[lbo-talk] The Moral Case for Health Care

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Wed Jul 29 20:55:42 PDT 2009


Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jul 29, 2009, at 5:45 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> This is exactly backwards. What made the Holocaust possible was the
>> rational, bureaucratic calculation. If the Nazis had been
>> "overwhelmed" by passion and emotion, they wouldn't have been able to
>> effectively plan the deaths of millions of people.
>
>
> So where did they get the desire to kill millions? Was that rational
> too? Ever read Mein Kampf? It bubbles over with hate.
>
> Doug

Sure. But if all Hitler had was his personal hate, he could not have killed millions of people. That required a vast, rationally organized bureaucratic system. Without that system, the Holocaust could not have occurred. I've used this example before, but it's worth repeating: a greedy person in a hunting and gathering society cannot institute a capitalist economic system, no matter how much he wants to, because the important social constituents of capitalism do not exist in that type of society (e.g., production of a significant economic surplus). Capitalism is not simply a product of individual psychological characteristics; it is a precipitate of social relations and conducive social structures.

And just so with the Holocaust: any explanation that hinges on the psychological characteristics of people is a nonstarter, because the Holocaust was the product of a complex ensemble of social relations. Without conducive social structure and technology (e.g., bureaucratic organization, mass transportation, recordkeeping), the Holocaust would have been impossible, Hitler's vicious hatred notwithstanding.

Miles



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