Comments by "The french are harlequins" (@thefrenchareharlequins2743) on "The Armchair Historian"
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@modest_spice6083 I see you brought up Bel's "Against the Mainstream". Very good, lets see how it fairs as a reliable source for Nazi privatisation.
>Privatization was part of an intentional policy with multiple objectives and was not ideologically driven.
>In addition, privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.
So the Nazis weren't doing it because they are corporatists. They were doing it to gain support.
>It is a fact that the government of the Nazi Party sold off public ownership in several State-owned firms in the mid-1930s. These firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyards, ship-lines, railways, etc.
To gain support from industrialists, yes.
>In addition, the delivery of some public services that were produced by the government before the 1930s, especially social and labour-related services, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to organizations within the party.
The Nazi Party wasn't a private sector organisation. Saying giving state-owned property to the party in charge of the state is privatisation makes no sense. This isn't the only time Bel calls the Nazi Party a private sector organisation either
>Besides the transfer to the private sector of public ownership in firms, the Nazi government also transferred many public services (some long-established, others newly created) to special organizations: either the Nazi party and its affiliates or other allegedly independent organizations which were set up for a specific purpose...
So I am unsure on whether anything in this article can be taken as a source for Nazi privatisation since the author doesn't know what the private and public sector organisations are.
>Die Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front) was not part of the machinery of the State, but a legally independent organization of the Nazi Party...
The Nazi Party was the state.
>Its ‘recommendations’ were compulsory... Membership, also theoretically voluntary, was in fact compulsory. The fees received from the workers and the employees made substantial resources available for use by the Labor Front.
If this was private, nothing here would be compulsory.
>On one hand, the intense growth of governmental regulations on markets, which heavily restricted economic freedom, suggests that the rights inherent to private property were destroyed. As a result, privatization would be of no practical consequences since the state assumed full control of the economic system... On the other hand, the activities of private business organizations and the fact that big business had some power seemed to be grounds for inferring that the Nazis promoted private property. Privatization, in this analysis, was intended to promote the interests of the business sectors that supported the Nazi regime, as well as the interests of the Nazi elites...
Not entirely sure this can be called "privatisation" since most of these big businesses are Aktiengesellschaft or public limited companies and they were controlled by members of the Nazi party.
>Nazi policy was heavily dependent on Hitler’s decisions. Hitler made no specific comments on nationalization or denationalization in Mein Kampf. Even if Hitler was an enemy of free-market economies, he could by no means be considered a sympathizer of economic socialism or the nationalization of private firms. The Nazi regime rejected liberalism and was strongly against free competition and regulation of the economy by market mechanisms. Still, as a social Darwinist, Hitler was reluctant to totally dispense with private property and competition. Hitler’s solution was to combine autonomy and a large role for private initiative and ownership rights within firms with the total subjection of property rights outside the firm to State control. As Nathan pointed out “It was a totalitarian system of government control within the framework of private property and private profit. It maintained private enterprise and provided profit incentives as spurs to efficient management. But the traditional freedom of the entrepreneur was narrowly circumscribed.” In other words, there was a private initiative in the production process, but no private initiative was allowed in the distribution of the product. Owners could act freely within their firms, but faced tight restrictions in the market.”
So Hitler didn't traditionally nationalise the economy, but to conclude this was privatisation would be incorrect since businessmen couldn't act freely, as this letter from a German businessman demonstrates:
>You have no idea how far State control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. In this respect, they certainly differ from the former Social-Democratic officials. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except "distributing the wealth." Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system. How can we possibly manage a firm according to business principles if it is impossible to make any predictions We businessmen still make sufficient profit, sometimes even large profits, but we never know how much we are going to be able to keep . . . [Vampire Economy PDF, Mises Institute, Pages 23, 24]
Commissars in all but name could be in charge of factories and make salaries from them, but that is about it. They were part of the Nazi Party and they were controlled by the Nazi Party, which controlled the state.
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He was such an Georgian, to take it all away. We miss him so, That you should know, And we honor him this day. He was an Georgian, to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back, And now he's on our minds. Mitchell was an Georgian, to leave us feeling like this, Our minds are rubber, our joints don't work, Our tears fall into abyss. He was an Georgian, to take that shot, In life it wasn't his task, He shouldn't have had to go that way, before an decade'd past. Now he sits there in my heart, this Georgian of mine, Always there to make me smile, Make me feel just fine. He had courage,that boy did, courage in his heart. To take that shot, To end his pain, To tear us all apart. But in the end, he died in courage. Lacking, nevermore, He died a Georgian, Mitchell did, And we'll love him forevermore. We love you like an brother. We miss you so much. We will always love you, kid. Rest In Peace Mitch.
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