The Destruction of Capitalism in Germany

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ON March 31, 1937, the Associated Press reported from Berlin that the German Government is preparing to give the German people "a new conception of property rights differing radically from the ideas of orthodox capitalism. In the new civil laws, now in process of codification, there will be no need and no room for abstract rights of property." Just what this will mean in practice remains to be seen. But in no case will it constitute a revolutionary change from what has been developing gradually through the years since 1933. To all intents and purposes Germany has long since ceased to be a capitalist country. "The capitalist system has been replaced by the National Socialist system which is borne along by an entirely different spirit and obeys entirely different intrinsic laws from those which control the capitalist economy." ^[i]

For years Fascist propaganda has offered Fascism as a safeguard and panacea against Communism; and Communism has exposed Fascism as its arch foe and antithesis. In fact, the world has never seen two supposedly hostile economic and social systems more alike in essentials, both of practice and ideology, than National Socialism and Communism. (The difference between the German and Italian brands of Fascism is a difference of degree, not of kind. The similarity between them is growing daily, owing in particular to their common aim of autarchy. In accomplishing that aim, Germany, the far stronger industrial Power, of course, takes the lead and Italy imitates; while Italy, being the older Fascist Power, sets the model for Germany in the administrative technique of dictatorship. But this is beyond the scope of this article.) To draw inferences from German developments regarding Russian developments, and vice versa, one must take into consideration the fact that the National Socialist régime has been in power for four years, the Soviets for almost twenty. It is of no avail, therefore, to compare institutions and policies developed in an advanced phase of a régime with institutions and policies created in the initial phase. The change in the social and economic fabric of the Soviets, say between the era of Lenin's New Economic Policy and the Second Five Year Plan now current, is certainly greater than the change from the Tsarist economy to the NEP...