Blogs > Liberty and Power > American Conservatism is "Gone With the Wind"

Oct 19, 2008

American Conservatism is "Gone With the Wind"




Both parties now represent wings of Corporatism, much like Germany in the 1930s & 40s under Hitler.

The Republicans represent on the whole Big Business, with a few like Rubin in the other party but also well financed by Wall St. These are increasingly like the German Big Business conservatives of that era backing Adolf.

In the other wing of the Nazis, Adolf's true friends, the Socialist radicals backing all sorts of things from health fads to their idea of Eugenics to homosexuality, etc., much like the Demo Left today, a total welfare program, even for the German hausfraus! And, the universities, as Fulbright understood, are very much a part of that Corporate mix.

I think a good term to describe what has occurred here might be"Feudal Corporatism," using the term"feudal" as James Madison did in referring to a system of"feudal" Republics.

All the studies show that Germany was not"Totalitarian" in the organizational sense of the Soviets, but with various"fiefdoms" operating almost independently of each other. If you found a copy of Brady's book (1943) you can see this clearly as did C. Wright Mills. This is also clear in the case of Shindler, for example, being able to save some Jews in the midst of this mess, and is even evident in the film about him.

In one sense, the Allies were much more Total. In 1941-2, when Hitler was keeping the German housewives at home, with their maids to"preserve" the family, and changing some War Production over to more appliances, etc., for her,"Rosie the Riveter" in both the US and GB was causing war production to soar! More Spitfires were produced by far than German fighters, and here FDR talked about 50,000 planes for the War, and Rosie gave him that many a year. Ironically, Soviet tank production also Kicked the"S**t" out off the Krauts as well! It had all been organized in 1935 by the assembly line engineers of Ford Motor Co. from a place called Detroit, now part of the American"Rust Belt," struggling to survive.

American Conservatism, to the extent it existed, is"Gone With the Wind!" Whatever one says about Marx, certainly some later thinkers of that School, along with some early Americans over a century ago, saw this rise of Finance Capitalism, as opposed to earlier Industrial or Entrepreneurial varieties. Carroll Quigley in 1961 correctly called it"Financial Capitalism," in The Evolution of Civilizations.

CQ understood already morally bankrupted Empires then proceed to economically bankrupt themselves in seeking to fulfill both their Warfare and Welfare dimensions. The Total State! These take a long time to actually"fall," but the"decline" can go on for a long time, unless a new"instruments of expansion" can be discovered and then decentrally put into use without the bureaucracy comprehending what has occurred.

For"saving remnants" to"withdraw," using today's advanced, decentralized technologies to live a moral life is the only way to deal with this within one's lifetime. The most amazing aspect of developing these ideas from building, to energy, to food production, to waste use, etc., is the way in which you begin to better understand even a little bit about Nature, which, as all great philosophers and scientists (actually much the same) saw reflected in Natural Law.



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Mark Brady - 10/23/2008

Robert Alexander Brady (1901-1963), a professor of economics at Berkeley, wrote several books, of which at least three are in some way germane to this topic.

The Rationalization Movement in German Industry: A Study in the Evolution of Economic Planning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1933; reprint, New York, H. Fertig, 1974).

The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (New York: The Viking Press, 1937; reprint, with a foreword by Harold J. Laski, New York: H. Fertig, 1969).

Business as a System of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943; reprint, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1972; reprint, with a new introduction by Douglas Dowd, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001).

Read the Wikipedia entry on Brady here and Douglas Dowd’s appreciation here.


Tim Sydney - 10/23/2008

I couldn't see the title of the Brady book within the post.