altamira wrote:
> The element that the U.S. economy has in common with the Italian economy
> under Mussolini is this: legal title to capital assets is (in many cases,
> though not in all cases) held by private individuals rather than by a
> government. Sometimes such individual ownership is indirect, such as where
> a parent corporation owns subsidiary corporations--but if you trace
> ownership all the way back through the parent corp. you find that the owner
> is an individual person rather than a government. However, even though
> legal title to capital assets is directly or indirectly held by an
> individual, one branch or another of the government actually controls many
> of the functions of the corporation.
>
> I gave an example in an earlier post of a manufacturer of fasteners used in
> the construction of nuclear power plants--let me elaborate a bit: title to
> the business is held by, say, five shareholders. One or more of them might
> manage the business, or they might hire someone else to do it. The person
> who manages the business must follow federal guidelines for how the
> machinery is set up, what sort of contracts the corp. can enter into with
> employees, what sort of restroom the building must have, what sort of
> entryway the building must have, how quality control of the product must be
> done, how and for what causes employees can be fired, how to determine which
> employees to hire, how much to pay low-skilled employees, how to structure
> fringe benefits for employees, where raw materials can be obtained, and I
> feel certain there are more that I've left out. This is NOT what I would
> call a free-market economy, which is why I said it seemed to be a mixture of
> capitalism and fascism.
>
Excellent illustration, Bonnie. Don't worry about the commonalities
between communism and fascism. The Nazi Party was the National Socialist
Workers Party, after all, and the brownshirts that fought streetfights
with communist gangs in the 20's were not fighting an opposing ideology
economically, but on political principles. The communists were very much
internationalists, they gave allegiance to the International Communist
Congress, while the fascists were Nationalists who also beleived in
communism/socialism, but refused to sacrifice national sovereignty to
the ComIntern. A similar situation can be found here in the US now,
where you have the populist/nationalist/anti-internationalist Pat
Buchanan and his followers finding supposedly strange bedfellows with
the anti-WTO, anti-World Bank anarcho-socialists. The anarcho-socialists
purportedly do not swear allegiance to the nascent 5th ComIntern, which
is actually more of a front for Russian ex-KGB agents turned mafia, but
frankly, their record for candidness and honesty does not encourage me
to believe them.
In Nazi Germany, the best double agents were frequently communists
working for Stalin. Many German communists saw so little difference
between the Nazis and the Communists that they pragmatically decided to
join the Nazis when it seemed they were the ones with the winning hand.
The most convincing arguments the Nazis used against the Jews were
actually ones that painted the Jews as capitalist running dog war
profiteers that had run Germany into the ground in WWI for the sake of
profits. These arguments resonated with the communist/socialist
sympathizers in the German population.
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