THE MILITARY'S REVOLVING DOOR still spins

A great article on this same subject:

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

When people hear the word “fascism” they naturally think of its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and ’30s as “corporatism,” that was an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a “model” by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. A version of economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day. In the United States these policies were not called “fascism” but “planned capitalism.” The word fascism may no longer be politically acceptable, but its synonym “industrial policy” is as popular as ever.

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Another result of the close “collaboration” between business and government in Italy was “a continual interchange of personnel between the . . . civil service and private business.”[29] Because of this “revolving door” between business and government, Mussolini had “created a state within the state to serve private interests which are not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation.”[30]

Mussolini’s “revolving door” swung far and wide:

Signor Caiano, one of Mussolini’s most trusted advisers, was an officer in the Royal Navy before and during the war; when the war was over, he joined the Orlando Shipbuilding Company; in October 1922, he entered Mussolini’s cabinet, and the subsidies for naval construction and the merchant marine came under the control of his department. General Cavallero, at the close of the war, left the army and entered the Pirelli Rubber Company . . . ; in 1925 he became undersecretary at the Ministry of War; in 1930 he left the Ministry of War, and entered the service of the Ansaldo armament firm. Among the directors of the big . . . companies in Italy, retired generals and generals on active service became very numerous after the advent of Fascism.[31]

Such practices are now so common in the United States – especially in the defense industries – that it hardly needs further comment.

From an economic perspective, fascism meant (and means) an interventionist industrial policy, mercantilism, protectionism, and an ideology that makes the individual subservient to the state. “Ask not what the State can do for you, but what you can do for the State” is an apt description of the economic philosophy of fascism.

(snip)

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo85.html

The imperial follies continue, different countries same BS. 

by Darren Wolfe (5 articles, 151 quicklinks, 92 diaries, 691 comments) on Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 11:21:54 AM