By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--January 24, 2011
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A board to get Americans back to work and strengthen our economy will be chaired by Jeff Immelt, CEO and Chairman of General Electric...The Council will focus on finding new ways to promote growth by investing in American business....So, the current CEO of one of America's largest companies running a government jobs program raises no red flags? Ironically, GE has long flouted sanctions on Iran, Syria and others. But instead of punishment, GE is rewarded. Has no one really asked what kind of quid pro quo, or reward, GE gets for its aid to Obama? The American Spectator reports GE already benefited from Obamanomics:
Obama had signed the stimulus bill, which included $24.9 million in grants that would flow directly to GE, with roughly $20 billion more slated for health care record modernization of the kind that GE specializes in -- "with a direct request to do so from GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt."So Obama and GE already had some kind of agreement. And seeing what rewards are at stake, consider how this will encourage other captains of industry to publicly support Obama. Such a scenario harkens back to Nazi Germany, where companies either accepted Hitler or had no future.
A form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual's life to the authority of the government.Under fascism, men have no rights and government no restrictions. Contra, a state based upon constitutionalism, a republican theory, and democratic practice, highlighting a natural rights theory, like America, is polar opposite. Conservatism, or historical Classical Liberalism, uses government to increase, not diminish, human freedom. Fascism is not synonymous with socialism or communism, but similarities form a long list:
According to Kevin Passmore's Fascism, A Very Short Introduction, these similar traits are discernible in Fascism:
The German economic system was run by the central government. It preserved the illusion of private property, but it was a socialist system. The government controlled the means of production. The government issued fiat money, and it established price and wage controls. It set up a system of 1,600 cartels in 1933-36. Beginning in 1934, government officials set the prices of commodities, and this resulted in shortages of most domestic commodities. The government also expanded the power of the government over the affairs of everybody in the society.
The primacy of politics in the Third Reich was indeed a unique phenomenon in the annals of bourgeois society since the Industrial Revolution, but was an unassailable fact per se.Tooze also weighs in on this point:
The evidence cannot be dodged. Nothing suggests that the leaders of German big business were filled with ideological ardor for National Socialism.Second, the businesses that survived Nazi takeover and thrived were those supporting Hitler's rise. Barkai quotes David's Schoenbaum's observation:
The status of business in the Third Reich was at best the product of a social contract between unequal partners , in which submission was the condition for success...Business recovered, in effect, as an accomplice of the Third Reich and by the grace of it. But the initiative was the State's and economic recovery a means, not an end.The net effect was business leaders became silent partners. Writes Barkai,
In substance, this means that the captains of industry in the Third Reich occupied the position of "sleeping partners," enjoying generous profits but having no say on the "management of the firm." All groups in large-scale industry accumulated vast profits; they benefited from economic recovery and shared in the gains of plunder without compunction--beginning with Jewish property confiscated during the process of Aryanization and going onto the spoils of war . However, the business community had no real say with regard to far-reaching objectives of economic policy...Nazi policy set interest at a "just rate" by decree, according to Barkai. This policy allowed a legal attack against the Jews, launching pogroms against their businesses. This well represents Nazi racial theory pursued even to their own harm.
During the interim period, the National Socialist state will use its right to create money wisely in order to finance large public works and the construction of housing, in the spirit of my well-known proposals (a bank for construction and economic activities, etc).Hitler was not anti-capitalist. He merely believed his state should control personal property, saying:
What matters is to emphasize the fundamental idea in my party's economic program clearly--the idea of authority. I want the authority. I want everyone to keep the property he has acquired himself according to the principle: benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz). But the state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interest of others among his people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property.It would be impossible to find a better expression of fascist property theory, as distinct from socialism and communism in name, if not always in effect.
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.