michael
At 11:11 24/03/2005, you wrote:
I think that what has often been forgotten about Hitler's regime was that during the 1930s, in domestic policy at least, it out-social-democratized the Social Democrats. Under the Weimar Republic, the SPD either participated in governments or supported governments that responded to the economic downturn by following strictly orthodox fiscal and monetary policies, which needless to say exacerbated things. The Nazis after they took power in 1933 rejected orthdodox economic policies in favor of cutting taxes, increasing expenditures on public works, and later on rearmament, and increasing spending on social welfare.
John Maynard Keynes noted that the economic policies of Hitler's regime for dealing with the Depression, were close to the sort of policies, that he himself favored. In 1936, in a forward that he wrote for the German edition of his *General Theory*, Keynes noted that:
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The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons that justifies the fact that I call my theory a general theory. Since it is based on fewer hypotheses than the orthodox theory, it can accommodate itself all the easier to a wider field of varying conditions. Although I have, after all, worked it out with a view to the conditions prevailing in the Anglo-Saxon countries where a large degree of laissez-faire still prevails, nevertheless it remains applicable to situations in which state management is more pronounced. For the theory of psychological laws which bring consumption and saving into relationship with each other, the influence of loan expenditures on prices, and real wages, the role played by the rate of interest�all these basic ideas also remain under such conditions necessary parts of our plan of thought. http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/foregt.html
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Of course, as Goetz Aly points out in his book, all these generous expenditures were ultimately paid for through imperialist conquest and open thievery, but then again the same has been true for the US and other Wester countries that more or less successfully implemented Kenyensian economic policies after WW II.
Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Michael A. Lebowitz Professor Emeritus Economics Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at Residencias Anauco Suites Departamento 601 Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1 Caracas, Venezuela (58-212) 573-4111 fax: (58-212) 573-7724
