Weimar Revisited: Corporate Fascism In German Europe- They Deny Fascism Had Anything To Do With Them….

Weimar Revisited: Corporate Fascism in German Europe

by Rodney Atkinson

I am going to talk about the Weimar Republic in Germany, 1918 to 1933. How it set the tone for European fascism and corporatism in the 1930s and 40s and how we have seen exact parallels in post-war Europe, which is precisely why today we have lost so much of the constitution and democracy of a free nation which we fought that war to preserve.

It is important to define what fascism is. It is customary for both socialist and capitalist political parties to deny that fascism had anything to do with them. Socialists are the most vehement in their denials since they have traditionally used the term as an insult for their opponents.

During the Nuremberg trials American Corporatist Capitalists were anxious to distance themselves from their undeniable support in the 1930s of fascism, through their support of German Corporations like the Dresdener Bank, the electricity giant AEG and IG Farben. While Socialists tried to deny the blatant appeal of National Socialism for the German working class, Corporatist capitalists ignored the undeniable strong connection between German industry on the one hand and the Nazi state on the other.

But the seeds of fascism were sewn in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic, when ‘centre’ parties, so-called, of the Christian right, the Liberal Party and the initially radical Social Democratic Party repeatedly abandoned their individual voters in the pursuit of the collectivist interests of the State, the Party, the Unions or Big Business.

Moderate parties established the kind of corporatist institutions that inevitably lead to Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, and provided them with the political and economic structures, and often the legal precedents (like Rule by Decree), to run their dictatorships.

It was during the first world war that many of the causes of the future resentments among Germans arose. The post-war revolutionary movement in Germany swept away the monarchy, denigrated the nation and seemed to put the working class in control of the middle classes which had lost so much during the war in any case. State war contracts and the urgent need after the war to earn foreign exchange to pay reparations benefited the large corporations and capital concentrations in the state approved cartels, which further alienated the middle classes.

The socialist state was followed therefore, by the corporatist state. As if this were not bad enough, there followed the great inflation of the 1920s. It further benefited the twin pillars of a corporatist society, The State as the biggest debtor of all, (and if you are a big debtor inflation benefits you most) and the large Corporations, whose quotation on the inflation boosted stock exchange and their borrowing power allowed them to profit substantially benefit from high inflation. In addition major Corporations and the Banks held large amounts of foreign exchange, the domestic buying power of which appreciated considerably as the Reichsmark collapsed.

In the face of this manifest injustice, the Government, far from acting to protect the domestic buying power of impoverished individuals and families, actually legislated to protect those who were exploiting them. As one author points out;
‘A couple who owned a large house before the war and received an income by letting the rooms would find that in 1923 the cost of replacing a broken pane of glass was more than all the rent they had ever received from their tenants.’

There could not be a clearer case of state supported corporate power over the individual. One price that did not rise in anywhere near the proportions of inflation between 1921 and 1923, was the price charged by the Banks for their money. The Banks had other ways of profiting. Vast profits were therefore to be made by borrowing Reichsmarks one week and repaying at a much depreciated rate the next week. It did not matter about the interest rate because the difference between capital values was enormous. The Banks were of course, just borrowers, and they lent to the large Corporations who had overseas earnings, ever appreciating physical assets and, therefore, security.

In addition the Banks took shares in the companies to which they were lending, a practise still prevalent in German banking today, and which is really the definition of a corporatist society. But this in the inflationary 1920s was another source of profit. As the banks benefited from the effect of inflation the savings of the middle class were decimated. The increasing concentration of business activity in corporations, (the state actually enforcing cartel agreements by law, to the detriment of the smaller traders and manufacturers), caused more resentment and further enhanced the power of the corporatist state.

The official cartels in steel, coal, cement, plate glass and chemicals were then increasingly matched by small producer co-operatives and even buyer-co-operatives (See ‘Letsbuyit.com’ for a modern equivalent of buyer co-operatives). In Germany in 1925, combines controlled 93% of mining, 95% of steel and 87% of electricity. 70% of all German companies was in the hands of a mere 2,000 firms.

Once the collectivist corporatist process is established, as it was then, those excluded by such political power in commercial markets have no choice, they must either succumb or adopt similar corporatist structures themselves.

We see the same process in the world at large since the European Union started it’s collectivist controls of agriculture, fishing and latterly of industrial trade. The rest of the world finds it necessary to establish competing collectivist systems and therefore forms the economic blocks that then lead to dangerous international friction. Trading blocks, whether within countries in the form of corporate cartels and state monopolies, or internationally in the form of trading communities, always start with the claim that ‘they are freeing economic activity’. But even if they reduce protectionism between the limited number of companies or countries within their agreement, like the European Union or NAFTA, they are in fact thereby establishing worse relations with those outside those agreements.

This logic is best demonstrated in the term ‘Single European Market’, which for those who believe in open and free trade, is of course, a contradiction in terms. The Single European market is however the construction, not of Nationists, (people who believe in nations, democracies and free trade), but of corporatist politicians bent on creating a single state with a single government with a single civil service etc. etc.

Indeed it is the practice of Corporatism within countries which leads corporate capital, the socialist trade unions who bargain with them, and the corporatist state which subsidises them, to extend the corporatist state beyond the national level to the supranational level. The ultimate step is the extinction of the nations themselves and their parliaments, and the transfer of their power to a level so geographically, culturally and democratically remote that individual voters can no longer influence events. Corporations can go straight to the source of power – Government, the state’s bureaucrats and politicians, but the individual cannot, so he is bypassed and marginalised.

As profitable for the German Corporations which had benefited from the great inflation of the 1920s was the subsequent currency reform and revaluation. But now even those bourgeoisie interests like the small farmer, who had benefited from being able to raise debt against the security of his land as inflation drove up prices, were decimated by the reverse process. Their debts, in the absence of inflation but taken on at a time of inflation, became a real burden. Just as they are, of course, today, for British farmers and British householders who find themselves in a similar position, contending with excessively high mortgages taken out in times of high inflation.

In theory, of course, small savers should have benefited from the currency reform, as their loans to others would have been repaid in real money. They lent to the banks and to others – and that money should have come back equally indexed. But in yet another proof of the power of corporatism in 1920s Germany, the elementary justice of their deposits being treated in the same way as their debts was denied them. It was opposed by the large corporations and the government. The Government actually restricted the revaluation of debts to individuals, to only 15% of the original gold mark value.

Indeed the Government postponed indefinitely the revaluation of it’s own debts to the public. So it was one law for the privileged few and another law for the many. This is corporatism in tooth and claw.

The conflict for the German middle classes and the independent non-collectivist members of all classes in the 1920s was the same as their equivalents in Britain today. They had Hobson’s choice between several corporatist parties that represented the mainstream, and two major fringe parties, the Communists and the Nazis. Both fringe parties gained membership rapidly as soon as the crisis deepened and the so-called ‘moderate parties’ showed every sign of supporting the status quo.

Pearl S Buck summed up the choice neatly. He gave the example of a family visited by two groups of friends; The Holtzmanns came to visit us, ‘What Germany needs’, said Father to Mr Holtzmann, ‘is a sound and healthy middle class and what the middle class needs is a strong middle class party.’ Mr Holtzmann, a member of the Social Democrat Party said ‘It would be wiser for you to side with the workers against the monopolies.’ Father replied ‘Good, if only the workers would side with us instead of striking against us.’ The von Bulow’s also come to visit, and Father repeated ‘What Germany needs is a sound and healthy middle class and what the middle class needs is a strong middle class party.’ To this Herr von Bulow, a member of the German National Party replied: ‘We have already more than enough parties as it is (you have heard that one recently haven’t you?) Why don’t you side with us, we shall see that law and order are restored in Court.’ Father said ‘But who guarantees to us that you won’t swallow us up after we have checked the workers?’

How easily could that father have the same conversation today with a member of the Labour Party, representing the corporatism of state and union power, of high taxes and inflation or a member of the Conservative Party, representing the corporatism of state and private monopolies, high taxes and high inflation, subsidised as it is by City Institutions and the Confederation of British Industry, with it’s contempt for the nation that once defined the very essence of Conservatism.

Or perhaps the father could have confronted a member of the Liberal Democrat Party with it’s own middle class collectivism, disdain for the nation state and a prime mover in the construction of the New Europe and the destruction of our nation and the sovereignty of our Parliament.

Of equal significance in both the periods that we are talking about, (the 1920s and 30s Germany, 1980s and 90s Europe) in both periods the role of Corporations which influence and are subsidized by the state is of major significance. In the United Kingdom the Conservative Party has lost the support of it’s individual members, (membership has fallen by more than 50% since 1990 and 80% since the 1950s), it has become Corporatized and has turned to it’s Corporate donors for funds.

As a result it is corporations which have been the most influential in forming Conservative Party policy for the last 20 years. This has been most graphically illustrated in the legislation on Sunday Trading, on Gambling Laws and on relations with the European Union. Policies, which would not have had the support of the Conservative Party, were passed by a Conservative Government relying on the help of Labour and Liberal Democrat votes.

Fascism is not just another alternative to the various political movements within a democratic system. It is an alternative to the entire democratic system itself. By taking the worst of both socialism and corporatist capitalism it constructs a powerful collective state, in which the individual has no role except as a devotee of an approved movement or corporate body.

The Party which benefited from the crisis within 1920s German Corporatism but which nevertheless took over it’s structures was the National Socialist German Workers Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party. The combination of socialism and corporatism naturally produced great tensions.

These tensions were evident in their public pronouncements. In response to a transport strike the Nazis in Saxony played the Corporatist card, they said: ‘Absolute opposition to any form of industrial sabotage.’ While the Nazis in Berlin played the Socialist card, they proclaimed: ‘Unconditional solidarity with the workers.’ Some Party organs criticised those who wished to abolish capitalism, ‘Abolition of the Capitalist system has for centuries been nothing more than a catch phrase. Nothing is more unjust than equality.’ Other Nazis attacked international corporatism saying: ‘The Frankfurter Algeminer (newspaper) central organ of the international finance hyenas.’

Now all those statements are from one party, the Nazi Party, trying to combine, just as a certain Prime Minister is today, left and right in the pursuit of nothing more idealistic than power itself. Here is the point about Hitler’s fascism by the way – he did not object to corporatism, only to international corporatism, and to the ‘Imperialist Anglo-Saxon Trading System’. He did not object to National Socialism, only to International Socialism and Marxism.

The extent to which the Conservative Party in Britain today is very much a corporatist Party can be seen in the kind of issue on which Conservative MPs take a stand. One MP, an unequivocal supporter of European Union legislation, which has destroyed the democratic and parliamentary rights of the British electorate, recently resigned. Not for any constitutional reason or to defend the individual rights of his constituents, but because he had lost a vote in parliament which had tried to allow local Newspaper Groups, in which industry he was previously employed, to bid for television franchises. That, to him, was the important issue on which to resign. Not the destruction of the parliament in which he sat.

In similar vein, after 10 years of supreme indifference to the health of British beef consumers, John Major suddenly took up arms against the European Union for banning British beef exports. The loss to business and to the exchequer due to lost beef markets was far more important to this corporatist Prime Minister, than either British consumers or the European Union’s power over the British Constitution – a power which Major himself had confirmed and extended.

It is precisely such corporatist policies that have destroyed the Conservative middle classes, and enhanced the wealth of the collective Socialists, whose state and unionised power need not be troubled by market forces. As a result the British Labour Party in 1990 is now wealthy enough to elect a quasi-Conservative leader. In 1920s Germany, the socialist in work, being relatively well off, stayed with the Social Democratic Party, which often took a conservative line, compared to the Nazi Party or the Communist party, 85% of whose members incidentally, in 1932 were unemployed. Both Communists and Nazis advocated more radical solutions needless to say.

Indeed the confrontations between the Nazi and Communist Parties on the streets in Germany disguised a closer political connection than one might suppose. You have probably seen similar confrontations in Berlin on TV recently, between Communists and neo-nazis. They often supported strikes that other parties opposed, they supported certain expropriation policies and when 54% of the Communist party’s membership left in 1932, a very large number went straight to the Nazi Party. It’s therefore not surprising, despite the denials of many Socialist revisionists, that the Nazi Party fully warranted it’s name which included the words ‘socialist’ and ‘workers’.

Hitler had himself joined the German Workers Party in 1919 and added the words ‘German’ and ‘National’ in an attempt to win over many working class nationalists. But just as the modern Labour Party revised it’s socialism, so did Hitler. In 1927 he clarified Article 17 of the party programme on nationalisation. Just as the Labour Party abolished it’s Clause 4 on expropriation, Hitler explained that the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation did not mean that the NASDAP did not accept the principle of private property, but only property illegally acquired or companies not ‘run to the benefit of the community’ would be affected. How reminiscent of Mr. Blair’s approach to privatised monopolies. Far from renationalising these monopolies, or even introducing competition, the Labour Party levies a ‘windfall profits tax’ on the monopolies, thus joining in the exploitation of consumers.

There is another crucial comparison between 1990s British socialism and 1920s German fascism. The power of a managerial elite with loyalty only to the Leader. One author describes the Nazi Party thus: ‘A leadership core emerged whose bureaucratic ability and absolute loyalty to Hitler meant that they were content with a managerial role within a rigid hierarchy and were less prone to challenge the leadership on fundamental issues of Party policy.’

The following Nazi leaflet could easily have been produced by the modern Labour Party, it read: ‘Man should not be valued according to his money, rather according to his accomplishments for the community. The common good before individual greed – that is socialism. Out with the swindle Marxism, away with bourgeois selfishness!’

The final links in the Nazi chain of interest groups were the alienated small businesses, retailers and small farmers. Much as in early 1990s Britain, the turnover of small shops in Germany between 1928 and 1932 fell by one third. 40,000 small businesses collapsed in 1930 alone.

As in Britain under John Major, where unemployment benefit was cut from 12 months to 6 months, thus leaving anyone with any savings, (i.e. the middle classes who therefore do not qualify for social security), no means of support until, of course, they have nothing at all. So in the 1930s Germany’s unemployment benefit was cut from 6 months to 6 weeks once again hitting the middle classes.

Today this corporatist conspiracy of the so-called centre parties has alienated the same groups as in 1920s Germany, and the increasing support for neo-fascist parties in Italy, Germany and France is accompanied by the thuggery of the extreme left. The marches of the former running the gauntlet of the latter are as regular a feature of the 1990s as they were of the 1920s. Indeed in Germany attacks on foreigners, the rise of Nazism in the armed forces, the burning of immigrant’s homes and the utter contempt for what the Press laughingly call the ‘moderate’ parties, (led by such examples of moral rectitude as Helmut Kohl), is a prelude to the resurgence of dictatorial politics and social violence on a grand scale, made undoubtedly easier by the freedom of movement of so called ‘European citizens’.

As a further example of how ‘liberal’ political parties can put in place the dangerous constitutional structures which will subsequently be used by their enemies, we can compare the Conservative Government’s signing of various European Union Treaties under Crown Prerogative with Germany’s President Heinrich Bruning of the centre Christian Party, who in 1930 was able to rule by Presidential Decree. Both processes, Bruning in the 1930s and our signing of the European Treaties under Crown Prerogative allowed so-called democratic Governments to by-pass the Parliamentary process, and present their actions as a fait accompli.

In Germany the device was most useful to Hitler when he effectively destroyed the spirit of the Constitution. In Britain the situation is even worse as the Major Government at Maastricht effectively destroyed the spirit and the letter of the British Constitution. Yet another aspect of supreme weakness which helped the rise of Hitler in Germany was the system of proportional representation which caused the splintering of democratic parties. And indeed it almost did the same thing in the 1960s, and led to the resurgence of the neo-nazi parties when the Grand Coalition of left and right came together.

I have tried to show that fascism is not an exotic quirk of politics, associated only with fanatical dictators. Rather it is a set of ideas that the major democratic parties share in varying degrees, and indeed whose social and economic structures they themselves often unwittingly put in place.

The enormous strain that they thereby put on free economic systems, as well as on the individual then lead to the collapse of the Parliamentary state. Their successors (adopting the structures already put in place by so-called centre parties) then take the process on to the political and military stages of fascism, or as in the modern European Union, supra-national collective structures became so powerful that the conquests of war are achieved through the peaceful signing of Treaties and the imposition of Directives and Regulations. It’s no coincidence that the parallels between 1920s and 1930s Germany and 1980s and 1990s Britain are so strong, for they share the same ideas, the same philosophy, the same social and economic principles, often the same individuals and corporations and the same kind of politicians have dominated both periods.

We also see the process in the ex-Soviet Union, where Corporatism has been imposed on it from outside. That process led in the 1930s to social resentment, political upheaval and the search for scapegoats, as we know. The same is happening in Russia today, all aided by the grotesque war in the Balkans instigated by the German Secret Service, aided by the CIA and fought against the Serbs, our former allies against European fascism.

The Slavs, condemned in the past by the Germans as ‘sub-humans’, recall what the British and American political classes have evidently forgotten, that German Europe and Continental Fascism have always pursued their Imperial ambitions at the expense of eastern Europe. Also at the expense of the Slavs and at the expense of orthodox Christianity. But this extraordinary attack by the United States and the United Kingdom on our former ally merely adds to anger within the former Soviet Union at the depredations and corruption of the corporatism introduced to them by the European Union and the USA in the name of ‘capitalism’.

One of the symptoms of the backlash, interestingly enough, as in Weimar Germany, is today’s attack on Jews in Russia. Nearly 8,000 Jews left Russia for Israel in the first three months of 1999, double the number in the same period in 1998. Pinchers Goldschmidt, Moscow’s Chief Rabbi, told a Sunday Telegraph reporter: ‘People have been attacked in the street for wearing yarmulkes (skull-caps) and there have also been bombings, there are cat-calls, graffiti and anti-Semitic leaflets.’ Another Jewish commentator said ‘If you see young men with swastikas, that’s enough to make you start thinking about emigration.’ Two bombs have gone off outside Synagogues and other Synagogues have been vandalised. A Communist MP blamed Jews for Russia’s collapse. High profile Jews are disclaimed as a part of a conspiracy of evil robber barons – an exact replica of the Nazi attacks on Jewish financiers and businessmen in the 1930s. ‘Anti-Semitism is as strong among Russian Communists as among Neo-Nazis’, Rabbi Goldschmidt say’s, ‘This is political anti-Semitism on the part of the Communist Party’. The biggest culprit is Gennadiy Gerasimov, the leader of the Communist Party.

This is also a re-run of 1930s Germany, when, alienated by the anti-democratic corporatist centre parties, ordinary Germans, their jobs wrecked by inflation and then again by the following deflation, turned, often on a weekly basis, from the Communist Party to the Nazi Party and then back again, desperately searching for economic salvation and political representation.

Further comparison with that period is in Germany’s attitude to Eastern Europe, in the paper Der Drang Nach Osten which I delivered here some months ago to this audience. The paper is a translation of the German Parliamentary Motion of July 1998, and includes:
‘Democracy and the Rule of Law in middle and eastern Europe will be lastingly secured through the entry of our neighbours into the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. Step by step we are thus approaching the common goal of a lasting a just peace for the whole of Europe.’
Most of us thought that occurred in 1945 or at the very least in 1989, but not the German political class today.

They go on to say:
“The German Parliament, in accordance with the treaty agreements with the states of middle and eastern Europe and most recently with the ratification of the German-Polish and German-Czech ‘Neighbour treaties’ has emphasised that in the process of the acceptance of our eastern neighbours into the EU and NATO, basic European freedoms must of course be equally applied without condition to all citizens in the old and new member states, including the German refugees.”
In other words what is sold here as a way of being at the ‘heart of Europe’ and co-operating with our neighbours, is used in Eastern Europe for the re-imposition of German migration and the occupation of what they call German homelands. I need hardly say that this is another direct comparison with the 1930s.

Just to show that this does not just affect Germans and Russians, but everyone else including ourselves, the New European Union is busily as we heard this morning from Knud Pedersen, manipulating and bypassing democratic systems and creating oppressive anti-individual, anti-democratic structures. For instance a report written for the European Commission which showed that high unemployment coincided with high taxes and social regulations in industry was deliberately not published. So much for democratic openness.

An internal memo of the European Commission said ‘the Commission should not get carried away by the idea of transparency – it is necessary to learn to conceal aspects of information which give rise to bad interpretation.’

And of course our own Labour Government, in an internal Northern Ireland Office memorandum said ‘We have commissioned research without it being seen to be government inspired. It is important to ensure that not all results of opinion polls be in the public domain as some will be important to our cause and others will not.’

Not long ago before the European Summit in Amsterdam, 27 Danes were put under ‘preventative arrest’ in case they made trouble at a European Summit – by that they mean demonstrating outside it.

Small farmers in Britain are committing suicide at an alarming rate, some 400 over the last three years compared to a figure of 27 deaths from CJD. A document issued by Gwent Police called on all their employees, whether police or just general staff to act as spies on Farmers – the appeal was for any information on farmers meetings or congregations, demonstrations, any conversations overheard, suspected movement of farm vehicles and any information from unusual sources ie internet or CB radio. Here are ordinary British citizens being called upon to act as spies for the state against desperate but law abiding fellow citizens.

The European Union is trying to put its propaganda into sit-coms. Programmes mentioned in an EU directive were ‘Highlander’ in Britain, ‘Alle zusammen’ in Germany and others. The official who handles the new approach to the audio-visual, a man called Santiago Herrero Villa said ‘We are not insisting that the Commission or the European Union be mentioned.’ How good of him and how insidious not to know who is subliminally influencing your favourite sitcom. Difficult to think of a more fascist approach! The subsidy for putting EU friendly material into these programmes was 5% of production costs. This new Goebbels continued: ‘We are talking about product placement.’ (Corporatist language again), ‘or even ideas placement. Sitcoms are the best way to get the message across, because they are set against the background of a particular reality, we just have to broaden it into a European one’. The Commission, reported The Times, would insist on vetting scripts to ensure there are no inaccuracies.

That is your country today. Now hear what your leaders have said about it:
Delors: ‘The European Union would require a European Army to fight the resource wars of the 21st Century.’
The German General Naumann, also a NATO Commander: ‘German troops will be engaged for the maintenance of the free market and access without hindrance to the raw materials of the entire world.’
The German spokesman on the pressure of Serbia’s neighbours to join trade embargoes against Serbia during the Serb war: ‘As applicant members of the European Union they are required to join in our regulations.’

So that is the world into which Mr Heath, Major, Howe and Hurd have plunged us, with the grateful cheering of Labour and Liberal Parties in this country. It is an evil world, it has been covertly constructed, and we must shout throughout the world about what is happening to our country, our democracy and the other nations of western Europe which our American friends fought two wars to defend, because today nearly all we fought for has disappeared.

Europe has gone full circle.

http://www.ukconservatism.freeuk.com/archive23.html

Imagine the LBC Radio host today- when BNP Bashing- a black guy phoned in to say- he’d voted BNP- For all the reasons whites usually give- as much as the host tried to pioson his mind- the guy wasn’t having any of it——-He recognised that we already have Fascism in Westminster-and felt nothing to fear from his voting BNP.