https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/08/30/18879437.php
The resurgent Poor Peoples Campaign calls for a moral reorientation of the US, where exploitation, social warfare against the poor, and real warfare over resources and power are currently part of “business.”…
This market fundamentalism is destroying society.
Fascist legacy
Structures and mentalities from the Third Reich have outlived Hitler’s fascism — time for a real new beginning.
Demonstrations suppressed by police force in France, laws enacted that severely restrict freedom of expression and assembly in Spain, attempts to regulate free speech before elections in Germany (1). These are all signs that the economic and political system in which we live is faltering. It is becoming totalitarian. But fewer and fewer people are allowing themselves to be blinded by the colorful consumerism. They are beginning to protest loudly and massively against the conditions.
by Jairo Gómez García
[This article posted on 11/6/2019 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/faschistisches-erbe.]
The brief fear of capitalism
Exploitation, profit-making, and eternal economic growth, synonymous with an infinite increase in resource consumption, are the driving forces of capitalism. Nothing else matters. Human values such as compassion, solidarity, and freedom fall by the wayside. This realization is not new. It is all the more surprising that historical experiences have not led to a change of direction.
Under the impression of the Second World War, which was also the result of an excessive, almost global and crisis-ridden capitalist financial and economic system, politics in Germany took an anti-capitalist stance. One stroke of the clock after the zero hour, the parties declared their willingness to chain down the terrifying monster of “capitalism.”
The Ahlen Program of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), presented on February 3, 1947, is an exemplary expression of these efforts:
“The capitalist economic system has not served the state and social interests of the German people. After the terrible political, economic, and social collapse resulting from criminal power politics, only a fundamental reorganization can take place.
The content and goal of this social and economic reorganization can no longer be the capitalist pursuit of profit and power, but only the well-being of our people. Through a public economic order, the German people shall receive an economic and social constitution that corresponds to human rights and dignity, serves the intellectual and material development of our people, and secures internal and external peace.
(…) Strengthening the economic position and freedom of the individual; preventing the concentration of economic power in the hands of individuals, companies, private or public organizations, which could jeopardize economic or political freedom.”
As recently as 1959, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), now in decline and losing its significance, formulated the dangers posed by corporations and capital concentration in the Godesberg Program:
“(…) A key feature of the modern economy is the ever-increasing process of concentration. Large corporations not only have a decisive influence on the development of the economy and living standards, they also change the structure of the economy and society: those who have control over millions in assets and tens of thousands of employees in large economic organizations are not only engaged in economic activity, they also exercise power over people; the dependence of workers and employees goes far beyond the economic and material sphere.
Where large corporations dominate, there is no free competition. Those who do not have equal power do not have the same opportunities for development; they are more or less unfree. People have the weakest position in the economy as consumers. With their power further increased by cartels and associations, the leaders of big business gain an influence on the state and politics that is incompatible with democratic principles. They usurp state power. Economic power becomes political power.
This development is a challenge to all those for whom freedom and human dignity, justice, and social security are the foundations of human society. Curbing the power of big business is therefore a central task of a liberal economic policy. The state and society must not fall prey to powerful interest groups.”
What is the current situation? Seventy-two years after the Ahlener Program and 60 years after the Godesberg Program, none of the above concerns and fears can be found in “realpolitik,” especially in the CDU and SPD. Capitalism is flourishing, and the party bosses are delighted.
Rapid change of heart
The old resolutions were commendable, without a doubt. However, it quickly became clear where power lies in the capitalist system: with the economy and capital. The parties and, as a result, the administrative and civil service apparatus, ultimately the decisive components for the functioning of a state, implement what is good for capital. People and nature are secondary.
It took the CDU barely two years to get back on track with capital. In 1949, the party presented the so-called “Düsseldorf Principles,” its economic and social policy program for the first federal election, to the public (2). These clearly departed from the Ahlen Program. There was talk of a “social market economy” in combination with a planned “influence on the economy with the organic means of a comprehensive economic policy based on flexible adaptation to market observation.” Figuratively speaking, they wanted to be a little bit pregnant.
An impossible undertaking in capitalism.
A system in which the propertied classes live off the exploitation of those who, lacking property, must exploit themselves through wage labor, is not social. This does not change even if the adjective “social” is written on the label.
The example of I.G. Farben
The historical example of I.G. Farben (3) shows the ruthlessness that can unfold in capitalism when, for example, corporations are able to rid themselves of all moral and social responsibility. About four years before the New York stock market crash that triggered the global economic crisis in October 1929, eight German companies merged to form Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG. I.G. Farben rose to become the largest pharmaceutical and chemical company in the world.
It does not take much imagination to realize that this created a center of economic and thus political power. The situation was similar in other areas.
Companies in the coal and steel industries and large banks rose to become giants. Maximizing profits and profitability was the top priority then, as it is today. The rearmament of Germany under the Nazis offered a brilliant opportunity to do business and reap profits. There were no moral concerns, and critical voices remained the exception. The Nazi regime and business leaders worked well together.
Business with death
After the total military defeat of the Third Reich, the leaders of I.G. Farben found themselves in the dock. The board of directors and senior executives were brought before a US military tribunal in Nuremberg in 1947. Charges were brought against them for crimes against humanity, conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, and the torture and murder of enslaved prisoners of war, concentration camp inmates, and civilians from the occupied territories, among other things.
It was undisputed that I.G. Farben not only produced goods essential to the war effort, such as synthetic gasoline, but also supplied the SS with Zyklon B through the company Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung m.b.H.). The agent was used for mass murder in concentration camps. However, the “business leaders” themselves had never committed murder, but had merely made good business deals with death.
The successors to I.G. Farben
The trial ended in the summer of 1948 with ten acquittals and thirteen prison sentences. None of the convicted had to serve their sentences. All were released early and found new positions in business or politics. One example was Otto Ambros, who was in charge of planning the Buna camp—later renamed Auschwitz III Monowitz—whose construction was financed by I.G. Farben. The fact that thousands of people unfit for work were selected and murdered apparently did not bother Ambros or any of the other desk perpetrators involved.
What happened to the company? I.G. Farben’s assets had already been seized in September 1945. From 1947 onwards, the company was controlled by BIFCO (Bipartite IG Farben Control Office). In 1952, I.G. Farben was broken up into its original components. The so-called successors to I.G. Farben included Farbwerke Hoechst AG, BASF, and Bayer AG.
The DNA of evil
The Allies began denazification as early as the summer of 1945. National Socialism and its nefarious influences were to be removed from all areas of society, and every Nazi criminal was to be punished. A noble intention. The main war criminals were charged and tried at the Nuremberg Trials. The organizations of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the SS Schutzstaffel (SS), and the Secret State Police (Gestapo) were declared criminal associations.
But there was a spanner in the works. Members of the Gestapo, the security service of the Reichsführer SS, who were involved in purely administrative tasks, and lower-ranking officials of the NSDAP and the Waffen-SS were not included across the board.
The experiences of National Socialism, the DNA of evil, were everywhere. Politics, culture, media, justice, and the economy—everything was infected. And so was the administrative and civil service apparatus, without which no state can function.
In order to guide Germany through the initial post-war phase, rebuild the country, and implement a market-oriented basic order, the expertise of those who were considered followers or, as in the case of Otto Ambros, war criminals, was also needed. He managed the transition to the new democracy. Even Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is said to have sought advice from the planner of Auschwitz III-Monowitz (5).
Experts for the economy
At the end of the 1940s, when the Cold War between West and East began, the momentum in Germany to prosecute Nazi criminals slowly waned. The impression was merely that of a major denazification effort. The apparatus and the small cogs in the great machinery of horror that made it possible to put a misanthropic ideology into practice were to drive the new representative democracy and, above all, the economy. Expertise was needed.
According to economic historians Werner Abelshauser and Albrecht Ritschl, who commented on this topic in the documentary “Unser Wirtschaftswunder — Die wahre Geschichte” (Our Economic Miracle — The True Story) (6), the US used the know-how and spare capacity of the German arms industry to manufacture military equipment for the war in the Far East and to prevent communism from spreading to the West in the long term.
Contrary to what the images of destroyed German cities convey, the arms industry was not so badly affected by the Allied bombing. The Nazis had relocated factories and arms factories that were important for the war effort. Some of them were built underground or were located far to the east, beyond the reach of the Allied bomber squadrons. This gave the young Federal Republic an advantage in production over other European countries whose factories lay in ruins. And then there were experts like Heinrich Nordhoff.
Nordhoff became a member of the board of Adam Opel AG in 1942. In the same year, he took over the management of the Opel truck factory in Brandenburg. Forced laborers were also used in production there. At the end of the war, Nordhoff fled to the zone occupied by the Western Allies. In the course of denazification, he had to resign from his position as a member of the board of Adam Opel AG. Just three years later, in 1948, he was appointed general director of Volkswagenwerk GmbH with the support of the British military government.
Other engineers who had been part of Albert Speer’s circle, the Reich Minister for Armament and Munitions, also took up positions in industry and business in the Federal Republic.
Ex-Nazis in politics
Politics was also not free of former supporters and advocates of the Hitler regime and its ideology of extermination. Former members of the NSDAP, which was banned by the Allies in October 1945 on the basis of Control Council Law No. 2 on the dissolution and liquidation of Nazi organizations, found a new political home in almost all of the parties represented in the Bundestag of the young republic (7). Among them were two future federal presidents.
This reveals the root of the problem. After the horrors of war and industrial mass murder, it would have been only logical not to entrust the construction of a new society to those who had directly or indirectly served the Nazi regime. But in practice, this was impossible.
The intention of this article is to illustrate that the ideology of National Socialism persisted well into the era of the Federal Republic. It was embedded in structures and minds.
It did not matter whether the person in question was a politician, postman, doctor, teacher, police officer, or CEO of an automobile manufacturer.
The ideological legacy was passed on—intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously. So it is not surprising that we find ourselves today in a situation similar to that before the Nazis came to power.
Inhuman extremism is becoming socially acceptable in parts of society, even in the so-called middle ground—especially when people are looking for someone to blame for existing, but self-inflicted, grievances.
A question
What does all this have to do with predatory capitalism? In my opinion, this question is relatively easy to answer. Capitalism as such is the problem.
It is free of political ideology. It does not matter at all what form of government prevails in a country, but whether capitalism can flourish. If it is a representative democracy, wonderful. If the best deals are made in a cruel dictatorship, that’s fine too. The only things that animate capitalism are exploitability, profit maximization, growth, and profit. It does not distinguish between skin color, origin, or religion, but between exploitable and non-exploitable.
After World War II, two economic models faced each other that were completely different at first glance. The socialist model in the East—based on the idea of social equality and freedom for all members of society, but a world away from utopia due to its totalitarian approach—fascinated many people.
It might have worked, with the equality of all people. That would have been the end of capitalism.
The West sought ways to bind the population to itself and build a military and ideological bulwark against communism. This was achieved in the Federal Republic of Germany through social concessions, a certain level of prosperity for the majority of the population, and the necessary propaganda about the Red Menace.
There were few scruples about enlisting the help of former NSDAP members and war criminals. It was no different in the GDR, even though more Nazi perpetrators were convicted there than in the FRG. On both sides, denazification remained a half-truth (8).
The unleashing of a disease
The capitalist system has shown more than once that it plays rough, including regime change and the installation of totalitarian regimes.
For example, the West responded to the nationalization of oil production and refinery facilities in Iran in 1953 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh with a secret service operation to overthrow the government. In Chile, Salvador Allende showed his willingness to implement radical social policies. These included agricultural reform, the partial nationalization of industrial enterprises and banks, and the nationalization of the country’s greatest treasure, the copper mines. In 1973, the military staged a coup, with the involvement of the US foreign intelligence service, the CIA.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the alternative social model disappeared. The capitalist system exploded and ate its way into the former Soviet republics. Even communist China now plays by capitalist rules, strictly speaking.
Every corner of the earth is now infested with capitalism. Capitalism is a disease that has been in a crisis of exploitation since 2008. Where to put all the capital?
Everything that isn’t nailed down is being bought up. The privatization of common property and the ludicrous expenditure on military equipment are expressions of this crisis.
And now comes Industrialization 4.0. The resource “human beings” is becoming increasingly unimportant in the production process. Income from wages is lacking, prices are rising, people are losing their homes and farms and becoming impoverished. And capitalism continues ruthlessly.
A radical renewal
It is not surprising that, in the US, for example, 43 percent of all households now have so little money available each month that their budget is no longer sufficient to cover housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cell phone.
This is leading to increasing tensions. It is no coincidence that voices are growing louder, calling for an unconditional basic income in order to buy social peace. Can that be enough? “No,” says Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, one of the leading figures in the resurgent Poor Peoples Campaign, which calls for a moral reorientation of the US, where exploitation, social warfare against the poor, and real warfare over resources and power are currently part of “business.”
Europe is following in the footsteps of the United States: privatization, dismantling of the welfare state, rearmament, participation in wars, and free rein for capital. This market fundamentalism is destroying society.
What can be done? Germany, the EU, and Europe need a radical shift toward a social economic order with a moral, humanistic, and nature-friendly orientation. This is sorely needed. Only in this way is there a chance that the human species will not go down in history as a failed experiment of nature.
Sources and notes:
(1)https://neue-debatte.com/2019/06/23/linksunten-presse-und-meinungsaeusserungsfreiheit-in-deutschland/
(2) http://www.gesellschaft-und-visionen.de/PDF/Strategie/Duesseldorfer%20Leitsaetze%20KAS.pdf
(3) http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/de/ig_farben
(4) https://www.zeit.de/1991/19/hochstimmung-im-schatten-der-ig-auschwitz
(5) https://programm.ard.de/TV/daserste/2013/07/15/unser-wirtschaftswunder—die-wahre-geschichte/eid_2810610240061314, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV8DsMmS65I&feature=youtu.be
(6) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ehemaliger_NSDAP-Mitglieder,_die_nach_Mai_1945_politisch_t%C3%A4tig_waren
(7) https://www.mdr.de/zeitreise/nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html
(8) https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html
Jairo Gómez García, born in 1959, is the son of a Spanish mother and a Colombian father. He has lived in Germany since 1967 and has held German citizenship since the mid-1980s. His interests include history, politics, painting, and photography. He is part of the team of authors at Neue Debatte, where he writes about political developments in Spain and takes a critical look at social changes in Germany and Europe.