Germany as a Keynesian state

Greg Nowell GN842 at CNSVAX.Albany.Edu
Wed Oct 7 15:14:38 PDT 1998


1. I too think Turgeon is a little too sunny on this topic.

2. Part of the question hinges on what it means to put everyone to work. Hitler had military style work camps, where hard labor on roads was a prelude to hard marches on other nations' roads. The military and economic function was fused. The "pay" was not in wages but in ideology. "The system" would not have worked, IMHO, if wages had met the standard of more-than-barracks style living for the unemployed, which literally was cajoled & dragooned into a reserve army. I do not think that this brand of Keynesianism can be distinguished from the parties that pushed it. But I do not think that it is the only brand of Keynesianism. It may be that it was "better" at getting the unemployment rate down than FDR's milktoast Keynesianism (which also featured labor corps) but then it also designed a "better" fighter plane (for a while) and a number of other things. But the core component was rather evil. No, it was paradigmatically evil. The only question this kind of above-the-board paradigmatic evil raises is whether it is better or worse than under-the-table-who-gives-a-damn evil, like Leopold in the Congo. No one mustered armies to kick HIS ass.

3. It has been alleged that ancient Assyria was a kind of fascist state avant la lettre. You might be able to get the flavor and feel without having it be capitalist.

-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222

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