Tory cuts could be mighty unpleasant

Mr_Mumble

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Only loons think that Hitler was a socialist.

Hayek wrote to Beveridge back in 1933 about Nazi-socialism. Since Hayek is the under-pinning of post-WWII conservatism, from Churchill to Thatcher, you're implying that anyone to the right of Blair is a loon. Revealing.

Sir_Humphrey

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Hayek wrote to Beveridge back in 1933 about Nazi-socialism. Since Hayek is the under-pinning of post-WWII conservatism, from Churchill to Thatcher, you're implying that anyone to the right of Blair is a loon. Revealing.

Nonsense, the 1950-60s Tory party owed nothing to Hayek. No-one paid any notice of him until the 1970s, and even then he contradicted Milton Friedman on many economic issues.

And yes, he was a loon when it came to politics. He should have stuck to philosophy.

i8change

Originally Posted by Sir Humphrey
Only loons think that Hitler was a socialist.

In "Mein Kampf" he definitely sounds more Tony Benn than Maggie T :-

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt

From CHAPTER II
YEARS OF STUDY AND SUFFERING IN VIENNA

But it is absurd and also untrue to say that the
Trades Union movement is in itself hostile to the nation. The opposite
is the more correct view. If the activities of the Trades Union are
directed towards improving the condition of a class, and succeed in
doing so, such activities are not against the Fatherland or the State
but are, in the truest sense of the word, national. In that way the
trades union organization helps to create the social conditions which
are indispensable in a general system of national education. It deserves
high recognition when it destroys the psychological and physical germs
of social disease and thus fosters the general welfare of the nation.

It is superfluous to ask whether the Trades Union is indispensable.

So long as there are employers who attack social understanding and have
wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the right but also
the duty of their employees--who are, after all, an integral part of our
people--to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason
of the individual. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the
people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public
health.

Both are seriously menaced by dishonourable employers who are not
conscious of their duty as members of the national community. Their
personal avidity or irresponsibility sows the seeds of future trouble.
To eliminate the causes of such a development is an action that surely
deserves well of the country.

From CHAPTER II
THE STATE

The individual will have to be valued, not by the class of work he does
but by the way in which he does it and by its usefulness to the
community. This statement may sound monstrous in an epoch when the most
brainless columnist on a newspaper staff is more esteemed than the most
expert mechanic, merely because the former pushes a pen. But, as I have
said, this false valuation does not correspond to the nature of things.
It has been artificially introduced, and there was a time when it did
not exist at all. The present unnatural state of affairs is one of those
general morbid phenomena that have arisen from our materialistic epoch.
Fundamentally every kind of work has a double value; the one material,
the other ideal. The material value depends on the practical importance
of the work to the life of the community. The greater the number of the
population who benefit from the work, directly or indirectly, the higher
will be its material value.

From CHAPTER XII
THE PROBLEM OF THE TRADE UNIONS

The National Socialist employee will have to recognize the fact that the
economic prosperity of the nation brings with it his own material
happiness.

The National Socialist employer must recognize that the happiness and
contentment of his employees are necessary pre-requisites for the
existence and development of his own economic prosperity.

National Socialist workers and employers are both together the delegates
and mandatories of the whole national community. The large measure of
personal freedom which is accorded to them for their activities must be
explained by the fact that experience has shown that the productive
powers of the individual are more enhanced by being accorded a generous
measure of freedom than by coercion from above. Moreover, by according
this freedom we give free play to the natural process of selection which
brings forward the ablest and most capable and most industrious. For the
National Socialist Trades Union, therefore, the strike is a means that
may, and indeed must, be resorted to as long as there is not a National
Socialist State yet. But when that State is established it will, as a
matter of course, abolish the mass struggle between the two great groups
made up of employers and employees respectively, a struggle which has
always resulted in lessening the national production and injuring the
national community. In place of this struggle, the National Socialist
State will take over the task of caring for and defending the rights of
all parties concerned. It will be the duty of the Economic Chamber
itself to keep the national economic system in smooth working order and
to remove whatever defects or errors it may suffer from. Questions that
are now fought over through a quarrel that involves millions of people
will then be settled in the Representative Chambers of Trades and
Professions and in the Central Economic Parliament. Thus employers and
employees will no longer find themselves drawn into a mutual conflict
over wages and hours of work, always to the detriment of their mutual
interests. But they will solve these problems together on a higher
plane, where the welfare of the national community and of the State will
be as a shining ideal to throw light on all their negotiations.

thescouselander

Generali wrote: »

The CKYY index of manufacturing production (link) fell from 87.1 to 84.5 between 1974 and 1979. By 1990 it had risen to 93.3 and by 1997 to 97.9.

It now stands at 88.8.

So industrial output fell under Labour in the 1970s (probably due to strike action and inefficient nationalised industries), rose under the Tory Governments (as a result of multinationals relocating to the UK most likely) and has fallen under New Labour (probably due to the end data point being during a disastrous recession - it was a little over 100 in 2007).

Yup, the figures surprised me too.

One thing I discovered in researching these numbers is that the share of skilled/semi-skilled/unskilled shifted pretty heavily under Thatcher from unskilled to semi-skilled and it was mostly unskilled workers that lost their jobs and were unable to find new work.

True but a little misleading don't you think. First off the methods for collecting this data have changed so you need to be careful when making comparisons. But, in any case, if you look at he whole series, that measure of output was depressed for much of the early 80s - things got better towards the end but not until Maggie was on the way out (although she did do quite well towards the end).

carolt

i8change wrote: »

In "Mein Kampf" he definitely sounds more Tony Benn than Maggie T :-

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt

If you genuinely believe Hitler was a socialist, I think you urgently need to look up the meaning of the word socialist. :eek:

Thrugelmir

carolt wrote: »

If you genuinely believe Hitler was a socialist, I think you urgently need to look up the meaning of the word socialist. :eek:

So was Lenin a socialist in your view ?

i8change

Originally Posted by carolt
If you genuinely believe Hitler was a socialist, I think you urgently need to look up the meaning of the word socialist.

I think there is plenty to read on the subject of whether he was or was n't. He is more to the left and less to the right than I first thought, before reading Mein Kampf. Not saying any of the links are definitely accurate, just that there is controversy

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html

In conclusion:

Because this article contradicts what most people think they know about Hitler, it has necessarily been a long one. There have been many potential questions to answer. I would therefore like to close with a useful brief summary of what happened and why it is so little known. It is excerpted from a comment by Peter Hitchens on what is being taught in British schools and purveyed by the British media today:

"A schools video produced last year on the Forties barely gives a walk-on part to Winston Churchill, a man who is being steadily written out of modern history because he does not fit the fashionable myth that the Tories sympathised with the Nazis and the Left were the only people who opposed Hitler....

LABOUR'S role in the rise of Hitler was to consistently vote against the rearmament measures which narrowly saved this country from slavery in 1940. Stalin's insane orders to the German Communist Party, to refuse to co-operate with the Social Democrats, virtually ensured the Nazis would come to power in 1933.

This would be mirrored, six years later, in the joint victory parade staged by Nazi and Red Army troops in the then-Polish city of Brest, and the efficient supply of Soviet oil to Germany which fuelled the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the bombers which tore the heart out of London.

But millions of supposedly educated people know nothing of this, and are unaware that the one country which behaved with honour and courage when the fate of the world was being decided was Britain."

It was the Left who were on Hitler's side, not the conservatives. And the Left were on his side because he was one of them.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F3EmtyNuKfQC&dq=was+Adolf+Hitler+a+socialist%3F&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=7APWSvbmMcms4QaKv_jNDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CCEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=was Adolf Hitler a socialist%3F&f=false

http://fire.prohosting.com/jonjayra/flew.html

Even those who are aware that Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party have doubted the sincerity of its socialist professions. This is in part because Hitler, upon coming to power, refrained for tactical reasons from launching an immediate and extensive program of state takeovers of private industries, and in part because these skeptics have not enjoyed the benefits of Watson's re-readings of the lost literature of socialism.

carolt

Thrugelmir wrote: »

So was Lenin a socialist in your view ?

There's an interesting question.

Personally speaking, I'd say no - he was a dictator. But at least there's something to argue about there.

I'd like to hear anyone's definition of socialism wide enough to incorporate Hitler. If it stretches that far, it's clearly utterly meaningless as a definition.

Thrugelmir

carolt wrote: »

There's an interesting question.

Personally speaking, I'd say no - he was a dictator. But at least there's something to argue about there.

I'd like to hear anyone's definition of socialism wide enough to incorporate Hitler. If it stretches that far, it's clearly utterly meaningless as a definition.

Just an observation. As in many ways he was as "evil" as Hitler. Both to his own people and those he suppressed. Something which is often forgotten.

StevieJ

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Just an observation. As in many ways he was as "evil" as Hitler. Both to his own people and those he suppressed. Something which is often forgotten.

Substitute Stalin for Lenin and I may agree with you.