On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 07:02:04AM -0400, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> > This is a short section from my book: Transcending the Economy
> >
> > Lessons from Germany on Inequality and War
>
> Michael, doesn't the beginning of this passage contradict the end? The
> first paragraph says:
>
> > A recent collection of essays, comparing the experience of London,
> > Paris, and Berlin during World War I, suggests that, at least in part,
> > Germany lost that war because the German government was less able than
> > either France or Britain to persuade its people that it was acting
> > fairly (see Winter and Robert 1997; especially, Bonzon 1997, p. 302;
> > and Triebel 1997).
>
> And the last paragraph says:
>
> > Gabriel Kolko, a renowned professor of history at York University in
> > Toronto, noted that German workers did not recover their 1913 level of
> > wages until 1928. The Nazis realized that they could not pursue their
> > program of military conquest, if they repeated the mistakes of World
> > War I and undermined social solidarity by intensifying inequality.
> > In Kolko's words: "Forced to choose, the Nazis ... preferred to risk
> > depriving the war effort to possibly alienating the workers and seeing
> > them driven once again to political action in various forms, including
> > slowdowns and sabotage." So, in World War II, Hitler protected wages.
> > As a result, "Real weekly income in Germany grew dramatically from
> > 1932 to 1941, and even in 1944 it was only slightly less than it had
> > been at its peak 1941" (Kolko 1990, p. xvii).
>
> __________________________________________________________________________
> Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu