I mean, you joke. But Germany pivoted out of the Great Depression far faster than its European peers precisely because they weren’t afraid to print a bunch of money and pay people to do things.
The Fascists inherited one of the only recovering economies in Europe by the time they took power in 1932. And when they assumed office, they brought investment from the Americans overseas (who were having their own fascist turn), because they were willing to purge or enslave local populations, tear down neighborhoods, and build up whatever capital Standard Oil, IBM, and Ford Motor Company asked of them.
On the opposite side of the Atlantic and on the other side of the Urals, progressive liberals and Soviet communists were trying out a leftist mirror of this strategy. They were using the levers of the state to mobilize the masses of unemployed labor into productive capital improvements for the benefit of the public at-large. So the US, Germany, Japan, and the USSR all rapidly emerged out of the '29 crash into a booming 1930s economy. Meanwhile, England and France and much of Latin America and North Africa languished under artificial constraints of state-capitalism.
I mean, we’ll jump to 1930s on reflex. But this is a pattern that’s repeated itself internationally, from Apartheid South Africa to the juntas in the Pacific Rim to Fascists in Argentina and Chile.
Economy shits itself. Social Democrats come in to deliver milquetoast reforms. The economy recovers somewhat, but never enough to actually relieve the social pressures of the moment. And then the democratic system starts vomiting up radical candidates of all stripes, while bourgeois capital attempts to ride the tiger into the next full recovery and/or national emergency.
The wheel of fortune doesn’t always land on Fascism. But it’s definitely a possibility.
It seems like we’re plunging into fascism, but maybe this upcoming midterms will (not be rigged and) prove to be an effective backlash to the US’ reactionary coup. What do you figure the odds are we pull out of this and say, “huh actually let’s try that FDR thing instead of this Nazi shit”?
I mean, you joke. But Germany pivoted out of the Great Depression far faster than its European peers precisely because they weren’t afraid to print a bunch of money and pay people to do things.
The Fascists inherited one of the only recovering economies in Europe by the time they took power in 1932. And when they assumed office, they brought investment from the Americans overseas (who were having their own fascist turn), because they were willing to purge or enslave local populations, tear down neighborhoods, and build up whatever capital Standard Oil, IBM, and Ford Motor Company asked of them.
On the opposite side of the Atlantic and on the other side of the Urals, progressive liberals and Soviet communists were trying out a leftist mirror of this strategy. They were using the levers of the state to mobilize the masses of unemployed labor into productive capital improvements for the benefit of the public at-large. So the US, Germany, Japan, and the USSR all rapidly emerged out of the '29 crash into a booming 1930s economy. Meanwhile, England and France and much of Latin America and North Africa languished under artificial constraints of state-capitalism.
Why does that feel forebodingly familiar
I mean, we’ll jump to 1930s on reflex. But this is a pattern that’s repeated itself internationally, from Apartheid South Africa to the juntas in the Pacific Rim to Fascists in Argentina and Chile.
Economy shits itself. Social Democrats come in to deliver milquetoast reforms. The economy recovers somewhat, but never enough to actually relieve the social pressures of the moment. And then the democratic system starts vomiting up radical candidates of all stripes, while bourgeois capital attempts to ride the tiger into the next full recovery and/or national emergency.
The wheel of fortune doesn’t always land on Fascism. But it’s definitely a possibility.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
It seems like we’re plunging into fascism, but maybe this upcoming midterms will (not be rigged and) prove to be an effective backlash to the US’ reactionary coup. What do you figure the odds are we pull out of this and say, “huh actually let’s try that FDR thing instead of this Nazi shit”?