On Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 09:53:37 (-0700) David B. Shemano writes: >Louis Proyect writes (and others follow up): > >>> The fascist system was based on capitalist property relations. >>> "Corporatism" was the form that capitalism took in Spain, Portugal, >>> Italy and Germany. It does not matter that Hitler called himself a >>> National Socialist. Those were just words. He was a capitalist politician. > >I have two intellectual diversions during the day: this list and a >Leo Strauss list. Both have topics that periodically come up and >gender a lot of repetitive heat. On the Strauss list, one of the >topics is whether Nazi Germany was "capitalist." Ultimately, I come >down that it was not capitalist, because "capitalism," to the extent >it has any substantive meaning, means, following Aristotle (and I >believe Marx as well), an ideology that liberates the greed impulse >and advocates accumulation for no purpose other than accumulation >(what Strauss called the "joyless quest for joy"). Capitalism cannot >be confused with a social system based upon private property >relations, because that would mean every country with private >property relations would be "capitalist," and even Marxists don't >believe that. Therefore, the fact that Germany maintained private >property relations as the dominant form of the economy does not mean, >ipso facto, Germany was "capitalist." National Socialism was not an >ideology that the goal of the German people should be to accumulate >bigger and better SUV's and big-screen TVs as an end in itself -- >National Socialism treated the economy/private property relations as >instrumental to other "loftier" goals
Hitler was a capitalist tool supported by the German corporate elite. His "socialist" varnish did not alter the fact that their economy was certainly capitalist. Bill _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
