that their forebears were simply products of their time, that it’s not fair to hold them to our current standards.
But Freedland argues that socialists’ support for eugenics was no accident: “The Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their ilk were not attracted to eugenics because they briefly forgot their leftwing principles. The harder truth is that they were drawn to eugenics for what were then good, leftwing reasons.”12
These same socialists believed unreservedly in state planning of the economy. It was not much of a stretch for them to believe in the state planning of families. As Freedland asks, “If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies?”13
To these socialists, individual wants and needs were secondary to society’s interests. As Freedland explains, if the “aim was to do what was best for society, society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.”14
You can excuse these socialists all you want “as men and women of their times,” but never forget that they were socialists and that they saw state planning of the family as no different than state planning of the economy or a rancher’s planning for his cattle breeding.
As Mises put it: “It is vain for the champions of eugenics to protest that they did not mean what the Nazis executed. Eugenics aims at placing some men, backed by the police power, in complete control of human reproduction. It suggests that the methods applied to domestic animals be applied to men. This is precisely what the Nazis tried to do.”15
Once the truth of the Holocaust became apparent, Freedland tells us, “eugenics went into steep decline . . . most recoiled from it once they saw where it led—to the gates of Auschwitz. The infatuation with an idea horribly close to Nazism was steadily forgotten.”16
What should not be forgotten is that the central idea of collectivism, that the individual is less important than the whole, is entirely consistent with allowing the state to eliminate individuals that are a burden to society.
Socialism and eugenics are not a historical anomaly but a historical symbiosis that we risk any time we are tempted to accept an “ism” that elevates the collective over the individual.17
Watson writes, “since the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 socialists have been eager to forget” their association with state elimination of undesirables. He maintains that “there is plenty of evidence in the writings of H. G. Wells, Jack London, Havelock Ellis, the Webbs and others to the effect that socialist commentators did not flinch from drastic measures. The idea of ethnic cleansing was orthodox socialism for a century and more.”18
The argument that Hitler’s racial animus and ultimate extermination policies somehow disqualify him as a socialist are not justified. As Watson puts it, “Only socialists in that age advocated or practised genocide, at least in Europe, and from the first years of his political career Hitler was proudly aware of the fact.”19
The socialist intelligentsia, at the time, remained committed to defending the idea that creating a socialist paradise, as Beatrice Webb put it, is like making an omelet: “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”