But I am glad that List has for a supporter such an asshole, and I welcome Arno and his front teeth to come and visit me some time soon.
While I don't have much energy for such a pig after another busy nite, here is something of a reply.
1. Arno dimisses my claim that the kind of the supra national authority List has in mind is insubstantial when the burden is on him to specify what List was so vaguely calling for.
2. Arno argues that List's concern with the public interest is equivalent to his interest in the improvement of the conditions of labor but grants that List found only a harmony of interest between industrial capital and labor (another step back from the accomplishments of the classical economists of course) and never offered a programme specifically on the behalf of labor.
3.He argues that industrial development in itself is beneficial to labor but does not engage the argument that behind protectionist walls backward capitalists would only make the lives of labor even more miserable through higher prices. Arno finds nothing reactionary in List's desire to return to the old corrupt condition of monopoly by protective duties, of the prohibitive system, of national economy. This is what Smith was of course critiquing. Indeed Marx's criticism of List here anticipates Veblen in the characterization of Germany as a "modern ancien regime" where "cotton barons and iron champions turn themselves into patriots". (Marx's List critique as summarizned by Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire. John Hopkins.)
3. As if this wasn't a nail in the coffin, Arno lauds the Listian tendencies of Bismarck who of course unsuccessfully tried to annhilate the socialist movement and win popular assent to imperialist politics partly by enticement and even more by a series of enactments outlawing the Social Democratic Party and trade unions (1878-90). That is, the origins of the welfare state are in anti communism and imperialism. If we wants to put this in the lap of List, fine with me.
4. List is doubtless a voice of nascent industrial bourgeosie as opposed to purely commercial and financial interests (which is all the lengthy quote shows). Of course this narrowing of popular opposition to these latter two fractions of capital--in particular finance--is anticipatory of Nazi demagogy--production versus finance, creative versus parasite, Aryan versus Jew. Doug deals with this problem in the conclusion to his book and Neumann's treatment of this is simply brilliant. See also the other work of the Frankfurt School Paul Massing Rehearsal for Destruction. Moreover, this is a step back from what Marx referred to as Ricardo's scientific honesty about the absence of harmony in the industrial proletariat/industrial bourgeosie relation.
5. I find Arno's response to Neumann's argument that List's Memorandum anticipates the geopolitical strategy of Hitler not very persuasive. I will leave it at that. Arno wants to justify the civilizing aspects of imperialism but that was not the argument Neumann was making. Arno speculates that List may have been intoxicated at the time he wrote it.
6. I will let the following bizarre statement speak for itself.
> [list] argued that Britain later on would do well to join this alliance,he
> later on changed his mind and wanted an alliance with Britain - and
> correctly: as Hitler wanted later. Both List and Hitler were wrong, however,
> in their judgement of how willing the British aristocracy was to share
> power.
7. List was at least honest that the relations between the imperialist countries and the colonies would not be equal. He did not want all international relations to be equal.
8. I find Arno's interpretation of the miscegenation passage not very persuasive. List was not opposed to slavery in order to encourage miscegenation but because he was a voice of the industrial bourgeoisie.
Rakesh Narpat Bhandari