When a socialist calls someone a Nazi today, as they are wont to do if anyone disagrees with their agenda, they are actually calling them a fellow socialist.
Socialism is another word for collectivism, the doctrine that an individual life has no value, that an individual is owned by the collective and lives only to serve the state or group. This is an apt description for both Marxist-Leninist socialism and National Socialism.
The term “Nazi” was coined as a derogatory abbreviation for the proper name, “Nationalsozialist” (National socialist), short for “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (National Socialist German Workers' Party). Nobel Prize winning economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, rightfully considered Nazism to be socialism.
Both National Socialists and Marxist-Leninist socialists rejected laissez-faire capitalism in favor of total state planning. Prior to World War II, western progressives supported both Hitler and Stalin. “Utopianists” were socialists and socialists were dedicated eugenicists. This is a historical truth that even the leftist Guardian newspaper has had to deal with, an article stating "Socialism's one-time interest in eugenics is dismissed as an accident of history. But the truth is far more unpalatable…What could be more socialist than planning…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?” 1
Introducing Karl Pearson
Intellectuals embraced both Hitler and Stalin. Before 1941, it was a standard combination. But in the interest of brevity we will focus on just one prominent individual, Karl Pearson. Karl Pearson was one of the four main founders of statistics, founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and indispensable to the scientific progress that would follow. While the name Karl Pearson may not be familiar to all, everybody has heard of correlation. The concept was invented by Sir Francis Galton, Pearson’s mentor, to explain why great men had great sons.
Karl Pearson invented the formula for correlation still used today, as well as the chi-squared test for goodness of fit. But Karl Pearson was first and foremost a collectivist.
Pearson was a leader in preaching Darwinism operated not on individuals but was rather collectivist, supporting the discredited notion of group selection, with some races deserving extinction. Pearson was interested in statistics principally to justify the extermination of undesirables, notably Jews.
Karl Pearson in his own Words
Socialism, being collectivism, require as a totalitarian state, and for this Pearson was all in favor, writing “The legislation or measures of police, to be taken against the immoral and anti- social minority, will form the political realization of socialism. Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lamp-post.”
In 1925 Pearson founded a journal, Annals of Eugenics. It was preoccupied with the threat of Jewish Immigration, describing Jews as “ a parasitic race.”, and writing “into a crowded country only the superior stocks should be allowed entrance, not the inferior” and “History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race…on which probably so much of the Aryan’s success depended.”
In 1933 Karl Pearson, who would pass away in 1936 at 79, retired as Chair of National Eugenics at University College London. A 1934 dinner was held in UCL in his honor. Karl Pearson’s remarks at the dinner included “The climax culminated in Galton’s preaching of Eugenics, and his foundation of the Eugenics Professorship. Did I say ‘culmination’? No, that lies rather in the future, perhaps with Reichskanzler Hitler and his proposals to regenerate the German people. In Germany a vast experiment is in hand, and some of you may live to see its results. If it fails it will not be for want of enthusiasm, but rather because the Germans are only just starting the study of mathematical statistics in the modern sense!”
In that very same speech, Pearson recalled after returning to London for legal studies, he “varied legal studies by lecturing on… Marx on Sundays at revolutionary clubs around Soho. Indeed, I contributed to the Socialist Song Book hymns which I believe are still chanted.”
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Pearson, the Legacy
The Nazis had an appreciative awareness of Pearson’s contributions to their cause. In 1932, Pearson was awarded the prestigious Rudolf Virchow medal from the Anthropological Society of Berlin, handed to him by Eugen Fischer, author of books that provided racial theories for Hitler (read by the future Fuhrer in prison and quoted in Mein Kampf) and for the Nuremberg laws.(Fischer died in 1967 at 93, basking in glory till the end).
Hitler had great knowledge of American and British eugenists.
Pearson’s Annals of Eugenics and his writings directly influenced Eugenicists such as American Madison Grant, whose book got a fan letter from Hitler, being called by Hitler “His bible”. Hitler wrote he “studied with great interest” the eugenics theories of Sir Francis Galton and Pearson.
Pearson hated democracy, hated individualism, hated the “inferior”. He saw Hitler and Stalin, National Socialism and Marxist-Leninist socialism, as in line with his causes. He knew there was no contradiction between supporting Hitler and Stalin, between supporting National Socialism and Marxist-Leninist socialism, both were socialism, both were collectivism. In addition to influencing the Nazi racial theory, Pearson wrote to Marx to offer to translate Marx’s Das Kapital.
Pearson’s anti-Semitism is of course echoed by the woke left today, but some of his other views offend political correctness. In June 2020, University College London unceremoniously stripped his name from the former Pearson Building and the former Pearson Lecture Theatre. How the mighty have fallen. In his lifetime Pearson was offered a Knighthood, but as a good communist, turned it down.
Colleges are now undergoing review where every memorial and honor to anyone who ever wrote anything that violates 2021 speech regulations is being removed.
Yet this is unfair to Karl Pearson. He was complimented by Lenin who funded a state run (of course) bureau of Eugenics. Websites and books still present Pearson in his full measure of glory, as a devoted Marxist and enemy of capitalism. For example a recent statistics history book writes glowingly of Pearson “ Pearson gave a lot of thought to issues of social justice” and “Nor did his fascination with socialism diminish. He wrote about socialism and prominent socialists wrote about him. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin… one of the most influential socialists of all time, followed Pearson’s writing and wrote complimentary remarks about Pearson’s ideas.”2
Freedland, Jonathan, ”Eugenics: The Skeleton that Rattles Loudest in the Left's Closet.”, The Guardian, Feb. 17, 2012.
Tabak, John, Probability and Statistics: The Science of Uncertainty, Facts on File, New York, NY, 2004.
Dr. Alexander Nussbaum has had articles in a number of magazines including articles on intelligent design and on the history of statistics and is a contributor to a personality textbook
When a socialist calls someone a Nazi today, as they are wont to do if anyone disagrees with their agenda, they are actually calling them a fellow socialist.
Socialism is another word for collectivism, the doctrine that an individual life has no value, that an individual is owned by the collective and lives only to serve the state or group. This is an apt description for both Marxist-Leninist socialism and National Socialism.
