Liberal Pundits, Liberal Pundits Fuck Off!

Its election season again, and just like Christmas the signs show up earlier and earlier. One tradition in particular really drives me up the wall. Its the classic "Lie about the rise of Hitler to guilt everyone into voting for a candidate whose only positive is they're not as obnoxious as the other guy" tradition. 2016 was full of this, so much so that it drove me in desperation to write a blog trying to get through to these people. Re-reading it I stand by what I said, there was no electoral path in 1933, but there was a few things left out or barely touched on that are very important.

When the Presidential elections for 2016 were closed and Trump won I had hoped for a silver lining. The fact that the Democrats had gain 3 million more votes than the Republicans but still lost convincingly would; I hoped, finally get through to many of these obnoxious pundits on forums, social media and the talkshow circuit the fact that governance and power is more than just a ritualistic popularity contest every other year. And it given how many liberal commentators were demanding such things as making the electoral college dependent on districts or even abolishing it entirely, it looked like maybe a transition was starting to take place.

Of course none of the schemes for electoral reform went very far but I hoped they were a start. And a minority appear to have moved at least a bit further, but as time went on even these half measures seem to have been forgotten. Its an election year and we've come full circle. 

Once again I'm seeing more and more talking points, image macros and smug video snippets lecturing a largely imaginary constituency of political radicals to swallow their pride and support the lesser evil (tm). Only now I've noticed a shift, a lot of the Hitler crying has moved back a year, a lot of it is now using the 1932 parliamentary election results. Take for example this handy infographic.

This seems better, since it was at least an election that took place before Hitler was Chancellor and had control of multiple state police forces and the 50,000 SA auxiliary (pictured with a beat cop up top). But the flaws and out right lies remain the same. 

The funny thing here is that even if it was possible for the SPD and KPD to let bygones be bygones and forget about all the dead party members and mass imprisonments and botched uprisings etc, it wouldn't change anything. In 1933 the combined vote of the SPD and KPD fell short of a third meaning the Enabling Act would still pass since all the other parties with representation agreed to support Hitler. And of course the KPD were already being tracked down and arrested and so did several of the SPD deputies, so even they did manage to get a big enough slice of the Reichstag they would not be able to block the Act.

But let's look at the election results anyway.

National Socialist German Workers' Party	13,745,680	37.27	230	+123
Social Democratic Party of Germany	7,959,712	21.58	133	–10
Communist Party of Germany	5,282,636	14.32	89	+12
German Centre Party	4,589,430	12.44	75	+7
German National People's Party	2,178,024	5.91	37	–4
Bavarian People's Party	1,192,684	3.23	22	+3
German People's Party	436,002	1.18	7	–23
German State Party	371,800	1.01	4	–16

These are the best showing parties in July 1932, there were dozens more contesting that failed to get even one percent of the vote.

So the theoretical combined"Left" slate falls short 21.58+14.32= 35.90% which is still just below the 37.27% the Nazi's got. I'm actually a little surprised that they didn't use the November 1932 election results since there the Nazi party vote was slightly lower than the combined vote shares of the KPD and SPD.

But sad thing here, and why I feel confident calling this talking point a dirty trick by scummy liberals is that it doesn't matter how many votes the SPD or the KPD or some kind of hybrid SPD/KPD slate would get, Hitler did not get to power through a parliamentary majority or winning a presidential election, he was handed power by a coalition of German conservative politicians, Industrialists, Army Officers, and Aristocrats. 

Back in 2016 I spent a lot of time emphasising that Hitler was already Chancellor and his party had control of several important state functions before the elections were held in 1933. It is very important to keep in mind, but its also important to understand that by May 1932 Germany was already effectively run by a coalition of right wing militarists who were drifting further to the right, desperate for mass support to prop up their increasingly isolated regime and increasingly anti democratic and increasingly dictatorial.

After the coalition government under Chancellor Bruning, who was nicknamed the Hunger Chancellor because of the extreme austerity measures his government pushed through by emergency decrees in response to the economic chaos of the Wall Street Crash, a minority government dominated by the President Hindenburg and Von Papen continued to govern Germany by emergency decree though with even less democratic camouflage. They could do this because the Weimar constitution allowed them to do so. This is important, not only because the austerity measures increased popularity for the Nazi party, but the Bruning and Papen minority administrations frequent use of emergency powers, and interventions in the economy paved the way for an authoritarian governing mechanism which Hitler took full advantage off. When minority administrations propped up by Hindenburg's personal popularity proved unfeasible they turned to Hitler for support.

There's an important open letter that was written during this time called the Letter of the Industrialists, now the letter was published after Papen had gotten Hindenburg to agree to making Hitler an offer of a coalition, but its still an important document as it shows us who was willing to publicly invite Hitler into power. Here's a sample.

Gleichlautende Schreiben an den Reichspräsidenten schickten: Senator Dr. Beindorff, Ewald Hecker (Präsident der Industrie- und Handelskammer, Hannover), Dr. Kurt von Eichborn (Bankier), E. Helfferich (Reeder), Eberhard Graf von Kalckreuth (Großgrundbesitzer), Graf von Keyserlingk (Großgrundbesitzer), Carl Vincent Krogmann (Bürgermeister Hamburg), Dr. E. Lübbert, Erwin Merck, Joachim von Oppen-Dannenwalde (Großgrundbesitzer), Friedrich Reinhart (Bankier), August Rosterg (Generaldirektor der Winterhall A.G., Kassel), Kurt Gustav Ernst von Rohr-Manze, Engelbert Beckmann, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht (einflußreicher Bänker mit Beziehung zur Wall Street, später Reichsfinanzminister, Kurt Freiherr von Schröder (Mitinhaber der Firma J.H. Stein, Köln), Fritz Thyssen, Rudolf Ventzki, Senator F.H. Witthoefft, Kurt Woermann. Das Schreiben unterstützten inhaltlich auch Dr. Albert Vögler (Vereinigte Stahlwerke), Kommerzienrat Dr. Paul Reusch (Gutehoffnungshütte) und Dr. Fritz Springorum (Hoesch).

Its a list of Conservative politicians and industrialists. They were the support behind Papen and Hindenburg, and by both the offer and public shows like the letter prove were the ones willing to give Hitler power over Germany.

How many votes then would the KPD or an KPD backed SPD have to win before  August Rosterg (Generaldirektor der Winterhall A.G., Kassel), et al would publicly plead with Hindenburg to give Thalmann the Chancellorship? 

Ah, but what if, for argument sake a combined left platform took a majority of the seats in the Reichstag? Well that couldn't of happened, as we've seen their vote shares at their best were about just over a third of the vote. And we know from the vote on the Enabling Act that all the over parties including the liberal and catholic parties would side with Hitler over the two left parties, so a broader coalition is out of the question. But if miracles happened and they did get over 50% of the vote, I don't see how it would be feasible for them to form a government. Since there is no way Hindenburg and his coalition would cede power to them. 

On the contrary the naked hostility towards the German "Reds" was a major factor of given Hitler the Chancellorship in the first place. As we saw in January 1933, the "Moderate" Conservatives and capitalists were willing to give the Nazi's substantial control over the police and tolerate their private armies, Goring had already effectively outlawed the left in Prussia and was working on extending it nationwide, even the SPD the party that had collaborated the most to protect Germany from a Communist Revolt were viable targets for arrest as far as Papen and co were concerned. 

See that's the other thing about Weimar Germany, the popular image of an idealistic democracy beset by right wing extremists (the Nazis) and left wing extremeists (the Communists) with moderates (everyone else) crumbling under the constant pressure, is complete nonsense. Nearly every political party had a fighting organisation, and many were linked to paramilitary death squads in 1918. The DNVP which was the party many of the Conservative politicians around Papen and Hindenburg belonged to or had links and sympathies, which is often depicted as a fairly typical European Conservative party in reality had for years advocated the destruction of the Weimar republic and the restoration of the authoritarian monarchy and rebuilding of the German military and Empire. It also had a paramilitary group known as the Steel Helmets, and they were open admirers of Mussolini and the first group in Germany to adopt the label Fascist. After Hitler had come to power and made it clear that it would be him and not the Conservatives who would be the dominant force the Steel Helmets merged with the SA.

Members of the Steel Helmets wearing Nazi armbands in 1934

I could go on forever, but the point is, there was no way for even a mildly left wing electoral movement to succeed in Weimar Germany. For all its pretensions for democracy and openness power never rested with the people and the ballot box in Weimar Germany. In the early 30s the coalition of political conservatives, militarists, and capitalists found themselves in a crisis, they couldn't stand alone and they turned to the only option left to them, Hitler and the Nazis. At the time and especially with hindsight this shouldn't be a surprise, the Nazis were nothing more than more hard-line versions of the previous Conservative adminstrations.

Again the real lesson of the rise of Hitler is that democracy and elections are not a safeguard against fascism and reactionary movements. Ironically this is the one part that does indeed parallel with 2016, many people who had objected and opposed the American system and the Democratic party, many of them had reasons to oppose and despise Hillary Clinton personally, were so alarmed and worried at the prospect of Donald Trump's open courtship of white nationalism, and naked reactionary and xenophobic attitudes, that they swallowed their pride and principles and voted for the Democrats. I even know of a few who were so alarmed and felt so vulnerable that they even did some campaigning. And it worked 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton to be President than did for Donald Trump to be President.

And yet as we know it didn't matter, because just like Weimar Germany power does lie with the electorate. The system said he qualified for power, and when he had although some of the heads of the institutions that govern the USA couldn't stand him and his views, they either resigned in protest or just sniped at him from the side lines. At least in Weimar Germany Schleicher tried to split the Nazi party and turn it on itself, what has the official "resistance" achieved these past four years that matches that?

Heartbreaking

Introduction/Explanation
I spent a lot of time trawling through websites about labour history and documents on or about Socialism and Communism. Probably more than is healthy but occasionally it provokes some surprises. On one of them I saw in its index a listing for Ludwig von Mises (yes that one) and wondered what the hell he was doing their. If your not familiar Mises was "classical liberal" economist who promoted capitalist economics and liberal politics, he fled Europe in 1940 to teach in the United States. He's also something of a patient zero for the modern American Pro capitalist free market movements. He's taught or had some connection to nearly every "the market is the source of all liberty" spokesmen in 20th century America, from Ayn Rand to Rothbard.

So not someone you'd expect to see on a website dedicated to workers revolt, or this blog except maybe as a punching bag. But having given in to curiosity I read it, and I actually see why it was chosen as something of value. That essay was Marxism and the Labour Movement, published in 1944, though I suspect based on some of its comments it was written earlier, possibly before Germany invaded Poland.
Normally I'd just quote from it quite liberally (heh) and add my own commentary, but honestly while it isn't perfect and can't help but engage in some pretty transparent bad faith commentary, it largely holds up and I'd be quoting well over 50% of it anyway, so I figured might as well repost it in full.
I'll add my comments and addendums at the end. Footnotes using numbers were used in the original text, mine will be using *.
This version of the text comes from a website known as Panarchy.org and comes this explanatory paragraph.
Note
This essay is taken from Omnipotent Government. Here von Mises presents Marx's ideas with a lucidity rarely encountered in other classical liberals. What emerges is that Marx vision was in favour of the development of the capitalistic mode of production in view of the construction of a post-capitalistic society*. Instead liberals have presented Marx as a rabid anti-capitalism propagandist. Many have done it and are still doing it for political gains, in order that liberal parties prevail over socialist parties. Whatever the reason, the manipulation has been a stumbling block to a fruitful analysis of Marx's ideas.
Now I do have somethings to say about this note, but I'll leave that until later. I'll just quickly add that I don't believe Panarchy.org was motivated by a desire to take down Marx by hosting this essay, I say that because they also host texts by both Marx and Engels and their introductions are usually fairly positive to those.
Now then.

Ludwig Von Mises, 

Marxism and the Labour Movement

(1944)

Karl Marx turned to socialism at a time when he did not yet know economics and because he did not know it. Later, when the failure of the Revolution of 1848 and 1849 forced him to flee Germany, he went to London. There, in the reading room of the British Museum, he discovered in the 'fifties not, as he boasted, the laws of capitalist evolution, but the writings of British political economy, the reports published by the British Government, and the pamphlets in which earlier British socialists used the theory of value as expounded by classical economics for a moral justification of labor's claims. These were the materials out of which Marx built his "economic foundations" of socialism.

Before he moved to London Marx had quite naively advocated a program of interventionism. In the Communist Manifesto in 1848 he expounded ten measures for imminent action. These points, which are described as "pretty generally applicable in the most advanced countries," are defined as "despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois methods of production." Marx and Engels characterize them as "measures, economically unsatisfactory and untenable, but which in the course of events outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are indispensable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the whole mode of production." [1].

Eight of these ten points have been executed by the German Nazis with a radicalism that would have delighted Marx. The two remaining suggestions (namely, expropriation of private property in land and dedication of all rents of land to public expenditure, and abolition of all right of inheritance) have not yet been fully adopted by the Nazis. However, their methods of taxation, their agricultural planning, and their policies concerning rent restriction are daily approaching the goals determined by Marx**. The authors of the Communist Manifesto aimed at a step-by-step realization of socialism by measures of social reform. They were thus recommending procedures which Marx and the Marxians in later years branded as socio-reformist fraud.

In London, in the 'fifties, Marx learned very different ideas. The study of British political economy taught him that such acts of intervention in the operation of the market would not serve their purpose. From then on he dismissed such acts as "petty-bourgeois nonsense" which stemmed from ignorance of the laws of capitalist evolution. Class-conscious proletarians are not to base their hopes on such reforms. They are not to hinder the evolution of capitalism as the narrow-minded petty bourgeois want to. The proletarians, on the contrary, should hail every step of progress in the capitalist system of production. For socialism will not replace capitalism until capitalism has reached its full maturity, the highest stage of its own evolution. "No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new higher methods of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself." [2].

Therefore there is but one road toward the collapse of capitalism - i.e., the progressive evolution of capitalism itself. Socialization through the expropriation of capitalists is a process "which executes itself through the operation of the inherent laws of capitalist production." Then "the knell of capitalistic private property sounds." [3]. Socialism dawns and "ends . . . the primeval history of human society." [4].

From this viewpoint it is not only the endeavors of social reformers eager to restrain, to regulate, and to improve capitalism that must be deemed vain. No less contrary to purpose appear the plans of the workers themselves to raise wage rates and their standard of living, through unionization and through strikes, within the framework of capitalism. "The very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scales in favor of the capitalist against the workingman," and "consequently the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages." Such being the tendency of things within the capitalist system, the most that trade-unionism can attempt is to make "the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement." Trade-unions ought to understand that and to change their policies entirely, "Instead of the conservative motto: A fair day's wages for a fair day's work, they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: Abolition of the wages system!" [5].

These Marxian ideas might impress some Hegelians steeped in dialectics. Such doctrinaires were prepared to believe that capitalist production begets "with the inexorability of a law of nature its own negation" as "negation of negation," [6] and to wait until, "with the change of the economic basis," the "whole immense superstructure will have, more or less rapidly, accomplished its revolution." [7]. A political movement for the seizure of power, as Marx envisaged it, could not be built up on such beliefs. Workers could not be made supporters of them. It was hopeless to look for cooperation on the ground of such views from the labor movement, which did not have to be inaugurated but was already in existence. This labor movement was essentially a trade-union movement. Fully impregnated with ideas branded as petty bourgeois by Marx, unionized labor sought higher wage rates and fewer hours of work; it demanded labor legislation, price control of consumer's goods, and rent restriction. The workers sympathized not with Marxian teachings and the recipes derived from them but with the program of the interventionists and the social reformers. They were not prepared to renounce their plans and wait quietly for the far-distant day when capitalism was bound to turn into socialism. These workers were pleased when the Marxian propagandists explained to them that the inevitable laws of social evolution had destined them for greater things, that they were chosen to replace the rotten parasites of capitalist society, that the future was theirs. But they wanted to live for their own day, not for a distant future, and they asked for an immediate payment on account of their future inheritance.

The Marxians had to choose between a rigid uncompromising adherence to their master's teachings and an accommodating adaptation to the point of view of the workers, who could provide them with honors, power, influence and, last but not least, with a nice income. They could not resist the latter temptation, and yielded. They kept on discussing Marxian dialectics in the midst of their own circles; Marxism, moreover, had an esoteric character. But out in the open they talked and wrote in a different way. They headed the labor movement for which wage raises, labor legislation, and social insurance provisions were of greater importance than sophisticated discussions concerning "the riddle of the average rate of profit." They organized consumer's cooperatives and housing societies; they backed all the anticapitalist policies which they stigmatized in their Marxian writings as petty-bourgeois issues. They did everything that their Marxian theories denounced as nonsense, and they were prepared to sacrifice all their principles and convictions if some gain at the next election campaign could be expected from such a sacrifice. They were implacable doctrinaires in their esoteric books and unprincipled opportunists in their political activities.

The German Social Democrats developed this double-dealing into a perfect system. There was on the one side the very narrow circle of initiated Marxians, whose task it was to watch over the purity of the orthodox creed and to justify the party's political actions, incompatible with these creeds, by some paralogisms and fallacious inferences. After the death of Marx, Engels was the authentic interpreter of Marxian thought. With the death of Engels, Kautsky inherited this authority. He who deviated an inch from the correct dogma had to recant submissively or face pitiless exclusion from the party's ranks***. For all those who did not live on their own funds such an exclusion meant the loss of the source of income. On the other hand, there was the huge, daily increasing body of party bureaucrats, busy with the political activities of the labor movement. For these men the Marxian phraseology was only an adornment to their propaganda. They did not care a whit for historical materialism or for the theory of value. They were interventionists and reformers. They did whatever would make them popular with the masses, their employers. This opportunism was extremely successful. Membership figures and contributions to the party, its trade unions, cooperatives, and other associations increased steadily. The party became a powerful body with a large budget and thousands of employees. It controlled newspapers, publishing houses, printing offices, assembly halls, boarding houses, cooperatives, and plants to supply the needs of the cooperatives. It ran a school for the education of the rising generation of party executives. It was the most important agency in the Reich's political structure, and was paramount in the Second International Working Men's Association.

It was a serious mistake not to perceive this dualism, which housed under the same roof two radically different principles and tendencies, incompatible and incapable of being welded together. For it was the most characteristic feature of the German Social Democratic party and of all parties formed abroad after its model. The very small groups of zealous Marxians - probably never more than a few hundred persons in the whole Reich - were completely segregated from the rest of the party membership. They communicated with their foreign friends, especially with the Austrian Marxians (the "Austro-Marxian doctrinaires"), the exiled Russian revolutionaries, and with some Italian groups. In the Anglo-Saxon countries Marxism in those days was practically unknown****. With the daily political activities of the party these orthodox Marxians had little in common. Their points of view and their feelings were strange, even disgusting, not only to the masses but also to many party bureaucrats. The millions voting the Social Democratic ticket paid no attention to these endless theoretical discussions concerning the concentration of capital, the collapse of capitalism, finance capital and imperialism, and the relations between Marxian materialism and Kantian criticism. They tolerated this pedantic clan because they saw that they impressed and frightened the "bourgeois" world of statesmen, entrepreneurs, and clergymen, and that the government-appointed university professors, that German Brahmin caste, took them seriously and wrote voluminous works about Marxism. But they went their own way and let the learned doctors go theirs.

Much has been said concerning the alleged fundamental difference between the German labor movement and the British. But it is not recognized that a great many of these differences were of an accidental and external character only. Both labor parties desired socialism; both wanted to attain socialism gradually by reforms within the framework of capitalist society. Both labor movements were essentially trade-union movements. For German labor in the imperial Reich Marxism was only an ornament. The Marxians were a small group of literati*****.

The antagonism between the Marxian philosophy and that of labor organized in the Social Democratic party and its affiliated trade-unions became crucial the instant the party had to face new problems. The artificial compromise between Marxism and labor interventionism broke down when the conflict between doctrine and policies spread into fields which up to that moment had had no practical significance. The war put the party's alleged internationalism to the test, as the events of the postwar period did its alleged democratic tendencies and its program of socialization.





Notes
[1] Communist Manifesto, end of the second section. In their preface to a new edition of the Manifesto, dated June 24, 1872, Marx and Engels declare that because of changed circumstances "stress is no longer laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of the second section."
[2] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, edited by Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1897), p. xii.
[3] Marx, Das Kapital (7th ed. Hamburg, 1914), I, p. 728.
[4] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. xii.
[5] Marx, Value, Price and Profit, edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling (New York, 1901), pp. 72-74.
[6] Marx, Das Kapital, op. cit., p. 729.
[7] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. xi.

Some Comments

* Just to comeback to that note, this is true up to a point, the writings of Marx contain many references to a progressive feature of Capitalist development, perhaps the most infamous example of this was when Marx commented on Imperialism. Especially regarding India in the 1850s for example this passage written in 1853 for the New York Daily Tribune 

All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?...

The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 millions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget... [t]he bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world — on the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/marx-the-future-results-of-british-rule-in-india.html

 Though there is evidence that his ideas had started to shift somewhat on the progressive character of Empire building. One of the most commonly cited is a letter to Danielson in 1881 shortly before his death.
In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, is in store for the British government. What the English take from them annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to the Hindus; pensions for military and civil service men, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc., etc. – what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have gratuitously and annually to send over to England – it amounts to more than the total sum of income of the sixty millions of agricultural and industrial labourers of India! This is a bleeding process, with a vengeance! The famine years are pressing each other and in dimensions till now not yet suspected in Europe! There is an actual conspiracy going on wherein Hindus and Mussulmans co-operate; the British government is aware that something is “brewing,” but this shallow people (I mean the governmental men), stultified by their own parliamentary ways of talking and thinking, do not even desire to see clear, to realise the whole extent of the imminent danger! To delude others and by deluding them to delude yourself – this is: parliamentary wisdom in a nutshell! Tant mieux!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_19.htm

But yeah, his comments on the necessity for capitalistic development aren't very popular even amongst most self described Marxists.
**

This is the big weakness of the essay, I guess Mises can't help himself, this argument is incorrect on nearly every level. Let's get started with a refresher on the ten points from the Manifesto

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 
 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

These are the ten points, Mises admits that points 1 and 3 weren't applicable, his assertion that they were on the way in the future though is dubious because he cites trends in Nazi economics that simply didn't exist. The main issue here is that Mises is lying, what similarities between the Manifesto and German economic reality of the 1930s was not the work of the Nazi party, but the government they replaced. They inherited large state companies and proceeded to sell them off.

The Great Depression spurred State ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception; the last governments of the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in the Western capitalist countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the delivery of public services previously provided by government. The firms and the services transferred to private ownership belonged to diverse sectors. Privatization was part of an intentional policy with multiple objectives and was not ideologically driven. As in many recent privatizations, particularly within the European Union, strong financial restrictions were a central motivation. In addition, privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.

Against the Mainstream Germa Bel  http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf

The German Central bank was the Reichsbank which was founded in 1876 and was a private monopoly. Nazi policy changed its name to the German Reichsbank and placed it under the control of Hitler. Beyond the Reichsbank the Nazi party merely setup a regulatory body and then sold the states shares in the banking sector to private interests.

In the end, the Banking Investigation Committee recommended strengthening public supervision and control of private banking and introducing new restrictions on the creation of credit institutions and the exercise of the banking profession (Lurie, 1947, p. 62). These recommendations were implemented through the German Bank Act of 1934, which allowed the government to exercise tight control over private banks. Regulating banking appeared to the regime as a safe and economically sound alternative to proposals by party radicals for controlling finance through socialization (James, 1995, p. 291). Afterwards, and consistent with the theoretical insights of Shleifer and Vishny (1994), the reprivatization of the big commercial banks (Deutsche Bank, Commerz-Bank, and Dresdner-Bank) was implemented within the new regulatory framework. The alliance of financial interests and top economic echelons in the government held the reprivatization of State-owned banks as one of its top priorities.

And progressive income tax? Uh not really, if anything the Nazi party taxation plans benefited the wealthy who could make investments in their businesses tax deductible and count servants as dependendents. The highest rate of tax in Germany was 13.7% compared to 23.7% in the UK at the same time.

How about centralisation of the means of communication and transport? Again no, they all remained in private hands, the closest to centralisation I can think of would be the Authobahn construction programs, but again this was an inheritance from the previous government.

Railways: In the 1930s The Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Railways) was the largest single public enterprise in the world (Macmahon and Dittmar 1939, p. 484), bringing together most of the railways services operating within Germany. The German Budget for fiscal year 1934/35, the last one published (Pollock, 1938, p. 121), established that Railway preference shares4 worth Reichsmark (Rm.) 224 million were to be sold.5 

Point 8, well yes the Nazi party did establish large industrial armies to build roads and work in factories, however in the Manifesto this demand is coupled with the "Equal liability of all to work" and this was not the case in Nazi Germany. Jewish people were systematically denied the right to work outside of the ghettoes and labour camps.

Point 4 is the only point that I can see a case for comparison. The Nazi party did confiscate the property of exiles and its enemies.

***

The SPD weren't monolithic but it seems hard to deny that their orthodoxy fell overwhelmingly on the cautious and gradual approach. Rosa Luxemburg is famous for publishing the text "The Mass Strike" in 1906 which advocated for a general uprising of labour in the workplaces by seizing control through direct action of capitalist property. But the party under Kautsky very quickly moved away from such radical ideas and soon Luxemburg would find herself increasingly isolated as part of fringe minority. Though the official breaking point wouldn't come until the outbreak of the First World War.

****

In the UK the dominant socialist party was the Labour party, unlike the French and German Social Democrats there were few if any Marx admirers within the Labour party ranks. It was founded largely by the Trade Unions and members of social reforming societies and smaller Socialist and workingmen's parties. Its intellectual wing became dominated by the Fabian society.

There was however a small Marxist current in the Social Democratic Federation founded by Henry Hyndman, but by 1911 it had split into several other competing groups that eventually faded away. Apparently Marx and Engels who didn't care for him very much, though the SDF did attract for a time at least most of the early English Marxists.

*****

The SPD at the turn of the 20th century was both the largest political party in Germany, (especially when factoring in its affiliated Trade Unions, co-operatives and associations) and the largest nominally Marxist group in the world. However not only were many of its rank and file not Marxists, but many of its leaders and theoreticians also came from non or anti Marxist traditions. When the party was formed it was done with the alliance of two groups, one around Marx and the other around Lassalle. And many of the works of Marx, Engels and Kautsky about the nature of Social Democracy and the role of the party were written as criticism or outright opposition to the rival currents within Social Democracy.

Such as the Critique of the Gotha Program, or Engels Anti-Duhring. So while the party was large and quite powerful physically, the party seems to have failed utterly in its role as teacher of the class, since even many of its leaders had at best payed lip service to the works of the three great Marxist thinkers, Marx, Engels and Kautsky. 

Classical Liberalism: Classical Menace

I encountered YouTube user and social commentator Sargon of Akkad about a year or so ago. He seemed like a rather obnoxious man who seemed to be deliberately playing up to the stereotype of a toxic intellectual. So I ignored him, though due to his popularity and infamy he kept popping up on my radar like in this video clip where he ends it saying he'll support Fascist terror.




Flicking through the comments and seeing his fans come out the woodwork reminded me of something else Sargon has been pretty heavily committed to in his internet career, the rehabilitation and promotion of the ideology of `classical liberalism`. Classical Liberalism, I'm just going to call it Liberalism from now on, promotes itself by appearing as a moderate and open and tolerant view point that is in strict opposition to all the various political extremists. The horseshoe fallacy is common talking point amongst this crowd.

So far as I'm aware this liberal revivalism unlike Neoliberalism doesn't appear to have grown into a full fledged political movement, so this may seem like tilting at windmills, but this is early days and I think given the prevalence of a certain smug frog its best to knock this thing on the head sooner rather than later. In my personal experience if you let a self professed Classical Liberal talk for long enough you'll eventually start hearing some pretty extreme and violent reactionary ideas. Sargon is pretty typical in that regard, but this more than just individual moral failings the whole project is rooting in some pretty vile stuff and is inherently reactionary.

This particular strand of liberalism likes to based itself on the Enlightenment period, specifically the early United States and United Kingdom, and the personalities they really like come from the 18th and early 19th century. But these societies were not wonderful bastions of reason and tolerance, they both were heavily involved in slavery, conquest and complete oppression of women. And a mans social worth and standing was dependent entirely on the size of their property holdings. Even in the democratic and republican USA property gave you unique entitlements like the right to vote or stand for office.

These weren't aberrations they coincided quite a lot with the views of many of this periods most prominent thinkers. For example John Stuart Mills On Liberty is a foundational text on Liberalism written in 1859 it largely codifies a lot of earlier liberal thinking. It outlines for example the limits of government authority, it also fully endorses colonial expansion and domination.

This isn't a man from an earlier time carrying some baggage either this is at the core of Mill's liberal framework of authority, if you're not advanced enough you should be ruled for your own good. He also was not being guilty of theoretical abstraction, Mill worked for the East India Company and assisted in the Despotic control of millions of "barbarians".

Another influential thinker often cited as one of the best thinkers of early liberalism is Thomas Jefferson the well known democracy advocate and American revolutionary. He not only drafted the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights the two pillars of liberal thought but he was so committed to them that he declared them `self evident`.

He was also a slave owner and even raped some of those slaves  . He also opposed the free coloured population, he tried to declare free black people living in Virginia declared outlaws, and wanted to expel the children of white women and black men.[1] Like Mill he also took a dim view of "Barbarians" and endeavoured to pressure the tribes living in or near US territory to leave and move further west if they couldn't be "civilised". His favourite method was tricking the tribes into debt by selling to them on credit, then using that as leverage in negotiations. In exchange for debt cancellation the government would get land for cheap and parcel it off, this would weaken the ability of the tribe to pay off any future debts and establish a negative spiral eventually forcing the tribes to either leave US territory or assimilate into the towns.

Jefferson first instructed his agents to persuade Indians to adopt agriculture. That new way of life, the agents explained, would require less land than hunting. With no need for their vast forests, the Indians were encouraged to sell their uncultivated territories for 25 cents per acre, the profits of which Indian farmers could use to purchase agricultural tools and manufactured goods. To stimulate Indian consumerism, Jefferson increased the number of government trading houses located near Native villages, arguing publicly that the establishments enabled Indians to share in the fruits of white "civilization." But it was a ploy. His real motive, he confided in 1803, was to lure Indians into spending themselves into debt, obligations that would be paid off through the sale of tribal lands.

The weapons in Jefferson's arsenal of dispossession were many and varied, and they worked to perfection. As the historian Colin Galloway has observed, Jefferson's strategy yielded some 30 treaties with approximately a dozen tribes, who ceded some 200,000 square miles of land in nine states.

The fact Jefferson owned slave is no secret of course, even his admirers acknowledge it, though they quickly make excuses. For example when his slave estate is brought up the quotation about the wolfs ear is often cited as an example of his sad reluctant compromise with that bloody institution.  "but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." But that is a very selective quote, the full letter that it comes from makes it clear that he advocates expanding slavery throughout the Union including the newly acquired territory of Missouri. Indeed he goes so far as to call abolition a form of treason and the death of the nation.

Monticello Apr. 22. 20.

I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. it is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. the cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors. an abstinence too from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress, to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a state. this certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. could congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut, shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of '76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.

to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect. Th. Jefferson

This is all terrible but again it is not an aberration, these horrible views are part of the bedrock of Jeffersonian liberalism.  He believed that for the democratic society he championed to work it must be primarily agricultural and based on a large body of small land owners. The Yeomen farming class[2] essentially. In order for this class to survive and prosper it needed several things, plenty of unoccupied land, hence the pushes to removal of the tribes to free up vast acres. It also explains in addition to naked racism and belief in pseudo science the drive to maintain and expand slavery and expel the free coloured population. If the slaves were freed many of them would become free farmers and so compete for land, and so would be a destabilising influence on the yeoman farmer society Jefferson wanted to cultivate.

And speaking of cultivation...

Voltaire! The above is basically classical liberalism's slogan. If they ever do become a full fledged movement with rallies and marches that will be on most of the banners. Minor tangent, when I looked up where exactly Voltaire said this and the second result was Stormfront, I don't have a point here, just thought it was worth mentioning. Also it appears that he didn't and the quotation was attributed to him in a book written after his death by an English admirer  but the association has stuck so I'll keep going.

Voltaire was of course very influential and still is to an extent, the problem is while his works have many merits, Candide is a favourite, both his personal life and his legacy aren't very good omens if this liberal revival takes off. Voltaire was not afraid to offend or risk punishment for what he believed in, though he didn't relish being sent back to the Bastille so often used pen names and moved around when the authorities had had enough of him. The problem is though that he had a very, very poor track record when it came to defending the rights of anyone else.

He was the close friend and confidant of Frederick the Great, and may have been his lover. Frederick's regime was built on conquest and serfdom[3] so he does not appear to have made much impact in Prussia. He also had little success with his other great admirer Catherine the Great. Again he found an enthusiastic fan at the head of an autocracy built on military conquests and serfdom. He had a lively correspondence with the "enlightened despot"[4]. Indeed before the French revolution Voltaire was the most important and popular thinker amongst the Russian nobility.

Now because of the two previous examples I want to make it clear that unlike Mill and Jefferson I don't think Voltaire actively promoted any of this, though his comments praising Catherine's war with the Turks for example are pushing. I'm mainly bringing up Voltaire because he's an enlightenment figure many classical liberals openly aspire to and his legacy shows just how insufficient his ideas are for addressing extreme injustice. 18th century Russia was a society where the nobility could in effect do what they pleased so long as they did not anger a more powerful member. And yet despite years of infatuation the Russian enlightenment never translated into effective social change. On the contrary after 1789 Catherine ditched the enlightenment and aggressively stamped out what little progress had been made.

Now back to the UK. Arguably the United Kingdom since its founding in 1707 was the nation where classical liberalism made the most inroads. Indeed the UK has had several liberal Prime Ministers, and by strange coincidence these premierships often occurred during some pretty dark and bloody periods of UK history. For example Prime Minister John Russell who essentially caused the Irish famine. Now he didn't go around spreading the blight, the blight actually appeared while his predecessor the Conservative PM Robert Peel.

But the majority of the deaths can be lead squarely at Russell's feet since he not only did not take measures to prevent or limit the damage of the famine, he ended what relief efforts Peel's government had made, (small scale public works, price guarantees of corn etc.). He was the Prime minister from 1846 to 1852 nearly the entirety of the famine, and he never changed course. His actions, or rather deliberate inaction lead to the displacement of 2-3million people and the deaths of 800,000 to 1,000,000 people depending on estimates. All of whom were British subjects due to the act of Union in 1800. And again as with Mill and Jefferson this wasn't some personal failing, it was the direct result of a firm belief in a cornerstone of classic liberalism, that of the market economy.

As far as Russell was concerned the real tragedy of the famine was that it lead the British government to intervene in the economy for them it was most important to get the market back on track. To quote Trevalyn a member of Russell's government who oversaw Ireland and its (lack of relief)

Our measures must proceed with as little disturbance as possible of the ordinary course of private trade, which must ever be the chief resource for the subsistence of the people, but, coûte que coûte (at any cost), the people must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to starve.

Which seems not too bad, but the commitment to not let people starve quickly proved hollow, under Trevalyn exports of Irish food stuffs continued regularly and when in 1847 he was confronted with news that the years potato harvest had been riddled with blight this was his response.

'The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the operation to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary. Whatever may be done hereafter these things should be stopped now or we run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer strongly supports this policy.'

And there you have it, liberal economics in a nutshell. Property and commerce before and above human costs. Whenever someone praises liberal economics and laissez-faire commerce this is what they mean.

Before I wrap up I'd like to hammer home this point with the example of the most successful liberal statesman in the UK, Gladstone. Gladstone was Prime minister four times, and Chancellor of the Exchequer another four times, so a man of influence and power. In opposition he developed a reputation for opposing the growth of the Empire. When he was in office though he made no move to withdraw British rule from any of its overseas territories. Indeed, he personal investments in several Imperial ventures. The case of Egypt is very revealing, in the 1880's tensions were growing there. Gladstone decided to intervene, the fact he had 37% of his stock invested in the country was probably just a coincidence.

Gladstone funnily enough justified Imperial aggression and domination in much the same way J.S. Mill did, for their own good, and it would end once the conquered "savages" reached an appropriate level of civilisation whatever that actually means.

The Liberal project old and new is one steeped in violence and hostile elitism. In that respect the modern "classical liberals" of today are not much different from their forefathers. The reputation political liberalism has of being an emancipatory movement for civil discourse and polite toleration is largely a product of misdirection and propaganda to cover up the atrocities and structural tyranny it presided over.

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1:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.html
2: The term Yeomen farmer in the United States didn't have any feudal connotations
3: Frederick II past an abolition of serfdom decree in 1763 after he had fallen out with Voltaire and the decree only extended to crown lands. It wouldn't be until the revolution of 1848 when Prussian peasants would finally be freed from all feudal obligations.
4: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/02/russia.books