Today's JG rant: Hitler was not a capitalist

Galen Yordy’s letter “Beware the concentration of political/economic control” of Feb 21, 2020 is more proof that the public school system cannot be trusted to impart even the most rudimentary facts.  Yordy inexplicably believes that Adolph Hitler was a capitalist.

The only thing dumber than Yordy making that absurd assertion is the JG printing it. 

Here’s all you really need to know: The Nazi Party’s official name in Germany was the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party.

Now if you are of the Romeo Montague school of thinking and are forever asking “what’s in name”, like DPRK or the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea, consider that “private ownership” of the means of production in Germany under Hitler was in name only.  

In 1936, to control inflation, the Nazis introduced price and wage controls.  That move led to shortages of nearly all commodities.  To offset that blunder, the Nazi state  later took it upon itself to control what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed. “Private ownership” of the means of production, i.e. capitalism, under Hitler with these onerous government imposed restrictions is a pure leftist myth. 

History and economics are hard.  By comparison, airbrushing pastel rainbows and unicorns over ugly inconvenient facts for leftists is a relatively easy task made easier by a supine MSM.

Friday, February 21, 2020 1:00 am

Letters

Beware the concentration of political/economic control

As we fulminate about the terrors of socialism, we would do well to bear in mind the distinction between economic and political systems.

Throughout humankind's history, it has relied on variations of three fundamental types of economic systems. At one extreme we have pure communism, with complete management of economics by the government, and at the other extreme we have unregulated capitalism, with no government involvement. Somewhere in between lies socialism, with varying degrees of governmental regulation of economic matters. By contrast, humankind has relied upon two basic governmental systems: authoritarianism and democracy.

One may combine these economic and political approaches any way one chooses, but one system does not necessarily imply the other. It makes no more sense to condemn communism because it was practiced by the brutal Josef Stalin than it does to condemn capitalism because it was practiced under the equally brutal Adolf Hitler.

Until, perhaps, the early 20th century, the United States practiced a largely democratic unregulated capitalistic political/economic approach. During that period, because of the cruel inequities of unregulated capitalism, the government instituted a number of necessary regulations, at which time we began the transition to our current democratic regulated capitalistic political/economic system, which is, essentially, democratic socialism.

One can be sure that if the dictator-loving, stable genius in the White House were to have his way, he would institute a Stalin-like authoritarian/communist system in this country, with total Trump control of both the political and the economic spheres. And that, my friends, is a truly terrifying prospect.

Galen A. Yordy