[Gee Asked:]
: Is it not possible that trying to marry up the free market to Nazism is a similar excercise?
[Lark countered:]
Possibly but if you consider the might of capital in the free market is it not possible that private indiviuals could employ brown shirts for strike breaking and 'property protection'.
*Just a quick observation regarding 'free' markets and competition. The trouble with 'free' (I am using the word conditionally since I personally cannot see the great word 'freedom' being applied to political-economic paradigms) markets as I see them is that ultimately, someone 'wins' the competition to dominate key industries.
Then, as Lark points out, what do you do when the workers start to win the battle of democracy - in the streets, the fields, the shop floors and the ballot box? Well, you hire out the Mussolini's and Hitlers... or in the case of Japan and Chile, big business, big landowners, and other sections of the bourgeoisie form a coalition with the military. That's the nexus between capitalism as an economic system and fascism as a political expression.
Now you could argue that at this point, it's no longer 'capitalism,' at least, as you've come to view it. However, isn't what I've just described what pure, unadulterated Laissez-Faire must inevitably lead to? Are not such 'socialistic' measures as anti-trust legislation and income re-distribution required in order to keep capitalism from developing along these lines of least resistance? A good example IMO of the form of the new society maturing within the womb of the old.* --K
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