Another Nazi Myth Bites the Dust

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Mon Oct 5 12:26:00 PDT 1998



>Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but you should really scrutinze any text that
>uses the words "positive" and "successful" around Hitler. As Kalecki
>argued, fascism can tolerate full employment because of the vicious
>repression of labor. I hope Lynn wouldn't condone that part of the model,
>and recommend it to the Russians.
>
>Doug

Actually, Lynn does have some confusion around thesee questions, as I recall. He has tended to look at the New Deal and Hitler's Germany as subspecies of statist economies. I seem to remember that he had an objection to Vincent Navarro's retort to Hobsbawm in the MR. Hobsbawm believes that the German bourgeoisie was ruled by the Nazis rather than acted as their instrument. Navarro took a more classical Marxist position, which is that the capitalist class facilitated Hitler's rise to power, despite his socialist demagogy. Once in power, he put German big business in the driver's seat and purged the Nazi "radicals." Most times Lynn makes perfect sense, but he seems to miss the class distinctions which account for the rise of fascism. Fascism was a state which broke the power of the working class, while the New Deal co-opted it.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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