Capitalism, Democracy, Fascism, and War
"About the things one cannot speak about, one ought to remain silent," declared the famous philosopher Wittgenstein, and a colleague, Max Horkheimer, paraphrased him with regard to the phenomenon of fascism and its German variety, Nazism, by emphasizing that if one wants to talk about fascism, one cannot remain silent about capitalism.
Hitler's Third Reich was a monstrous system made possible by Germany's top business leaders, and while it proved a catastophe for millions of people, it functioned as a Nirvana for corporate Germany. Foreign-owned enterprises were also allowed to enjoy the wonderful services
Hitler's regime rendered to das Kapital, such as the elimination of all workers' parties and labour unions, a rearmament program that brought them immense profits, and a war of conquest that eliminated foreign competition and provided new markets, cheap raw materials, and an unlimited supply of even cheaper labour from POWs, foreign slave labourers, and concentration camp inmates. The owners and managers of America's leading corporations admired Hitler because in his Third Reich they could make money like nowhere else, and because he stomped on German labour and swore to destroy the Soviet Union, homeland of international communism.
Edwin Black wrongly believes that IBM was atypical of American corporations in flourishing from capitalism's great fascist feast on the banks of the Rhine. Many, if not all of these corporations, took full advantage of the elimination of labour unions and left-wing parties and the orgy of orders and profits made possible by rearmament and war. They betrayed their country by producing all sorts of equipment for Hitler's war machine even after Pearl Harbor, and they objectively helped the Nazis to commit horrible crimes.
These technicalities, however, did not seem to perturb the owners and managers in Germany and even in the US, who were aware of what was going on overseas. All that mattered to them, clearly, was that unconditional collaboration with Hitler allowed them to make profits like never before; their motto might well have been: "profits über Alles." After the war, the capitalist masters and associates of the fascist monster distanced themselves à la Dr. Frankenstein from their creature, and loudly proclaimed their preference for democratic forms of government. Today, most of our political leaders and our media want us to believe that "free markets" — a euphemistic code word for capitalism — and democracy are Siamese twins. Even after World War II, however, capitalism, and especially American capitalism, continued to collaborate cozily with fascist regimes in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Chile, while supporting extreme-right movements, including death squads and terrorists, in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.
One might say that in the headquarters of the corporations, whose collective interest is clearly reflected in American government policies, nostalgia has lingered on for the good old days of Hitler's Third Reich, which was a paradise for German as well as American and other foreign firms: no left-wing parties, no unions, unlimited numbers of slave labourers, and an authoritarian state that provided the necessary discipline and arranged for an "armament boom" and eventually a war that brought "horizonless profits," as Black writes, alluding to the case of IBM.
These benefits could more readily be expected from a fascist dictatorship than from a genuine democracy, hence the support for the Francos, Suhartos, and other Pinochets of the post-war world. But even within democratic societies, capitalism actively seeks the cheap and meek labour that Hitler's regime served up on a silver platter, and recently it has been by means of stealthy instruments such as downsizing and globalization, rather than the medium of fascism, that American and international capital have sought to achieve the corporate Nirvana of which Hitler's Germany had provided a tantalizing foreta
http://www.globalreserch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=4607
"About the things one cannot speak about, one ought to remain silent," declared the famous philosopher Wittgenstein, and a colleague, Max Horkheimer, paraphrased him with regard to the phenomenon of fascism and its German variety, Nazism, by emphasizing that if one wants to talk about fascism, one cannot remain silent about capitalism.
Hitler's Third Reich was a monstrous system made possible by Germany's top business leaders, and while it proved a catastophe for millions of people, it functioned as a Nirvana for corporate Germany. Foreign-owned enterprises were also allowed to enjoy the wonderful services
Hitler's regime rendered to das Kapital, such as the elimination of all workers' parties and labour unions, a rearmament program that brought them immense profits, and a war of conquest that eliminated foreign competition and provided new markets, cheap raw materials, and an unlimited supply of even cheaper labour from POWs, foreign slave labourers, and concentration camp inmates. The owners and managers of America's leading corporations admired Hitler because in his Third Reich they could make money like nowhere else, and because he stomped on German labour and swore to destroy the Soviet Union, homeland of international communism.
Edwin Black wrongly believes that IBM was atypical of American corporations in flourishing from capitalism's great fascist feast on the banks of the Rhine. Many, if not all of these corporations, took full advantage of the elimination of labour unions and left-wing parties and the orgy of orders and profits made possible by rearmament and war. They betrayed their country by producing all sorts of equipment for Hitler's war machine even after Pearl Harbor, and they objectively helped the Nazis to commit horrible crimes.
These technicalities, however, did not seem to perturb the owners and managers in Germany and even in the US, who were aware of what was going on overseas. All that mattered to them, clearly, was that unconditional collaboration with Hitler allowed them to make profits like never before; their motto might well have been: "profits über Alles." After the war, the capitalist masters and associates of the fascist monster distanced themselves à la Dr. Frankenstein from their creature, and loudly proclaimed their preference for democratic forms of government. Today, most of our political leaders and our media want us to believe that "free markets" — a euphemistic code word for capitalism — and democracy are Siamese twins. Even after World War II, however, capitalism, and especially American capitalism, continued to collaborate cozily with fascist regimes in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Chile, while supporting extreme-right movements, including death squads and terrorists, in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.
One might say that in the headquarters of the corporations, whose collective interest is clearly reflected in American government policies, nostalgia has lingered on for the good old days of Hitler's Third Reich, which was a paradise for German as well as American and other foreign firms: no left-wing parties, no unions, unlimited numbers of slave labourers, and an authoritarian state that provided the necessary discipline and arranged for an "armament boom" and eventually a war that brought "horizonless profits," as Black writes, alluding to the case of IBM.
These benefits could more readily be expected from a fascist dictatorship than from a genuine democracy, hence the support for the Francos, Suhartos, and other Pinochets of the post-war world. But even within democratic societies, capitalism actively seeks the cheap and meek labour that Hitler's regime served up on a silver platter, and recently it has been by means of stealthy instruments such as downsizing and globalization, rather than the medium of fascism, that American and international capital have sought to achieve the corporate Nirvana of which Hitler's Germany had provided a tantalizing foreta
http://www.globalreserch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=4607
