Bush As Hitler? Dems Could Learn Lessons From Keynesian Hitler

[RUexperienced]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01102004.html

Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
January 10 / 11, 2004

...My problem with the Hitler-Bush pairing is not so much the comparison per se which is solidly in the respectable mainstream of political abuse, but in the strange hysteria of Democrats about Bush as a leader of such consummate evil, so vile that any Democrat would be preferable. Any Democrat? George Bush is by definition a warmonger, but Wesley Clark, one of the contenders for the Democratic nomination, actually issued an order that could have sparked Armageddon...

Hitler, genocidal monster that he was, was also the first practicing Keynesian leader. When he came to power in 1933 unemployment stood at 40 per cent. Economic recovery came without the stimulus of arms spending. Hitler wanted a larger population, so construction subsidies produced a housing boom. There were vast public works such as the autobahns. He paid little attention to the deficit or to the protests of the bankers about his policies. Interest rates were kept low and though wages were pegged, family income increased by reason of full employment. By 1936 unemployment had sunk to one per cent. German military spending remained low until 1939.

Not just Bush but Howard Dean and the Democrats could learn a few lessons in economic policy from that early, Keynesian Hitler, whose hostility to unions they also echo.) As for warmongering, American presidents and would-be presidents don't need lessons from anyone. As Hitler freely acknowledged in his campaign bio, Mein Kampf, the debt was the other way round.

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Methinks Cockburn has been smoking too much weed.

[unblock]

1. they think gassing the jews was hitler's only mistake

unbelievable. they're actually now trying to rehabilitate hitler's image!

[the populist]

2. Uh.

That Hitler spent like crazy and didn't worry about deficits is all the more reason to compare * to Hitler.

Wow, Hitler was a Keynesian. Tell us something we don't know, Cockburn.

[mlawson]

3. hitler's rise to power predated The General Theory

(Keynes' magnum opus) by about three years. I really doubt that he was influenced by it (after all HE knew more than Keynes!). Of course, it's possible that hitler's economists *might* have read it, but they weren't exactly free to do as they pleased, either.

[RUexperienced]

4. Here is some more info

from Bruce Bartlett:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/bb20040116.shtml

At first glance, I thought Cockburn was totally off base. But as I looked into it, I found that respected academics have long drawn analogies between the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, generally considered the most important economist of the 20th century, and the economic policies of Nazi Germany.

For example, an article in the April 1975 issue of the prestigious Journal of Political Economy points out that German economists in the early 1930s were well aware of Keynes' work and were developing theories along parallel lines. These involved the now familiar prescription for economic depressions of large budget deficits, public works programs and easy credit.

A July 1992 article in the journal Explorations in Economic History found that German fiscal policy stopped being restrictive and turned "Keynesian" as soon as Hitler took power. Government spending increased almost immediately, helping to pull Germany out of the depression while America and Britain still maintained restrictive fiscal policies.

Furthermore, it turns out that Keynes' greatest admirers have long maintained that Hitler's economic policies were indeed Keynesian. In a lecture to the American Economic Association's annual meeting in 1971, economist Joan Robinson, a close colleague of Keynes, said, "Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred."

In 1977, John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous Harvard economist, wrote in his book, "The Age of Uncertainty," that Hitler "was the true protagonist of the Keynesian ideas."

Keynes himself even explained that his theories were not incompatible with national socialism. In the forward to the German edition of his book, "The General Theory" (1936), Keynes wrote that "the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than ... under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."

[mlawson]

5. Fair enough, but I believe that the two men's motives

were about as far apart as one could get. hitler would have greatly expanded public investment, had there been no unemployment in Germany; wars (or planning for them) are good for that. Yes, hitler's economists were likely familiar with Keynes' early work, but I doubt that hitler was doing more than using it for his horrible purposes. Of course, it was necessary for him to 'appear' to have ended unemployment in Germany; otherwise, he would not have been popular enough to execute his greater plans, dictatorship or not.