On Nov 4, 2008, at 12:22 PM, shag wrote:
> oh! that's normal. socialist already == fascist. that is why any
> conservative mushroom worth his salt will trot out the name of the
> nazi
> party as proof positive that a supposed distinction between the two
> is a
> fiction.
Yup. Both are authoritarian and statist. If more of them knew about Keynes's foreword to the German edition of The General Theory, in which he says the following, they might do something with it.
<http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/foregt.html>
The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez- faire. This is one of the reasons that justifies the fact that I call my theory a general theory. Since it is based on fewer hypotheses than the orthodox theory, it can accommodate itself all the easier to a wider field of varying conditions. Although I have, after all, worked it out with a view to the conditions prevailing in the Anglo-Saxon countries where a large degree of laissez-faire still prevails, nevertheless it remains applicable to situations in which state management is more pronounced. For the theory of psychological laws which bring consumption and saving into relationship with each other, the influence of loan expenditures on prices, and real wages, the role played by the rate of interest—all these basic ideas also remain under such conditions necessary parts of our plan of thought.