[D66] neoliberale nazis

[Antid Oto]

http://www.ub.es/graap/nazi.pdf


	

Edited on Wed Sep-13-06 10:22 AM by swag
PDF of Germa Bell's article published in "Journal of Economic Perspectives"

Excerpted and discussed at Economist's View.

Against the Mainstream: Nazi Privatization in 1930s Germany, by Germa Bel:

I. Introduction

Privatization of large parts of the public sector has been one of the 
defining policies of the last quarter of the twentieth century. The 
privatizations in Chile and the United Kingdom, implemented beginning in 
the 1970s and 1980s, are usually considered the first privatization 
policies in modern history (e.g. Yergin and Stanislaw, 1998, p.115). A 
few researchers find earlier instances. Some economic analyses of 
privatization (e.g. Megginson, 2005, p. 15) identify partial sales of 
state-owned firms implemented in Adenauer’s Germany in the late 1950s 
and early 1960s as the first large-scale privatization program, and 
others argue that, although confined to just one sector, the 
denationalization of steel and coal in the United Kingdom during the 
early 1950s should be considered the first privatization (e.g. Burk, 
1988; Megginson and Netter, 2003, p. 31).

None of the contemporary economic analyses of privatization takes into 
account an earlier and important experience: the privatization policy 
applied by the Germany’s National Socialist Party (Nazi Party). The lack 
of reference to this early privatization experience in the modern 
literature on privatization is consistent with its invisibility in 
either the recent literature on the Germany economy in the twentieth 
century (e.g. Braun, 2003) or the history of Germany’s publicly owned 
enterprise (e.g. Wengenroth, 2000). Occasionally, some authors mention 
the re-privatization of banks with no additional comment or analysis 
(e.g. Barkai, 1990, p. 216; James, 1995, p. 291). Other works, like 
Hardach (1980, p. 66) and Buchheim and Scherner (2005, p. 17), mention 
the sale of state ownership in Nazi Germany only to support the idea 
that the Nazi government opposed widespread state ownership of firms. 
However, they do not carry out any analysis of these privatizations.

. . .

VII. Conclusions Although modern economic literature usually fails to 
notice it, the Nazi government in 1930s Germany undertook a wide scale 
privatization policy. The government sold public ownership in several 
state-owned firms in different sectors. In addition to this, delivery of 
some public services previously produced by the public sector was 
transferred to the private sector, mainly to organizations within the 
Nazi Party.

Ideological motivations do not explain Nazi privatization. On the 
contrary, political motivations were important. The Nazi government may 
have used privatization as a tool to improve its relationship with big 
industrialists and to increase their support for Nazi policies. 
Privatization was also likely used to enhance more general political 
support to Nazi party. Finally, financial motivations did play a central 
role in Nazi privatization. The proceeds from privatization in 1934-37 
had relevant fiscal significance: Not less than 1.37 per cent of total 
fiscal revenues were obtained from selling shares in public firms. 
Moreover, the government avoided including a huge expenditure in the 
budget by using outside-of-the-budget tools to finance the public 
services franchised to Nazi organizations.

Nazi economic policy in the middle thirties was against the mainstream 
in several dimensions. The huge increase in public expenditure programs 
was unique, as was the increase in the armament programs, and together 
they heavily constrained the budget. To finance this exceptional 
expenditure, exceptional policies were put in place. Privatization was 
just one among them. It was systematically implemented in a period in 
which no other country did so, and this drove Nazi policy against the 
mainstream, which flowed against privatization of state ownership or 
public services until the last quarter of the twentieth century.


On 19-09-12 20:20, Antid Oto wrote:
> Wat blijkt: privatisering is uitgevonden door de Nazis! Neoliberale
> ideologie met de roots in het Nazisme. Een neoliberaal is in feite dus
> gewoon een ordinaire Nazi...
>
>
> New post on An und für sich
>
>
> A Fun Fact about Privatization: With Scattered Reflections on “the State”
> by Adam Kotsko
>
> James Meek's LRB article about electricity privatization in the UK
> includes an interesting tidbit:
>
>      How did we get here? In 1981, with inflation and unemployment at 10
> per cent plus, with the recently elected Conservative government forced
> to yield to the demands of the miners, public spending cuts provoking
> general outrage and Thatcher’s prime ministerial career seemingly doomed
> to a swift, ignominious end, a 38-year-old economist from Birmingham
> University called Stephen Littlechild was working on ways to realise an
> esoteric idea that had been much discussed in radical Tory circles:
> privatisation. Privatisation was not a Thatcher patent. The Spanish
> economist Germà Bel traces the origins of the word to the German word
> Reprivatisierung, first used in English in 1936 by the Berlin
> correspondent of the Economist, writing about Nazi economic policy. In
> 1943, in an analysis of Hitler’s programme in the Quarterly Journal of
> Economics, the word ‘privatisation’ entered the academic literature for
> the first time. The author, Sidney Merlin, wrote that the Nazi Party
> ‘facilitates the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires
> by its foremost members and collaborators through “privatisation” and
> other measures, thereby intensifying centralisation of economic affairs
> and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all
> practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite’.
>
> That's right: privatization of government functions and state-owned
> industries was literally invented by the Nazis.
>
> This reminds me of something I've been meaning to blog about for months.
> Read more of this post
> Adam Kotsko | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 7:27 am | Categories:
> economics, fascism, Foucault, politics | URL: http://wp.me/p2IRQ-2dn
>
>
>
>
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