[D66] neoliberale nazis

Thu Sep 20 16:44:37 CEST 2012

Inderdaad Bert,
Dogmatici en sektariers herken je vaak aan hun historische en ideologische blindheid. Dus - vrolijk op weg en terug naar de gemengde economie, liefst zonder pseudoniem Oto (wie was dat ook weer?).
hv,u
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bert Bakker 
  To: informele D66 discussielijst 
  Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:13 AM
  Subject: Re: [D66] neoliberale nazis

  Als dat de overweging is kunnen we beter ook de kinderbijslag afschaffen. En de sociale ziektekostenverzekering/ziekenfonds. Allemaal door de Duitsers hier gebracht...

  2012/9/20 Antid Oto <protocosmos66 at gmail.com>

    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

      _______________________________________________
      D66 mailing list
      D66 at tuxtown.net
      http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66

    _______________________________________________
    D66 mailing list
    D66 at tuxtown.net
    http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _______________________________________________
  D66 mailing list
  D66 at tuxtown.net
  http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.tuxtown.net/pipermail/d66/attachments/20120920/62bfd594/attachment.html>