Sorry about the delay. Paul wrote: >>> I would be interested to hear why you say the Nazis were proto-Keynesian. Any particular authors you think I should look at?<<<
I wrote:>>Landes, Temin, etc.<< > OK, I can take a joke (I am thinking of David Landes of Harvard and his "cultural superiority" theories, have I got it wrong?). But I want to reassure you my question was serious.< I was serious. I don't think Landes' UNBOUND PROMETHEUS is significantly marred by his ethnocentrism (except in the choice of his subject-matter, i.e., Europe). > For people who not that familiar this issue (sort of including me!) here's my understanding of the state of play in terms of understanding modern politics, history and economics: > a) There was a conventional explanation of Hitler\Nazism\Fascism as an aberration that consolidated power through authoritarian means whose brutality allowed them then to produce domestic popularist "successes" [solving unemployment, making the trains run on time, etc]. So for example, in our discussion, this camp might say: Hitler's militarism and re-armament (plus the autobahns, work camps, etc) allowed then-unconventional finance which solved unemployment. An aberrantly twisted form of Keynesianism that 'worked' largely because Keynesianism works in a depression.< I don't see why an extreme military version of Keynesianism is a "aberrantly twisted" form -- perhaps because I don't see Keynesian politics as necessarily progressive. BTW, I'm told that the Italian trains didn't really run on time under Fascism. > b) In the 60's\'70s Europeans had a serious intellectual and cultural reassessment with of their experience with Nazism\Facism\Collaboration often finding less of a break between Fascism and "normal" economy and society. This was true in academic research, but even in popular film (Bertolucci, Louis Malle, etc). Both the overall political view of Nazism and Fascism and the economic element have been challenged. Progressive researchers often found that the Nazis, especially once in power, as having maintained continuity with the establishment in achieving the establishment's original goals (if by extreme repression). They point out that the Nazis jettisoned much of their radical popularism in the "Night of the Long Knives" when the SA was liquidated as part of a pact with the Junker-based officer class. Likewise, a pact was made with big industry through measures like dropping the pledge for meaningful economic planning controls (only a toothless Plan was announced and only in '36; only the armaments industry and foreign exchange had serious controls).< Central planning isn't Keynesian. But what you say above is largely true. The problem is that the Nazis remained rapid despite their alliances with Junkers and big industry. Their policies remained based on autarky and the like, while a military-style economy prevailed before remilitarization. > Relevant to our Pen-l discussion, this camp attributes economic "success" of 1933-38 partly to timing and partly to things like the assault on unions and reductions in relative wage share. They don't see much that was actually Keynesian-like stimulation (only scattered limited projects) and above all pointing out that through the end of 1937 economic policy was in the hands of a thoroughly conventional balanced-budget Minister of the Economy: Hjalmar Schacht (who finally left that post at the end of '37 in a split precisely over Hitler's insistence on embarking on large deficit spending for re-armament). Schacht had been the head of the central bank in the years *before* Hitler and the designer of the conventional measures against hyper-inflation before that. This camp particularly points out that the increase in deficit spending in Germany was far smaller than in say the US (even as a % of the economy, even after the special hidden armament debts). I think the total increase in govt deficit '32-'38 was about RM10 billion (4RM=1US$) so overall maybe half as much fiscal stimulus as the U.S (which, as Jim D. points out was not a concerted stimulus effort).< I don't have any data here, so I'll agree to agree. It should be remembered, however, that as E. Cary Brown argued, almost all of FDR's fiscal deficits were due to the Depression itself rather than being efforts to fight the Depression (until "Dr. Win-the-War" took over). > In short, this second group would find parallels and overlaps between economic policy under Fascism and those of extreme neo- liberalism...and not that much in common with Keynesianism.< The class bias of Nazism was clearly the same as an extreme neo-liberal. But the Nazis were willing to reject the balance-the-budget orthodoxy, so on that level were Keynesians in practice. > c) Since then, in the US and UK I understand there have been some researchers who would fall in the middle (or perhaps eclectic). I don't know much about them but would be interested if anyone knows a good review article. I also hear that a certain amount of empirical historical research has been done (and I think the discussion with Jim D. really hinges on empirical questions of what actually happened so this would also be very interesting if anyone knows of good research).< FWIW, I'm in the middle. Jim Devine
