Hitler on the Labour Party Wrecking British Economy

Hitler was very definitely not a socialist, although he did advocate kind of nationalization for joint-stock companies and the power industries. However, the Nazis favoured big business and private industry. They despised traditional organized labour, smashing the unions and sending their members to concentration camps. Hitler himself was firmly against profit-sharing and worker’s control. Under Nazism, industry was rigidly hierarchal and governed by the Fuhrerprinzip, the ‘Leader Principle’. The company director or factory owner was the leader, and the workers were his retinue, whose duty was to obey. He had nothing but contempt for the genuine socialist parties, which he reviled as Marxist and believed were part of a mythical international Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany and the Aryan race. And his table talk also revealed his absolute contempt for the British Labour party and especially one of its leading figures at the time, Stafford Cripps. He conceded that Cripps was a statesman who was ‘not negligible’, but said

To establish himself against the Conservatives, it would take a Cromwell at the head of the Labour party, for the Conservatives will not yield without a fight. Now, although Cripps (who has Stalin’s confidence) has succeeded in sowing Socialist ideas in England, I don’t think he carries enough guns for this role. From our point of view, a Red (and therefore fallen) England would be much less favourable than an England of Conservatives. In fact a Socialist Engalnd, and therefore an England tainted with Sovietism, would be a permanent danger in the European space, for she would founder in such poverty that the territory of the British Isles would prove too small for thirty million inhabitants to be able to keep alive there. I hope, therefore, that Cripps will be sunk by the fiasco of his mission to India-the most difficult mission with which an Englishman can now be charged. If he isn’t, it would become more and more difficult to avoid civil war on British soil. But the mobilization of the masses, on which the Labour party’s propaganda is working, and which would be the result of the execution of the trade unions’ new programme, should be regarded as a very serious threat. (Hitler’s Table Talk, (Oxford: OUP)pp. 369).

Hitler then goes on to rant about how he far prefers Churchill, sneers at Cripps as ‘a drawing-room Bolshevik … a man without roots, a demogogue and a liar’ and declared that ‘With his hypocritical social programmes, he’d be sure to dig a pit between the mother-country and the Dominions, especially the Catholic Canadians, Australia and South Africa’. (p.369).

This is very much the view of many Tories. Thatcher despised Socialism because it was a relation of Communism, and for many Tories Socialism and Communism are identical. Hence the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, who represent a return to proper socialism in the Labour party, as Communists, Trotskyites and Stalinists by the media and Blairite right. And like the Tories he believed that the Labour party and its programmes create mass poverty, with a particular contempt for its concern for popular welfare. Robert A. Brady in his book, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, stated that similar views to those of the Nazis can be found in American businessmen. They’re also shared by British big business and the Conservatives. The right-wing press continually declares that the Labour party’s programme will wreck the country economically, and despises welfare spending. Thatcher wanted to destroy the welfare state altogether. She wasn’t able to, but the Tories and the Blairites in Labour are still pursuing her goal, justifying it with false claims that those on welfare support are scroungers and malingerers.

Karl Kautsky, the Austrian Marxist intellectual stated that at the heart of socialism was a concern for equality. The working class was championed as the best way of creating a classless, more equal society. If this could be achieved best without socialism, then the latter would have to be abandoned. Since then there have been programmes to create more equality for certain groups that have crossed the boundaries of political ideology. These are anti-racism, feminism and gay rights, although these are most strongly supported by the Left. Marx in the Communist Manifesto also makes a point of distinguishing Communism from other ideologies that may have some similarity, such as the pre-Columbian Amerindian states of South America. Marx also stated that at the heart of Communism was a concern for the working class.

Hitler was bitterly anti-egalitarian, especially in the anti-feminism and genocidal racism. He stated that the included ‘socialist’ in the Nazi party’s name and made red one of the colours in the Nazi flag in order to take members from the real socialist parties. While his ideas on the nationalization of the power industry and joint-stock companies sound socialist, he was fiercely on the side of the capitalists. And his views on the destructiveness of socialism and contempt for welfare programmes are those of the Conservatives.

Hitler and the Imprisonment of the Unemployed in Concentration Camps

A week ago I put up a passage from Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism about how the Nazis prevented anyone, who had left their job without good reason, to receive unemployment benefit for several weeks. I pointed out that this was similar to legislation passed in the 1990s by John Major’s Conservative government, which also prevented those, who had voluntarily made themselves unemployed from getting benefit for a set period of time. And a few years or so ago now, I also put up pieces about the Nazis’ incarceration of the long-term unemployed, whom they stigmatized as ‘workshy’ – arbeitscheu – in concentration camps.

Flicking through Hitler’s Table-Talk (Oxford: OUP 1988), the Nazi leader’s dinner conversation as recorded by Martin Bormann, I found Hitler’s own ideas about it. Hitler said

The ten or fifteen thousand professional loafers who were lounging around Germany at the time of our assumption of power, and who showed no inclination to take a regular job when once German industry had started to function again, have been put into concentration camps. For it is ridiculous to try to deal by ordinary methods with muck of this kind. The fear of being put into a concentration camp has had a most salutary effect, and it greatly facilitated the gearing up of the gigantic industrial activity which our rearmament programme demanded. (p. 559).

This supports the case of one of the left-wing Labour supporters, who was falsely accused of anti-Semitism by the Blairites and the Israel lobby. He was accused because he’d put up on his webpage a photo of a jobcentre, with its sign reading Arbeit Macht Frei. This was the infamous slogan the Nazis had placed on the gates of Auschwitz, hence, presumably, why the poor fellows accusers tried to claim he was an anti-Semite. But the slogan simply means ‘Work Makes You Free’, and it was put over the top of many of the concentration camps even before the Nazis embarked on their vile ‘final solution’. And among the prisoners in them were long-term unemployed. The accused man was also quite justified in using the slogan to attack the Tories’ attitude towards the unemployed, because one Tory minister – I’ve forgotten who it was – had actually started an article in the online version of one of the papers defending the Nazi slogan and saying it was quite right. Until someone had a quiet word with him and told him that supporting the Nazis in anything was not the way to gain support and would just alienate people. As it would and should. So that part of the Tory’s article vanished soon after.

The Tories haven’t yet started imprisoning the unemployed in concentration camps. But they are killing them through their reforms to the benefits system, reforms which have seen tens or hundreds of thousands of people thrown of benefits for even the slightest infraction of the rules. Even when it involves matters beyond their control, such as if they were in hospital when they were supposed to attend their appointment at the jobcentre. And the very many disabled people, who have been forced into misery, starvation and death because they were declared ‘fit for work’ under the unscientific and fraudulent Fitness for Work tests.

The unemployed have also been used as a supply of cheap labour for private industry through the ‘welfare to work’ scheme. In this, they have been forced to take unpaid work in various firms and charities, if they wish to continue receiving their jobseekers’ allowance. This is supposed to prepare them for work. But research has shown that it does not, and in actual fact those forced onto these schemes are actually worse off at finding proper employment, than those who are able to make their searches.

The Tories aren’t working the unemployed to death in concentration camps just yet, but they have the Nazis contempt for them, which is poured out regularly in the pages of right-wing rags like the Scum and the Heil. But you do wonder how long before the Tories get sick of pretending to support the welfare state, and end unemployment benefit completely, leaving the poor to starve and die. Or else start opening concentration camps in which to imprison the jobless in order to teach them how to support themselves by working.

It would only be a natural extension of workfare, after all.

The Nazis and American Gun Culture

Before I go on and give May and her wretched ‘No’ confidence vote a metaphorical pummeling, I thought I’d take a break from the Tories and Brexit and blog about the very strong similarity between the military training the Nazis put at the heart of the Hitler Youth and modern American gun culture.

I found this piece, ‘4. Training the Youth to Become Soldiers’ in the Chapter ‘Youth to Become Soldiers of Labour’ Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937). I’ve blogged extensively about this book over the past few weeks, putting up passages from it, because although it was published 81 years ago, it still remains acutely relevant to the authoritarian structure of modern capitalism, and the links between Conservative ideology and that of the Nazis themselves.

In this passage, Brady discusses how the Hitler Youth began training boys with ordinary competitive sports before moving on to overtly military training. Brady writes

Under the banner of “Sword and Plough for Freedom and Honour,” Hitler’s own personal journal, the Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, sounds the tocsin of duty for the young: “The National Socialist people’s youth affirms battle, and submits to the carrying of arms as the obvious foundations of all people’s labour. They hope for the day in which the weapons will be placed in their hands which are associated with the full consciousness of manhood.”

The National Youth Administration has prepared a manual, Hitler Youth in Service, for guidance of instructors and leaders throughout all divisions of the Hitler Youth. The first half of the book is taken up with physical exercises, games, and calisthenics. These are outlined in great detail, illustrated with charts and drawings, and full instructions for proper performance, including standard performance for different age groupings. The second half of the book is devoted entirely to military activities.

Transition from the first to the second half is provided by conclusion of sports activities in competition. The German word is Wettkampt. Kampf means struggle, fight6, battle, combat. All sport ends up in Wettkampt; the military training division begins with the first instruments of Kampf, or guns and shooting. The bodily development and discipline of ordinary sport is, thus, the necessary background for the more strenuous demands of warlike activity. “Shooting sport,” the manual asserts, “demands the greatest concentration and control of all physical and spiritual powers.”

Such shooting promotes virtues commendable to the Nazis. “It develops inner and outer calm and cold-bloodedness (Kaltblutigkeit), awakes and promotes decision and self-confidence in the shooters. Through the necessary arrangement and subordination at the shooting stand, shooting sport promotes discipline and the spirit of comradeship.” Arms supplied to promote amongst the Hitler Youth “joy in shooting service” consist of air rifles for boys under sixteen and small caliber rifles for boys over sixteen years of age. Manual instruction is given in assembly and cleaning of all rifle parts, arranging sights and finding range, and various postures and techniques of firing. (pp. 177-8).

Now I’m not attacking here competitive sport, though I was always bad at it at school. Nor am I attacking the various cadet services of the armed forces. I’ve worked with people, who were members of them, and while they enjoyed military training, they were very far from the insane militarists that I want to criticize. The same with most of the people I’ve met, who joined the TA. I’m also not criticizing the sports shooters, who go clay pigeon shooting or blaze away at targets.

But the right-wing American gun culture seems to me to be very different. It is aggressively nationalistic, and doesn’t just protect gun ownership. It actively promotes the possession and use of high caliber weapons that should only be in the possession of serving members of the armed forces and kept in a secure armoury. The head of the NRA, Dwayne Lapierre, has appeared several times promoting the ownership of these powerful and highly dangerous weapons, especially for young people. The NRA also produced an unintentionally hilarious add a year or so ago, in which various blue collar Americans warned the ‘ayatollahs’ that they had better beware armed working class folks like themselves if they tried any terrorist attacks on American soil. Well, the Islamic regime in Tehran hates America, and demonstrations in Iran have frequently chanted ‘Margh bar Amrika’ – ‘Death to America’ and verbally attacked the country as ‘Shaitan-e bozorg’ – ‘the Great Satan’. But most of the Islamic terrorism in the world now seems to come from radical Sunni groups, like al-Qaeda and ISIS, which heartily despise the Shi’a and Iran as heretics, who they want to exterminate.

One of the great myths going round ultraconservative, pro-gun right is that the Nazis triumphed in Germany because the population had been disarmed. The German anti-Nazi vlogger, Three Arrows, has demolished that argument in one of his videos. He stated that, yes, Germany had banned gun ownership, but this was by the democratic Weimar coalition government after the radical left revolution of 1919. By contrast, the Nazis were enthusiastically pro-gun, and passed legislation promoting gun ownership amongst the German population. But only, of course, if they were ‘Aryan’. Jews were forbidden to own them. Even so, I think another blogger put up the stats showing that Jews right the way across Germany did try to put up armed resistance to the Nazis in heroic but ultimately futile acts of resistance. All of them failed, including the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, because small groups of civilians, no matter how determined, stood no chance of winning against the overwhelming power of the armed forces. If the American government also became a monstrous Fascist tyranny like Nazi Germany, its civilian gun owners would similarly stand absolutely no chance of defending themselves.

I’ve also found a very interesting documentary, which I will have to put up sometime from one of the American left-wing news shows, which went into the history of gun ownership in America. Gun ownership has been a fervent part of American culture since the first colonies passed legislation demanding that men possess guns. However, the NRA when it began was a largely benign society of shooting enthusiasts. When the American government first began introducing legislation to outlaw certain types of firearm, the NRA was perfectly willing to comply and cooperate. It was only later, in the 1960s and ’70s, when the Association had been heavily infiltrated by extreme right-wing groups like the John Birch Society, that it became so extreme in its demands for the almost unqualified right of ordinary Americans to own extremely dangerous military combat guns. And just as the Nazis demanded that Aryan Germans should own guns, so the BNP here in Britain at the election a few years ago also put in their manifesto that they wanted every British home also to have a gun ready for the race’s defence.

The passage from Brady’s book does, however, show the very strong similarity between the ideology of gun ownership in the Third Reich and contemporary America. And it’s no accident that so many on the racist right in America actively promote and defend gun ownership and the type of paramilitary activity that is illegal in Europe. As we’ve seen from the recent shootings in America, ordinary private citizens have no business owning military firearms. These have been used by racist maniacs to kill innocent people. And the people promoting these firearms themselves have views dangerously close to the Nazis.

The racist right in the gun lobby won’t defend America from a Fascist regime. They would actively collaborate and defend it.

The Tory Cabinet of Eton Toffs and the Nazi Ruling Elite

This is another quote from Robert A. Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, which is still very relevant to today’s Conservative parties. I’ve discussed before how the Nazis were Social Darwinists, who celebrated businessmen as the biological elite, who alone should rightfully hold power. Hitler was also deeply impressed with the British public schools, like Eton. He wanted to set up a system of similar schools, the Ordensburgen, which were to train the Nazi elite. It suggests a very strong similarity between the Nazi conceptions of class, and those of the Tory party with its members of the old Etonian elite in the cabinet.

On all, old and young, preferred and damned, judgment is passed by the self-appointed guardians and interpreters of the “people’s state” (Volkstaat). It is the business of the Leaders to allocate to each and every person that place allotted to him by nature as determined, typically, by social station at birth. In the Nazi view, the bulk of these people are capable only of hard work, sacrifice, and amusement. To them an intelligent man, born to his higher station, despises the stupid masses he exploits, but since the rank and file have the minds of children, they must be flattered, cajoled, amused, and occasionally threatened.

For the conduct of a state so ordered, “what we want,” said Hitler to Strasser in May 1930, “is a picked number from the new ruling classes, who … are not troubled with humanitarian feelings, but who are convinced that they have the right to rule as being a superior race, and who will secure and maintain their rule ruthlessly over the broad masses.” (p. 152).

This sounds like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and co., with the exception that these are members of the old ruling classes. The Nazis claimed that Germany was, under them, a classless society, and that under them even the son of working class parents could rise to the top.

On the other hand, the Tories have been saying this too, since David Cameron, another Etonian Aristo, made the absurd claim that the Tories were now the true party of British working people, not Labour. Just as the Nazis did.

Brady’s Warning of the Rise of Fascism in Britain and America

I’ve put up a number of quotations from the book The Spirit and Structure of Germany Fascism by the American economist Robert A. Brady, published over here by Victor Gollancz in 1937. Brady was concerned to show how the Nazis in Germany had allowed the German business classes to seize power and crush and exploit the workers, as well as creating and exploiting a murderous hatred of Jews, Gypsies and other people they consider ‘subhuman’ and an enemy of the German, Aryan race.

In the last chapter of the book, ‘The Looming Shadow of Fascism’, Brady shows that many of the attitudes of German business were identical to those businessmen elsewhere in Europe. The chapter includes passages from other publications, including those by explicitly pro-Nazi American writers, whose ideas are similar or even identical to those of the Third Reich. And he warns that a Fascist seizure of power from organized, monopoly capitalism was a real threat in America. A threat that would result in the persecution of ethnic minorities like the Japanese, Jews, Mexicans and Blacks. He writes

In all the complicated, confused, and myth-charged experiences of the human race, there can be no more curious spectacle than that which is taking place along this line before our very eyes in every capitalistic land to-day. Here we have the business enterprise, perhaps the most completely amoral and materialistic single-purpose institution the human mind has yet devised, governed by a class of men who may be ever so sentimental with their children and ever so “kind and gentle with their wives,” but who, in order to maintain their position unimpaired as the prime material beneficiaries of economic activity, are compelled to resort to the wholesale promotion of one of the most incredibly jejune, intellectually and emotionally shallow, and crudely primitive “faiths” known in the iridescent annals of myth and fable.

The doctrinal position of business evangelism has two faces, an inner and an outer. The first is that which business men believe concerning themselves and their human kind. The second is that which they wish the remainder of the population to believe about the business-military hierarchy-the “leaders’-on the one hand, and about the proper role each , and every member of the rank and file should expect to play in this “best of all possible worlds: on the other.

Both these propaganda faces are the same in all nations ordered on a capitalist basis. There is a veritable mountain of literature obtainable in every one of these countries which could be used to illustrate the close parallels in the programme, the doctrine, and the mood of their respective business communities. The variations which one will find are in the form of adaptations of the same doctrinal positions to local or national circumstances; they do not indicate differences in doctrine. As was shown in many different places in the preceding chapters, almost the entirety of the German Nazi programme and line of argumentation is identical in content and point of view with that of the American business community. Such elements as the persecution of the Jews is different, not in intent, but only in the fact that such persecution could serve Nazi ends in Germany in the particular circumstances of the years 1933-6. When the American situation has ripened to that of Germany in 1933, there will be race terror in the United States as well, and it will be anti-negro, anti-Jew, anti-Mexican, and anti-Japanese. (pp. 337-8, my emphasis).

Brady was clearly afraid of Fascism seizing power in America within a few years of his writing the book. Mercifully, he was wrong. But only just. A group of businessmen did meet various generals in the 1930s with the intention of organizing a coup to overthrow F.D. Roosevelt after he launched his New Deal. And those businessmen were the literal parents and ideological founders of modern Libertarianism.

Big business has been gaining increasing power in America and Britain since the days of Thatcher and Reagan. Trade unions have been smashed, welfare programmes destroyed, the state provision of healthcare also cut back. Wages have been frozen under the guise of curbing inflation. The result is growing poverty, job insecurity, homelessness and starvation. 330,000 Brits are homeless. A quarter of a million are keeping body and soul together through food banks. And over a thousand disabled people have died because they’ve been thrown off benefits in what Mike over at Vox Political has described as cheque book genocide.

And with poverty has come increasing racism, stoked by fears over mass migration and affirmative action/positive discrimination programmes. In Britain Tweezer and the Tories set up posters and sent vans round to Black areas telling illegal immigrants to hand themselves in. Windrush migrants, who have every right to live in this country, were illegally deported. Islamophobia is on the rise, partly caused by the suicide bombings that have occurred as blow-back from the Islamist groups aided and abetted by the West as allies in our wars in the Middle East, and by migrants forced out of the region and elsewhere by the very same wars. So we’ve had UKIP, Brexit and the lies of the ‘Leave’ campaign in Britain. While in America there’s Trump and his friends and supporters in the Alt-Right. He wants to build a wall with Mexico to protect American from further immigration. Armed troops have been sent down to the border to shoot unarmed illegal immigrants, and the Republicans are stoking up fears about the migrant caravan from Honduras. Quite apart from the increase in White Supremacist domestic terrorism, including the massacre of the worshippers at a synagogue because they were closely linked to a Jewish charity aiding asylum seekers come to the US, and therefore, to the perpetrator, enemies of the White race.

We’re not at the level of an imminent Fascist takeover yet. But the signs are there, and Brady’s warning remains chillingly relevant.

The Nazi Labour Front and Tory Employment Policy

I found this very interesting passage in Robert A. Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937). It’s about the Labour Front, or Deutschearbeitsfront to give it its German name.

This was the Nazi organization which was set up to replace the trade unions, which the Nazis declared were ‘Marxist’ and banned. This provided some recreational services to German workers through the Strength Through Joy movement and a minimum of restraint on employers. Instead of the trade union committee, there was a Council of Trustees, elected by the workers, but selected by the employer, whose job was to explain and promote the boss’ decisions, and give him any complaints the workers had.

But German employer-worker relations were strictly hierarchical, and followed the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip or ‘Leader Principle’. Just as Adolf Hitler was the Fuhrer of the German people, so the employer was the Fuhrer of his workforce. German employment law forbade the sacking of workers, who had been employed for over year without giving them due notice. And mass discharges in plants over a certain size had to be preceded by giving the Council of Trustees due written notice.

But the workers were also bound to their employers, and could not leave them if they worked on farms, while those that were employed in industry would not receive unemployment benefit for six weeks if they left their previous job without proper cause. Brady writes

Here as elsewhere the whole machinery redounds primarily to the advantage of the employer. Every effort is made to cut down labour turnover. In late chapters various methods for achieving this effect will be discussed. But the Labour Front has not been content with programmes for attaching workers to a given plot ground,, and hence to a particular employer, nor with an absolute prohibition against strikes of all kinds. These it heartily endorses, but it goes even further.

It goes so far, for example, as to declare workers who leave agricultural employment during the crop season saboteurs and unworthy of German citizenship. It warns all that “to gather well and surely the harvest is your foremost and weightiest task. Whoever neglects this duty and leaves his position with the farmer without due warning in order to into industry is a saboteur, and must be excluded from the community of the German people…” There are other and more direct punitive measures: “A labourer who gives up his work place without important or justified grounds or who has lost his position through a situation which justified his immediate discharge can receive as a rule no unemployment subsidy for six weeks…” Simultaneously, he can be “locked out” from his place of last, and all other employment until such time as he can submit proof of the reasons for losing the first job. (pp. 130-, my emphasis).

So far, workers aren’t being stopped from finding another job if they leave their previous employment, and farm labourers who give up their jobs aren’t being denounced as saboteurs. But it is Tory policy not to give unemployed workers unemployment benefit for a certain number of weeks. I can remember when it was brought in under John Major. You weren’t given unemployment benefit for a set period if you had made yourself ‘voluntarily unemployed’. And this policy has been extended to any unemployed individual, regardless of whether they left their job voluntarily or not, through the delays Cameron and May have built into the benefits system, and particularly with the problems accompanying the rollout of Universal Credit. So far, however, the Tories haven’t also followed the Nazi policy sending the ‘workshy’ – arbeitscheu – to the concentration camps. But perhaps its only a matter of time.

Tony Greenstein on his blog showed how completely false the accusations of anti-Semitism made against Corbyn’s supporters in the Labour party were by discussing the case of one man, who was so accused because he put up a photoshopped picture of a Jobcentre sign saying ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’. This was the Nazi slogan on the entrance to Auschwitz, ‘Work Makes You Free’. But there’s nothing anti-Semitic in the photo. It’s a comment on the government’s policy towards the unemployed. Particularly as Ian Duncan Smith, or some other Tory minister with a similar hatred for the proles, had actually written a newspaper column with a paragraph stating that ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ was quite right. Someone else spotted the paragraph, and had it removed from the website on which it was posted, before they thought too many had seen it. But they had, and many had taken screenshots.

It is no exaggeration in this respect to say that the Tories are following Nazi policy towards the unemployed. And this is likely to get even worse the longer they’re in power. And if they carry on as they are, eventually the Tory conferences will start with May goose-stepping on to the stage to cries of ‘Sieg Heil!’ and ‘Duce, Duce!’

Fascism Based on the Values of Business and the Military

On Saturday I put up a number of extracts from Robert A. Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937) to show that, contrary to what the Republicans in America and the Tories in this country would have us believe Nazism was firmly capitalist, not socialist. Brady argued that Nazism was, economically, monopoly capitalism with businessmen put in charge of the economy, very much like the corporatist capitalism introduced by the Tories, the Republicans and Blair’s New Labour.

Brady also argued that the autocratic social structure of Fascism was based very much on the hierarchical structure of business and the armed forces, including the businessmen’s contempt for the low paid. He wrote

With respect first to the condition, it has been pointed out in the first chapter of this study, and illustrated in subsequent chapters, that the German business community did not depart one iota from tried and true “business principles” when they underwrote the Nazi programme. Every business practices towards its own staff the “leader” and the “authority” principles, and it undeviatingly aspires towards the “total” principle. That is to say, all officers and staff members are appointed and removed from on top entirely at the discretion of management (leader principle), and authority is from the top down, responsibility from the bottom up (authority principle). And every employer attempts to control so far as humanly possible the attitudes, beliefs, and points of view (weltanschauung) of his employees and every section of the public with which he comes in contact (total principle).

Every business establishment is, in other words, completely autocratic and completely undemocratic in structure, ideology, and procedure. It is, by the same token, completely intolerant of all opposition within or without, or of any criticism which does not redound to the advantage of the profit-making possibilities of the enterprise. The enterprise may be compelled, it is true, to make important concessions on all points, but it should not be forgotten that these are concessions, not departures from principle.

Furthermore, every employer regards the gradation of pay and authority amongst the staff over which he presides as being essentially just and sound, because each indicates the relative ability he or she possesses by the position occupied. The criteria are not productive, but acquisitive. Each is paid according to his ability to acquire or “get ahead”, not according to his contribution to output. If the two – contribution to output and contribution to acquisition – happen to go together, well and good. If they do not, it matters little, since their juxtaposition is a matter of accident, not of interdependence.

The condition of society in which the business men would rule would be that one which is natural to them. It would, as a matter of course, be centralized, autocratic, and intolerant, and it would be so constructed that each would get exactly what he deserves for the simple reason that according to the rules he deserves whatever he can get. It is the well accepted business view that most, if not all of the unemployed are shiftless, worthless, irresponsible, and undisciplined. it is taken as axiomatic that the lowest wage-earner receives all that “is coming to him,” since if he could get more by any means which does not disturb business routine it is obvious that he would. His failure is the measure of his incompetence, and with that all has been said about it that may be mentioned by gentlemen of good breeding and respectable station!

This condition is one that would normally appeal to the conventional army officer. The military is the only other completely undemocratic, completely autocratic, and completely intolerant – completely “leader”, “authoritarian”, and “totalitarian” – organization in modern society. Provided due allowance is made for recognition of the military hierarchies of “authority” and “duty” in the fascist state, it can be fitted into the pattern of the businessman’s ultima thule without a single tonal jar. The moods, attitudes, points of view, values, and appraisals of human worth are fundamentally the same.

It is for this reason that it seems so easy for the military and business hierarchies to get together as they have in Italy, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, and many other places. But the significance of this natural alliance is that the military holds the key to political power. Once the alliance takes place, fascism is here unless the elements arrayed against it-as in Spain-possess superior force. It does not follow that the army rank and file will follow their officers any more than it does that labourers will follow their employers. But, if they do, fascism is practically certain to gain the ascendancy. (pp. 335-7).

The shared values of business, the military and Fascism helps explain why the British stock exchange applauded at the news of the Fascist revolt in Spain, at least according to Orwell, and why sections of Conservative party have always overlapped with the Fascist fringe, such as the National Front and the BNP. And why the Libertarians, like the Freedom Association, formerly the National Association for Freedom, or NAAF – make your own jokes up – backed murderous Fascist regimes in South and Central America. Of course, Milton Friedman, the founder of Monetarism, Thatcher’s favourite economic theory, and the Chicago School supported right-wing dictators like General Pinochet because they reasoned that it would only be through a Fascist coup that their programme of completely destroying the welfare state and state economic interference could be implemented.

And it exactly explains the Conservative and New Labour hatred of low wage workers and the unemployed, and why Thatcher was so keen on supporting the police and military against strikers. And it’s also a very strong argument for introducing some measure of industrial democracy – workers’ control – in order to make this country truly democratic.

And this is quite apart from the imperialism that is at the heart of Fascism – the wars fought for the benefit of American and western multinationals, from the coups in Latin America to the latest, so-called humanitarian interventions in the Middle East.

We desperately need a programme like Corbyn’s, which offers both industrial democracy, and a better deal for the unemployed and those in work in Britain and an end to wars abroad. Because without it, as we’ve seen, is the road to real Fascism, as shown in the militantly racist and anti-Semitic parties gaining strength in Europe.

The Nazis’ Promotion of Private Business and Businessmen as the Elite

Robert A. Brady provides further evidence of the capitalist nature of Nazism in his book, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937) by pointing out how the Nazis promoted private industry and businessmen as part of the biological elite, who were entitled to positions of leadership. They also embarked on a campaign of privatization of state enterprises, and promoted to positions of leadership in the economic direction of the state private businessmen, even when the majority of enterprises in that particular sector of the economy were state owned. And finally, the German law the Nazis used to promote their management of industry was that which recognized the management of private property for public use, as against proper socialized or nationalized industry.

Brady points out that the businessmen and functionaries who joined the Advisory Council of the National Economic Chamber had to take an oath to serve the Fuhrer and National Chancellor, which meant Hitler in the two offices he occupied, the goals of the National Socialist party, the Third Reich and the construction of the people’s community. (p. 265). But he also quotes Hitler’s economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, who declared that businessmen were indispensable to the Nazi system, as was free competition.

“We cannot dispense with the economic willing of individual business leaders and workers,” Schacht said. To do so, he held, would be to destroy “the creative power” of the people. The function of business enterprise is to release this creative power on behalf of the nation. “Under no circumstances,” he continued, “shall we destroy the multifarious individual character of our economic system. For all time to come we shall need the independent employer who, for better or worse,, is connected with his enterprise.” In other words, businessmen in the new Germany are to be given free rein to function as before, except now they must be “honest” in the sense that they must not resort to “unfair” tactics to achieve corporate ends. (pp. 265-6).

He further quotes Schacht as saying, “We cannot get along without an honest struggle of competition”. (p. 266).

He makes it also clear that the German business community were also able to name the Nazi functionaries appointed to lead the various state planning organisations controlling private industry. He writes

Since the whole Nazi philosophy necessarily calls for this apotheosis of bourgeois and capitalistic virtues, it is only natural that when they were presented with an opportunity to shape organization more nearly after the pattern of their hearts’ desire the business men should also be able to name their controlling staff of “Leaders.” And such has been the case. In all the literature published by business organisations, and of all the dozens of businessmen personally interviewed in Germany, regardless of their industrial, trade, or financial origin, not a single criticism has been found of the type of “Leaders” placed in command. There is a great deal of complaint about individuals and policies, but there are uniformly the pleadings of minority groups who are being discriminated against, or else against the specific incidence of policies which economic facts compel them to endorse.

Further, the leadership has been entirely that of men enjoying the confidence of the business community. This holds for the Chambers of Industry and Commerce, the Provincial Economic Chambers, the various National, Economic, and Functional (or Trade) Groups, and the National Economic Chamber and its various subdivisions. The first Leader, Schmitt, was a well-known German business man, and thoroughly acceptable to the business community at large. The second Leader, Dr. Schacht, has been so completely acceptable, and his dicta so readily enforced throughout the country, that he is commonly known as the “economic dictator of Germany.” Under the leadership of these men, the appointment and removal of inferior “leaders” through the system has been, with minor exceptions, entirely to the satisfaction of the business communities affected. (p. 290).

He also describes how private industry, and privatization, were promoted against state industries.

The same picture holds for the relations between the National Economic Chamber and the organs of local government. As Frielinghaus has put it, “The new structure of economics recognizes no differences between public and private economic activity…” Not only are representatives of the various local governments to be found on both the national and regional organs of the National Economic Chamber, but it is even true that local government is co-ordinated to the end that economic activities pursued by them shall enjoy no non-economic advantages over private enterprise.

The literature on this point is perfectly explicit, being of a nature with which the general American public is familiar through numerous utterance of business leaders on the “dangers of government competition with private enterprise.” Under pressure of this sort the Reich government and many of its subsidiary bodies have begun to dispose of their properties to private enterprise, or to cease “competition” with private enterprise where no properties are at stake. Thus the Reich, the states, and the communes have already disposed of much of their holdings in the iron and steel industry notably the United Steel Works), coal, and electric power. Similarly, support is being withdrawn for loans to individuals wishing to construct private dwellings wherever private enterprise can possibly make any money out of the transactions. True, the government has been expanding its activities in some directions, but mainly where there is no talk of “competition with private enterprise,” and with an eye to providing business men with effective guarantees against losses. (pp. 191-2).

A little while ago I posted up a piece from Maoist Rebel News on YouTube, which also cited articles from economic history journals to show that both the Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes engaged in massive privatization programmes beyond those of other industrialised western nations at the time.

Brady also points that, while three quarters of the German electrical industry was state-owned, it was private businessmen who were placed in charge of it.

Nothing could show more clearly the intent of Nazi control in economic affairs than the make-up of the active management of this organization. Despite the fact that better than three-fourths of all German electric power is owned or controlled by public bodies, the directing heads of the National Electric Power Supply Federation are drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of private enterprise. Its first Board of Directors was presided over by two chairmen, both representative of private power companies: Hellmuth Otte, General Director of the Hamburg Electric Works, Inc. (controlled by the Siemens-Schuckjert combine, largest manufacturers of electric equipment and supplies in Germany), and Dr. Wilhelm Luhr, member of the Board of Directors of the Gesellschaft fur Elektrische Unternehmungen-Ludwig Lowe & Co. A.G. (the largest holding company in the private German electric-power industry, the company likewise controls several electrical supply manufacturing concerns).

This is very similar to the corporatist system in Britain and America, in which businesspeople have been appointed to government posts overseeing the economy. This has been done both by the Republicans and Democrats in America, and by the Tories and Blair’s New Labour over here. George Monbiot described the situation in Britain very thoroughly in his book, Captive State.

He also makes it very clear that Nazi economic planning is based very much on private enterprise, going back to a distinction made between private property for public use and socialized property in German law.

From what has been said above it is perfectly clear that “planned organization” should be understood not as social-economic planning in the socialist sense of the term, but as “business co-ordination” with a view to exercise of monopoly powers. There is nothing in the literature which permits a discerning reader any other interpretation. By the same token, the expression – interlarded through the endless stream of propaganda and explanatory newspapers, brochures, books, and reports-Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz, requires transliteration into English patois in order to be understood properly. Gemein means “common,” or “public”, or “general”; nutz means “fruits,” or emoluments.” or “returns.” The expression Gemeinnutz as used by the Nazis, means “return to the community,” or, more precisely, “service to the community.’ Eigen on the other hand, means “individual” or “own.” Eignenutz thus means “returns to the individual,” or “profits”. The exact meaning of the whole expression is “services to the community before profits to the individual”; the American wording is “profits through service.”

This interpretation is in line with an old distinction, running back through several generations of German economic and business literature, between privatwirtschaft and Gemeinwirtschaft, on the one hand, and Gemeinwirtschaft and Sozialwirtschaft on the other. Privatwirtschaft has always been taken to mean an economy of private enterprise in the English, liberal, laissez-faire sense. Gemeinwirtschaft was used to mean a profits economy from the public point of view, or, in other words, a profit economy supplying a service tot he community. Sozialwirtschaft, on the contrary, has long meant socialization. All the Nazi literature emphasizes the present economic system as a Gemeinwirtschaft. (pp. 319-20).

It is thus very clear that the Nazi economy was very definitely capitalist. It celebrated the private businessman as a member of the economic and social elite, and promoted private enterprise and its leaders against state-owned industry, which it also privatized as far as possible. And it made very clear in law that the economy was a private enterprise supplying a public service and not a socialized economy.

Those who claim that Nazism was a form of socialism are wrong, and arguing so in order to try to discredit socialism and the Left through guilt by association. But the Nazis promotion of private enterprise, business interests and management also make it extremely similar to contemporary corporate capitalism, as advocated by the Republicans, Corporate Democrats, Tories and Blairite New Labour.

The Nazi and Israeli Use of Fellow Nationals Abroad

One of the charges laid against Mike by the Blairites and the Israel lobbyists in the Labour party was that he accused British Jews of being more loyal to a foreign state or their own people than other Brits. This, they argued, followed the classic pattern of anti-Semitism.

It’s certainly true that anti-Semitism does see Jews as more loyal to each other or to a foreign state than that in which they reside and of which they are citizens. It’s the basis of the ‘Stab in the Back’ myth that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany: that Germany’s defeat in the First World War was due to the secret machinations of the Jews. There were similar anti-Semitic conspiracy theories going around Britain at the same time, directed against Anglo-German Jewish industrialists like Mond. It is the central idea behind the grand anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that the Jews are in control of both capitalism and communism/socialism, and using both to enslave and destroy non-Jews. The White race is to be destroyed through immigration and intermarriage with non-Whites.

I’ve shown ad nauseam that Mike is not, and never has been, an anti-Semite, and has always regarded such conspiracy theories as vile, pernicious, murderous rubbish. That this accusation, directed at supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, is completely bogus is also clearly demonstrated by the fact that it was also leveled at Cyril Chilson. Chilson is a naturalized Brit of Israeli extraction, who served in the IDF and its propaganda unit. His mother was a Holocaust survivor, and his father an airman in the Soviet air force fighting the Nazis. Who also murdered his entire family. It is outrageous that this man in particular should have been smeared as an anti-Semite. Just as it is outrageous that so many other decent, anti-racist people, including Jews, Blacks and other Brits, who’ve been the subject of racial abuse and assault, and who may also have lost relatives to real Fascism and Nazism, have been smeared as anti-Semites.

But as I’ve shown in a previous article, the Israeli state and Zionism is very similar to Italian Fascism in that both Netanyahu’s Likud government and Mussolini’s Fascists have attempted to use members of their ethnic group or nation resident abroad to promote their countries’ interests. In the case of Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, this was the Italian communities around the world. And the Nazis attempted to use expatriate Germans in the same way. Robert A. Brady describes this in the table summarizing the main features of Nazi economics and ideology in his The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937), pp. 41-2.

On page 42, he writes

13. Non-Germans cannot be citizens; as a corollary, all Germans residing outside Germany either belong or owe allegiance to the Third Reich.

Israel was founded as the Jewish state, and under the law of return, only Jews may immigrate to become citizens of Israel with full rights. Furthermore, Netanyahu himself passed legislation a month or so ago declaring Israel to be ‘the national state of the Jewish people’, an advance on previous legislation which declared that all Jews, everywhere, were automatically citizens of Israel. It was ridiculed and criticized severely by Jewish anti-racists and pro-Palestinian activists. One Jewish American from Anchorage in Alaska posted a piece on YouTube making it very clear that he thought it was ridiculous that he, who had never even seen Israel, was now a citizen, while his Palestinian friend, who was born there, was not. And it is certainly true that Israel demands the supreme loyalty of all Jews, regardless of where they live. Diaspora Jews, who wish to continue living in their traditional homelands and vocally reject Zionism are denounced as ‘traitors’ and worse. And the Zionist activists, who collaborated with Shai Masot in seeking to determine who should be members of the Tory cabinet clearly were members of a conspiracy and did put the interests of a foreign country above their own. And it doesn’t matter how loudly Maggie Cousins, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism or Labour’s NEC howls ‘anti-Semitism’ at the mere mention of this. It is still true.

But it is obviously not true of all Jews, just one section of the Zionist movement, which is concerned to close down all criticism of Israel through clandestine political manipulation and spurious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism.

As directed by Netanyahu and the Likudniks, the Zionist movement is acting very much like the Nazis and Italian Fascists wished their compatriots abroad to behave: as promoters and servants of their ideology, whose loyalty was to the Fatherland, rather than the peoples with whom they lived. The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism declares that it is anti-Semitic to compare Jews with the Nazis, but in this instance, as regards Zionism and its collaborators, as in so many other areas of Israeli policy, the comparison is accurate. And the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is itself pernicious in that it is deliberately being used to deny these similarities, and silence those who point them out as anti-Semites.

The Capitalist Nature of Nazism

Every now and then a Conservative defender of capitalism tries to argue that Nazism and Fascism were forms of Socialism. Jonah Goldberg tried it a few years ago in his book, Liberal Fascism, a Tory MP stood up in the European parliament a couple of weeks ago and made the same accusation, though he had to take it back and apologise. And Private Eye in recent weeks have also published a couple of letters from readers making the same claims.

Fascism did have Socialistic elements. Mussolini was originally a radical Socialist, who broke with the rest of the Italian Socialist movement in supporting Italy joining the First World War. The Fascist party was originally extremely left-wing in its programme of 1919. Its corporativism was not only based on the ideas of the right-wing Italian Nationalists, but also from part of the syndicalist movement, which moved away from demanding absolute workers’ control to advocating an industrial structure which included both capitalists and workers in a series of corporations set up to govern each industry, or sector of the economy. The Nazis also included socialist elements in their 1922 programme, such as the nationalization of firms and profit-sharing in industry, as well as the break-up of the department stores.

However, the Fascists and Nazis came to power through their alliance with business and the aristocracy. Both the Italian Fascists and Nazis in Germany were hostile to socialism, communism and workers’ trade unions. In Italy, they also allied with the Vatican to destroy the Populists, a party set up to represent Italian Roman Catholics against persecution by the Liberal state, which was distrusted by the Papacy because they considered it too radical. Once in power, the socialist elements of these parties’ programmes was soon jettisoned. Hitler declared that he had no intention of nationalizing businesses, unless they were badly run. He had the SA massacred in the Night of the Long Knives because this part of the Nazi party did take the socialist elements of party programme seriously. The word ‘socialist’ had only been included in the name of the Nazi party – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – against bitter opposition by some of its founders. Hitler stated that he did so in order to steal potential recruits from the real left-wing parties. Furthermore, the Nationalist intellectuals who first advocated a right-wing ‘socialist’ order in the 1920s stated that they did not refer to the nationalization of industry, but to the socialization of people to serve the state. And just before the Nazi seizure of power, Hitler made a speech to German industry stating that Nazism would protect private industry.

Robert A. Brady, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, made the capitalist nature of the Nazi regime very clear in his The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937). The book is a thorough description of German society under the Nazis – its ideology, social structure, the coordination of science, industry and agriculture, the instruments of power and the various party organisations used to recruit and control the masses. Brady states

The regime which the Nazis proceeded to establish is fairly described, by the very nature of the major interest which sponsored it, as a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism. Its “fascism” is that of business enterprise organized on a monopoly basis, and in full command of all the military, police, legal and propaganda power of the state. (p. 33, emphasis in the original). He lays out the essential capitalist nature of the Nazi state as follows on pages 41-2.

1. Productive Property and natural resources are to be privately owned; freedom of contract is guaranteed (excepting to “aliens” and the peasants under the Inheritance laws).
2. Individual initiative, the business entrepreneur, conduct of business for profit (“reward for services performed”), and ownership (individual or stockholder) control are basic.
3. Business men are to be free, if “responsible” (“self-government in business”), to fix by agreement prices, production totals and quotas, marketing areas, and the conditions and terms of purchase and sale.
4. Stock and commodity exchanges, commission houses, brokers, and speculative transactions are inevitable and necessary for the conduct of “organic business.” (Business as usual.)
5. Heavy industries, particularly those catering to the military and foreign trade, are encouraged; large-scale units, unless “uneconomical” are to be kept intact; co-operatives are to be broken up.
6. The social class structure of society is sanctified, strengthened, made semi-hereditary, and hardened into caste lines (Standestaat, class state); the “Middle Class” are the Myrmidons of the Elite (Fuhrerstaat, leader state) and, as such, the backbone of the state.
7. Employers have practically complete control over workmen in regard to wages, hours, and working conditions. They must “take care” of their workmen-i.e. see that they are fed and do not grumble.
8. Collective bargaining is completely abolished; strikes are illegal; trade unions are forbidden; requests for wage increases are lese majeste.
9. Control is completely from on top; there is and can be no such thing as control or discussion of policies from below; the “leaders” decide all things as they see fit; each holds appointed office for indefinite periods at the will of his superior.
10. The National Socialist Party and the German State are one and inseparable, as spirit and body. Legislative, executive, and judicial authorities are fused together. The central government controls all local government and all activities in all their details.
11. Civil and military are fused together; as in the military there can be no freedom of speech, of assembly, of writing, of acting, of “thoughts.” “Anyone may grumble or criticize the government who is not afraid to go to a concentration camp.” (Goebbels).
12. Germany must be made self-sufficient at all costs. (Autarkie).
13. Non-Germans cannot be citizens; as a corollary, all Germans residing outside Germany either belong or owe allegiance to the Third Reich.
14 Communism (Bolshevism, Marxism) is the major enemy. There can be no such thing as equality of rights, opportunities, or income for classes, races, or sexes. The “broad masses” are fools and must be duped and led to meet the purposes of the elite (Herrenstaat). Class war is the major crime; material rewards for the rank and file sheer folly.
15. All sciences and “culture” must be co-ordinated and made to serve the purposes of the “leader,” “total,” “corporate” “master” (Herren)state. propaganda is the method. Propaganda knows neither right nor wrong, neither truth nor falsehood, but only what it wants.

In fact, business autonomy was severely limited by the imposition of the apparatus of state planning as Nazi Germany became a centrally planned economy similar to the Soviet Union, though in the case of Germany and Fascist Italy the economy was still very definitely capitalist private industry. Brady also goes on to discuss in his book how the Nazis celebrated and lauded the businessman as biologically superior through their social Darwinist ideology, and made sure that the leaders of industry, whether state-owned or private, were all drawn from the private sector.

Nazi rhetoric was anti-capitalist, but by this they meant free trade, which they identified with the Jews, just as they claimed the Jews were behind Socialism, Communism, the trade unions and other left-wing movements. They also borrowed some elements from Communism. Fellow Germans were ‘national comrades’, rather like the Marxist use of the term ‘comrade’ to describe a fellow Communist.

However, it is clear from this that Nazism was deeply Conservative and capitalist in its economic and social policies, and bitterly anti-socialist. It had socialist elements, but they were not taken seriously and only ever used as propaganda against the genuinely socialist parties and organisations. Any description of the Nazis as really socialist is utterly false and a lie, a rhetorical attempt to discredit contemporary socialism through guilt by association, and must be seen as such.