Is "National Socialism" always capitalized? [closed]

Hmm, I wouldn't normally capitalize it. We don't capitalize names of political ideologies in general. We write "Political ideologies we will discuss in this chapter include capitalism, communism, socialism, national socialism, democracy, dictatorship, and aristocracy." Not "... Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, National Socialism ..." etc.

Of course if you were specifically talking about the Nazi Party, you would write "the National Socialist Party". Just like if I was specifically talking about the Democrat Party, I'd capitalize like I just did there, but if I was talking about the idea of democracy in general, I would not capitalize.

Perhaps Word's autocorrect is assuming you are referring to the party and leaving off the word "party". Like you could say, "My friend Heinrich joined the National Socialists", meaning he joined the specific party, and not the ideological movement in general.

I suppose "national socialism" is rather specific to Nazi Germany and maybe some of its allies. (I don't know anyone today who calls themselves by that name. I think it would be an accurate description of the position of many 21st century Americans in the sense that they agree with the policies that gave national socialism its name, but as they would differ rather strongly on policies like setting up concentration camps, they don't tend to call themselves by a name that brings the Nazis to mind.) But that doesn't make it a proper noun that should be capitalized. Like, Canada is the only country that is north of the United States. But we don't therefore say that "The Country North of the United States" should be capitalized -- like so. It's still a description, not a proper name.

I believe that if you are talking about it as a political ideology that it would be perfectly in order for it not to be capitalised - national socialism. Similarly one would speak about communism or conservatism. After all a political ideology is merely an abstract noun in the same way that an academic discipline e.g. physics, literature, biology etc. are abstract nouns. They are not proper nouns.

But if one were speaking about a specific party which bore the name of one of them, then the word becomes part of a proper noun - it would be the National Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Conservative Party.

I would probably also write the National Socialist Government, *Conservative Government etc. since the government, in each case, is defined by the political party, whose members occupy the government.