Canada Post lost $748 million in 2023, up from $548 million the year before, and another $76 million in the first quarter of 2024, bringing the Crown Corporation's losses to almost $3 Billion in six years.
May 3, 32024 - "Canada Post recorded a loss before tax of $748 million in 2023. Results were negatively impacted by the post-pandemic surge in parcel delivery competition, the ongoing erosion of Transaction Mail, and continued growth in addresses and delivery costs....
"In the post-pandemic parcel delivery landscape, competition has accelerated at a pace not seen in the company’s history. Canada Post’s estimated parcel delivery market share has eroded from 62 per cent prior to the pandemic to 29 per cent in 2023. At the same time, Transaction Mail continues to decline in both volume and as a revenue source. In 2006, Canadian households received an average of seven letters per week; in 2023, they received two. Delivering fewer letters to a growing number of addresses is compounding the financial pressures on the Corporation.
"In 2023, revenue fell by $240 million, or 3.3 per cent, compared to the prior year, dropping across all three lines of business – Parcels, Transaction Mail and Direct Marketing. The 2023 loss before tax widened by $200 million from a loss before tax of $548 million in 2022. The cost of operations in 2023 rose by $11 million, or 0.1 per cent, compared to 2022....
"Under the Canada Post Corporation Act, the postal service has an obligation to serve all Canadians in a financially self-sustaining manner based on revenue generated by the sale of postal products and services, not taxpayer dollars. Over the last 20 years, the amount of mail Canadians receive has declined by more than 50 per cent, while the number of addresses has increased by more than three million. This has resulted in lower revenues and higher costs.... Without changes to align the postal service to the needs of Canadians today, Canada Post projects larger, unsustainable losses in future years."
May 24, 2024 - "Canada Post recorded a loss before tax of $76 million in the first quarter of 2024 as revenue for Parcels and Transaction Mail declined and Direct Marketing picked up. The segment’s loss before tax improved compared to the same period of the prior year due to the receipt of non-recurring dividends partly related to the divestiture of SCI Group Inc. (SCI). Without these dividends, Canada Post’s loss before tax would have been approximately $224 million, compared to a loss before tax of $107 million in the first quarter of 2023.
"In the first quarter, Canada Post’s revenue declined by $56 million, or 1.5 per cent, compared to the same quarter of the prior year. Parcels results continued to be negatively impacted by the competitive environment, while Transaction Mail volumes continued to erode. In Direct Marketing, Canada Post Neighbourhood Mail service benefited from new business and higher sales.
"Canada Post’s loss from operations in the first quarter was $221 million, expanding by $109 million compared to the $112-million loss from operations it had recorded in the first quarter of 2023. The cost of operations increased by 2.8 per cent in the first quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.... Parcels revenue declined by $59 million, or 5.4 per cent, while volumes fell by 2 million pieces, or 1.1 per cent, compared to the same period in 2023. A crowded and competitive parcel delivery market continued to negatively affect results for the line of business.... Transaction Mail revenue fell by $20 million, or 1.3 per cent, as volumes declined by 16 million pieces, or 1.1 per cent, compared to the same period a year earlier. Transaction Mail revenue and volumes declined as consumers and mailers continued to shift to digital channels.
"The company maintained its regulated stamp prices at 2020 levels through the first quarter of 2024. In May, Canada Post raised its regulated postage rates after receiving Governor-in-Council approval of its proposed increase. For stamps purchased in a booklet, coil or pane, which represent most stamp sales, the rate has increased by seven cents, to 99 cents per stamp. The stamp price increase took effect on May 6, 2024, and did not impact first quarter results."
August 28, 2024 - "Republican officials on Iowa’s state objection panel voted Wednesday to remove all three Libertarian candidates for Congress from the ballot, citing the Libertarian Party of Iowa’s failure to follow state laws concerning the process for nominating political candidates. The 2-1 vote means 1st Congressional District candidate Nicholas Gluba, 3rd District candidate Marco Battaglia and 4th District candidate Charles Aldrich will not appear on the ballot this fall unless they successfully appeal the decision in court by Sept. 3.
"Libertarian Party of Iowa Chair Jules Cutler said they would likely appeal the decision. Cutler said she was disappointed by the decision, but not surprised. 'It is about silencing us,' she said. 'Yes, it is about making sure that they are in a better position to win. If you want to win, how about you campaign, not silence other people.”
"Gluba, Battaglia and Aldrich said they would run write-in campaigns if they don’t get back on the ballot.
"The state objection panel is made up of Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird and Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand. Pate and Bird voted to remove the Libertarian candidates from the ballot, and Sand voted to keep them on....
"Republican voters from each of the three congressional districts filed objections to the Libertarians being on the ballot. Alan Ostergren, a prominent Republican lawyer in Iowa, represented the objectors. He said the Libertarian Party of Iowa’s county conventions were not valid because they were held the same day as its caucuses. Iowa law says county delegates’ terms start the day after the caucuses.
"'This flaw is fatal. It means that the purported delegates to a state and district convention that were selected at the county level were not validly selected on Jan. 15,' Ostergren said. 'It means the less than two dozen individuals who met in Des Moines to purport to nominate candidates for these three congressional seats had no legal authority to represent the Libertarian Party of Iowa'.... He also said the party failed to submit lists of delegates to county auditors, as required by state law.
"Cutler said the Libertarians held county conventions '181 minutes too early' — meaning they did not wait until midnight after the caucuses to hold the county conventions. She also admitted the party did not submit lists of delegates to county auditors. But, Cutler said, these should be considered technical violations and are not grounds for kicking people off the ballot.
"'It is embarrassing that we didn’t do it. It is a learning process. It is growing pains,' she said. 'But at the end of the day, we are substantially compliant with the law.'
"Sand, who voted to keep the Libertarians on the ballot, said there is no legal basis for removing candidates from the ballot because of 'nitpicky' issues with internal political party business. 'If this panel is making decisions, we are supposed to aim in terms of inclusiveness on the ballot, not trying to exclude people,' he said.
"Bird said there is precedent for the state objection panel reviewing nominating conventions. She said she doesn’t want to keep people off the ballot for small technicalities, but there are obligations major political parties have."
"More Canadians are receiving Employment Insurance benefits, as unemployment continues to grow across the country."
August 25, 2024 - "The number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance benefits has risen over 10% since the same time last year, according to new data released by Statistics Canada. According to new data released on Thursday, 474,000 Canadians are receiving Employment Insurance benefits, rising 6,000, or 1.3%, since the previous month, marking the second consecutive monthly increase. Since June 2023, regular EI beneficiaries have increased by 44,720 to 473,980 recipients, a rise of 10.4%....
“'In general, variations in the number of EI beneficiaries can reflect changes in circumstances of different groups, including those becoming beneficiaries, those going back to work, those exhausting their regular benefits, and those no longer receiving benefits for other reasons,' reads the report....
"Unemployment reached 6.4% in June 2024 across the country. This saw a similar rise from the year prior, growing 0.9% from 5.5% in June 2023, which had risen 0.5% from 5.0% in June 2022.
"Statistics Canada attributed the rise in unemployment to 'more people search[ing] for work, while overall employment held steady.' However, the more people searching for work were new immigrants to the country.... Canada’s population grew by nearly 100,000 between May and June 2024.
"While EI recipients rose by 1.3% between May and June 2024, not all provinces saw an increase. Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia were the only three provinces to see a decrease in recipients, at 1.7%, 1.4%, and 0.2% decreases, respectively.
"The biggest increase in EI recipients between May and June 2024 was found in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, and Ontario, at 2.7%, 2.5%, and 1.7%, respectively.... Ontario saw the biggest increase by a large margin in EI recipients year-over-year, rising 25.1%....
"Canadians who last worked in natural and applied sciences have seen a 26.3% rise in accessing EI over the last year. Following that are those who worked in manufacturing and utilities, as well as legislative and senior management, which saw increases of 21.8% and 20.8%, respectively. Conversely, those who last worked in natural resources and agriculture, art, culture, recreation and sport both saw annual decreases in EI beneficiaries, at 7.2% and 1.2%, respectively....
"The increase was led by men aged 25 to 54 years old, which saw a rise of 12.8% in EI beneficiaries year-over-year, followed by women in the same age group, which saw a rise of 10.5%....
"Despite the recent rise, EI beneficiaries have fallen greatly from [a] peak in Jan. 2022 of 671,390, the furthest the data goes back."
In a letter to the US House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor posts about both COVID-19 and the infamous Hunter Biden laptop.
27 August 27, 2024 - "In a letter sent to US House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan on Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-19 information, as well as news about the infamous Hunter Biden laptop. The letter comes more than a year after Meta provided the committee with thousands of documents as part of its investigation into content moderation on online platforms, reports Fox News, adding Meta has also provided the committee with access to a dozen employees for transcribed interviews.
"'There’s a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position,' Zuckerberg wrote. 'Our platforms are for everyone, we’re about promoting speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way. As part of this, we regularly hear from governments around the world and others with various concerns around public discourse and public safety.'
"He told Jordan that in 2021, 'senior officials' from the Biden administration and White House 'repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.' Zuckerberg said Facebook did not agree with the censorship.... Zuckerberg wrote. [that] 'I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it'....
"Fox News reached out to the White House for comment, with a spokesperson responding, 'When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.'
"Zuckerberg also confirmed the FBI 'warned' the platform "about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," reports the Post Millennial, adding the FBI also laid out a hypothetical Russian "disinfo campaign" would include a fake story about a discovered Hunter Biden laptop in an attempt to discredit Biden's campaign. The New York Post broke the story, which is now known to be true.... Zuckerberg wrote the impetus for the platform to censor and suppress the New York Post's reporting on the laptop was a direct result of the FBI's warnings."
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of social media app Telegram, has been arrested in France for not removing user content from the platform when ordered to by the authorities.
26th August 26, 2024 - "In 2013, the Russian authorities searched the home and offices of social-media magnate Pavel Durov.... [T]he raid was widely believed to be in retaliation for his platform’s persistent refusal to censor critics of the government. VK, Durov’s Russian-language competitor to Facebook, had consistently rejected the Kremlin’s demands to block the accounts of Putin’s domestic opponents and to hand over data belonging to protesters in Ukraine. In 2014, he sold his stake in VK, resigned as CEO, and fled his home country. Durov, a self-described libertarian, says he was not prepared to do the state’s bidding. Since he left, VK is now more or less controlled by the Kremlin.
"More than a decade later and Durov is in trouble with the law again. His newer app, Telegram, is in the firing line this time. He was arrested and detained on Saturday and charged with 12 crimes, seemingly all in connection with Telegram’s failure to comply with the authorities’ requests to remove certain content. But Durov was not arrested in Russia this time. He was apprehended as his private jet touched down in France.
"The 12 charges include ‘complicity’ in alleged crimes as diverse as child exploitation, fraud, drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism. As despicable as such crimes may be, it is unprecedented for the authorities in a Western liberal democracy to hold a social-media platform and its founder criminally liable for content shared by others.... The commonsense principle that social-media firms are not directly responsible for their users’ content had held firm until relatively recently in Europe.
"Yet, in the past few years, Europe’s illiberal elites have been gripped by hysteria about the supposedly malign influence of major tech platforms.... [A]lmost every societal problem is now pinned on an excess of online freedom. This has prompted a series of laws, from the EU’s Digital Services Act to the UK’s Online Safety Act, which effectively treat platforms as publishers of user-generated content, threatening them with fines if they fail to remove posts that contravene their rules.
"Telegram has over 900 million users worldwide and is well known for its laissez-faire approach to content and its fierce protection of its users’ privacy. It hosts both private conversations and ‘channels’, which allow a single user to disseminate messages directly to large numbers of followers. But its terms of service do prohibit terrorist content, scams, illegal pornography and incitement to violence. Notably it has removed ISIS-linked channels and white-supremacist groups involved with the ‘January 6’ storming of the US Capitol.
"Durov, the sole owner, insists his platform is neutral and ‘not a player in geopolitics’. Nevertheless, Telegram is especially notorious for hosting pro-war Russian bloggers.... This has led to suspicions that the Kremlin has more control or influence over Telegram than Durov lets on. The Russian government’s call for his release over the weekend has only compounded these fears.... Yet, on the other hand, there is no evidence that Telegram has censored, say, critics of Putin. Notably, it is also highly popular in Ukraine. It remains one of the few platforms to allow Russians to access information about the war that isn’t filtered by the Kremlin. Telegram also proved essential for those organising pro-democracy protests against the CCP in Hong Kong in 2019. To characterise the app purely as a propaganda tool for authoritarians like the Russian government, as many observers in the West are keen to do, is to miss the bigger picture. Durov’s own past run-ins with the Kremlin also suggest he is sincere in his libertarian beliefs.
"Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, was quick to defend Durov in the wake of his arrest. Musk, himself persona non grata among the Western liberal establishment, thanks to X’s more liberal speech policies, claims there is a political vendetta against Telegram and Durov. Musk argues that Instagram, owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, ‘has a massive child-exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data… He already caved into censorship pressure.’ In other words, while all platforms have unwittingly hosted illegal content, just as Telegram is alleged to have done, the European authorities are primarily interested in targeting those platforms that refuse to accede to their demands to censor political dissent.
"Certainly, some of those defending Durov’s arrest are not making any effort to dispel this impression. A piece in the Guardian has hailed it as a ‘smart move’ that could panic tech executives like Musk into censoring more content at governments’ behest. That ‘nagging fear [of arrest] is no bad thing’, it said. (Earlier this month, a former Twitter exec wrote another piece in the Guardian calling explicitly for Musk’s arrest.) It is hard not to suspect that allowing unfettered political speech is Telegram’s real crime in the eyes of the elites....
"The criminalisation of Pavel Durov sets a deeply troubling precedent. If social-media execs are to be held liable for posts on their platforms, then a ramping up of pre-emptive censorship seems inevitable. Europeans must stand up to this now, lest they lose their online freedoms for good."
August 24, 2025 - "The median family income has seen a year-over-year decrease in all parts of Canada due to inflation, according to numbers from Statistics Canada. In 2022, after-tax income was $60,800, according to data released on Aug. 19. While that was a 2.5 percent increase from 2021, when including the annual inflation of 6.8 percent, after-tax income was 4 percent lower than the previous year.
"The decrease in median family income was seen in all provinces and territories, StatCan said. The largest decrease was in Nunavut at minus 8.4 percent, followed by the Northwest Territories at minus 7.2 percent. Nova Scotia saw the third lowest drop in family income at minus 5.6 percent.
"StatCan said that the median family after-tax income for 2022 was about equal to pre-pandemic income. Broken down by province, Quebec, the Yukon, and B.C. saw increases in the median family income from 2019 by 5 percent, 1.7 percent, and 1.3 percent respectively. All other provinces saw a drop....
"Almost all types of family groups saw a drop in median income in 2022, when adjusted for inflation, StatCan said. Younger families saw the biggest decrease, with single-parent families where the parent was under 25 years old seeing a 15.1 percent decrease in income. Median income for this family group was $24,690, according to the data.
"Single Canadians 25 years and younger saw a 12.9 percent drop in median income to $17,650. That was the lowest median income of all family groups. Couples 25 years and younger saw a 9 percent decline in median income to $45,070 in 2022. Older Canadians also saw a decrease, but not as much as younger families....
"Some cities saw increases in median family income between 2019 and 2022, with the biggest increase in Sherbrooke at 6.2 percent. Montreal saw the second highest income increase 5.2 percent, followed by Trois-Rivières at 5.2 percent and Saguenay at 5.1 percent. Cities that saw the largest decrease in family income were Edmonton at minus 5.1 percent, Windsor at minus 4.3 percent, and Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo at 4.1 percent."
Was Hitler's National Socialism really socialism? In the Marxist paradigm, obviously not: it was a "far right" manifestation of "late-stage capitalism". But the Marxist paradigm is not the only way to look at it.
December 8, 2020 - "Words are powerful things in that they enable us to share a common world of understanding with our contemporaries and, in the written form, with generations long past. But too often words can just as easily cause confusion, misunderstanding, and conflict among people in any society. One such word that keeps causing this type of confusion and conflict is 'socialism.' What does it mean, what forms has it taken, and why does it generate so much intellectual 'heat' rather than 'light?'
"This has come up, again, in a recent article by Ronald J. Granieri, who is research director of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, on why 'The Right Needs to Stop Falsely Claiming that the Nazis were Socialists' (Washington Post, December 5, 2020).... He seethes with frustration that those he calls on the political 'right' attempt to classify the German Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s as 'socialist.' Yes, the formal name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party ... [and] prominent Nazis may have played to the 'working-class resentments' with the hope of attracting people away from the communists and the democratic socialists ... but there was no directed and consistent challenge against private property....
"Granieri says: 'National Socialism preserved private property, while also putting the entire resources of society at the service of an expansionist and racist national vision, which included the conquest and murderous subjugation of other peoples.' The Nazi regime, therefore, cannot be considered to be 'socialist,' because National Socialism was not interested in controlling the means of production or redistributing wealth to build an egalitarian utopia....
"Granieri also takes a swipe at the Austrian economist and Nobel Prize winner, Friedrich A. Hayek, for attempting to put the socialist label on Nazism in his book The Road to Serfdom (1944).... Hayek was 'enormously influential,' he says, on both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and 'Hayek’s assertion that all government interventions in the economy led to totalitarianism continues to animate popular works' that warn of the 'genocidal dangers' from implementing a welfare state.... Granieri would rather drop all of this distracting labelling controversy and search for ways for 'protecting citizens against the negative exigencies of the market'.... He also wants 'rightists' to drop harping on early 20th century American Progressives who heralded and advocated eugenics as a means of designing superior human types. (But, wait! Were they not simply 'following the science' as widely understood and accepted at the time?)...
"[I]n the house of collectivism there have been many socialist mansions. Among the early 19th century French socialists there was a diversity of views as to whether the socialist society to come, for instance, would be an industrial or agrarian paradise. There were disagreements about whether people could reason their way into radical social change, those whom Marx labelled the 'utopian socialists,' or whether it would come only in its own good time due to inescapable historical evolution and revolution, as Marx insisted.
"The first socialist party to seriously move towards political influence in the second half of the 19th century was the German Democratic Socialists, who shunned the call for violent revolution, and amassed a growing number of votes in electing their candidates to the Imperial German Parliament by pursuing power through the ballot box. This frightened the German powers-that-be, so besides attempting for a while to suppress the German socialist party, Otto von Bismarck, as Chancellor of the German Empire in the 1870s and 1880s, introduced all the major component elements of the modern welfare state as well as interventionist regulations over parts of German industry and trade. Bismarck’s brand soon was labelled 'state socialism' or sometimes 'monarchical socialism'....
"Further to the East in Europe, more doctrinaire Marxian socialists in Imperial Russia rejected the niceties of elections and legislative welfare-state reforms. Only violent revolution could break the capitalist hold on the exploited masses, with, as Lenin came to insist, a dictatorship of the proletariat once in power. This resulted in a schism between democratic and dictatorial socialists for a good part of the 20th century. But ... while these two groups of socialists denounced each other over the means of coming to power, well into the second half of the 20th century they almost all agreed on the desired end: the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the introduction of central planning....
"From these forms of 'socialism,' Granieri’s desire for a democratic 'balancing of interests' based on the expediency of what 'works,' Bismarck’s state socialism seems the closest to what he is looking for. As William Dawson expressed it in Bismarck and State Socialism (1891), 'No department of economic activity should on principle be closed to the state.... The state socialists say that this must be determined by expediency, and by circumstances of time and place.' (pp. 4-6) It was a state socialism in which, as an American admirer of the German system, Frederic Howe, expressed it in his book on Socialized Germany (1915): 'The state has its finger on the pulse of the worker from the cradle to the grave. His education, his health and his working efficiency are matters of constant concern'.... Howe later served in FDR’s New Deal Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) that attempted to plan the output of American farming....
"Granieri insists that National Socialism could not be 'socialist' because it did not pursue a 'utopian' ideal for greater equality for all as a whole. But this presumes that the only legitimate utopian dream, and therefore benchmark for labeling something 'socialist,' is the one that Granieri considers good and right. In fact, the Nazis had a utopian vision for the future; it began with their notion of German race purity on the basis of which they rejected the older Prussian idea of aristocratic and class hierarchy. All 'real' Germans were equal and were to be given opportunities for education, occupational and professional advancement as the means by which they could make their contribution to the high good of the German people as a whole.
"That Nazi egalitarianism was limited to only those 'real' Germans possessing the racial characteristics that guided their ideological thinking, with Jews classified as the lowest and most treacherous of race enemies, does not change the fact that they, too, were 'utopians' with social equality goals, but only for those within the 'in-group.' This was nothing but a variation of the Marxist theme that the world is divided into irreconcilable social classes, with the 'capitalists' being the inescapable 'class enemies' of 'the workers.' And as in the Soviet practice, they and their children were stripped of all rights and opportunities, and made into permanent pariahs to be reeducated to serve 'the building of socialism' or liquidated.
"It may be a notion of a utopia that both Granieri and I would reject, but for many in the Nazi leadership and among the wider German population at the time, it was believed in and worked for, no matter [how] reprehensible it may seem to others.... This is what made it a 'national' socialism rather than an international socialism. Its call and appeal were to a segment of humanity defined by asserted racial characteristics, rather than a call for all workers of the world to unite regardless of who or where. In retrospect, this meant that National Socialism could never have a following great enough to conquer and control the world, since its pool of members was definitionally too limited.... Most of the world’s population had to find itself in conflict with Nazism precisely due to its race-based exclusivity....
"It would be possible to draw upon any number of Nazi sources to determine and decide whether National Socialism was a form of 'real' socialism. In 1936, Nazi educator Friedrich Alfred Beck said in Education in the Third Reich, a text meant as a guide for German teachers around the country:
National Socialism has restored the concept of a people from its modern shallowness . . . By people we understand an entire living body which is racially uniform and which is held together by common history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks . . . Education, from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved through the totality of the people . . .
Socialism is the direction of personal life through dependence on the community, consciousness of the community, nationalism is the elevation of individual life to a unique (microcosmic) expression of the community in the unity of the personality.” (Translated in: National Socialism [U.S. Department of State, 1943], p. 28)
"The individual lives through the community, and race and nation define to which community an individual owes his allegiance. Rather than social classes, National Socialism classifies people by race category. This makes you who you are and provides meaning to your life, in the Nazi worldview.
"But what about National Socialist economics? Let us look at Gustav Stolper’s German Economy, 1870-1940 (1940). Stolper was the long-time editor of a German economic magazine oriented toward a classical liberal viewpoint. He was forced to leave Germany with Hitler’s rise to power due to his politics and his Jewish family background, and found refuge in the United States. Stolper explained some of the socialist aspects to Nazi ideology and policy:
The National Socialist party was from the outset an anti-capitalist party. As such it was fighting and in competition with Marxism.... National Socialism wooed the masses [from three angles]. The first angle was the moral principle, the second the financial system, the third the issue of ownership. The moral principle was ‘the commonwealth before self-interest.’ The financial promise was ‘breaking the bondage of interest slavery’. The industrial program was ‘nationalization of all big incorporated business [trusts]’.
By accepting the principle ‘the commonwealth before self-interest,’ National Socialism simply emphasizes its antagonism to the spirit of a competitive society as represented supposedly by democratic capitalism . . . But to the Nazis this principle means also the complete subordination of the individual to the exigencies of the state. And in this sense National Socialism is unquestionably a Socialist system . . .
The nationalization of big industry was never attempted after the Nazis came to power. But this was by no means a ‘betrayal’ of their program, as has been alleged by some of their opponents. The socialization of the entire German productive machinery, both agricultural and industrial, was achieved by methods other than expropriation, to a much larger extent and on an immeasurably more comprehensive scale than the authors of the party program in 1920 probably ever imagined. In fact, not only the big trusts were gradually but rapidly subjected to government control in Germany, but so was every sort of economic activity, leaving not much more than the title of private ownership.” (pp. 232-233; 239-240)....
"Guenter Reimann, in The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism (1939), highlighted that while most of the means of production had not been nationalized, they had nonetheless been politicized and collectivized under an intricate web of Nazi planning targets, price and wage regulations, production rules and quotas, and strict limits and restraints on the action and decisions of those who remained; nominally, the owners of private enterprises throughout the country. Every German businessman knew that his conduct was prescribed and positioned within the wider planning goals of the National Socialist regime.' Not much differently [from] the state factory managers in the Soviet Union, even at that time under Stalin, the German owners of private enterprises were given wide discretion in the day-to-day management of the enterprises that nominally remained in their possession. But Nazi planning agencies set output targets, determined input supplies and allocations, determined wage and work condition rules, and dictated the availability of investment funds and the rates of interest at which they could be obtained through the banking system, along with strict central control and direction of all import and export trade....
"[W]e can turn to a more recent historian of the Nazi regime, that being Goetz Aly in, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2007). Aly 'focus[es] on the socialist aspect of National Socialism' so as to better understand 'the Nazi regime as a kind of racist-totalitarian welfare state.' Aly emphasizes that the ideology and practice of the Nazi regime were in fact deeply socialist. Within Germany, among the German people of 'pure Aryan blood,' the ideal was an egalitarian social order in which every German would be freed from traditional class barriers so that he might have the opportunity to rise to any level of success in serving the fatherland. The welfare-state policies begun by Bismarck ... were viewed by the Nazis as a prelude to a complete guarantee of a quality standard of living for all 'real' Germans that would be paternalistically provided by the National Socialist state....
"Aly points out that before and during World War II, the German 'capitalist class' was made to pay its 'fair share' for the benefit of the rest of the German people. Taxes were proportionally far higher on the 'rich' in Germany than the rest of the population. During the war the government established mandatory overtime pay in all industries and imposed wage increases to keep 'the masses' loyal to the regime – all at the expense of German business. At the same time, German industry worked under government-commanded four-year plans from 1936 until the end of the war in 1945....
"But it was only after the war started that the machine of redistributive plunder was really set into motion. Every country overrun by the German army not only had to pay the costs of the occupation, but also was systematically looted for the benefit of the German population as a whole.... In every occupied country the Nazis initiated similar confiscatory policies with local accomplices with whom they shared looted Jewish property. (Only in Belgium and Denmark did large segments of the population and the bureaucracy resist participating in this plunder of the Jews.) The Nazis first nationalized Jewish property and then distributed it to those deemed worthy among the German or occupied populations.... Aly estimates that because of this looted property and the goods sent back to Germany by soldiers, many, if not most, Germans enjoyed a more comfortable standard of living throughout most of the war than the civilian population in Great Britain.... The vast majority of German families continued to feast, even under the allied bombings, thanks to the locust-like seizure of anything and everything across occupied Europe....
"No doubt this summary of the content of Goetz Aly’s analysis of the National Socialist welfare system and its version of central planning would convince Ronald Granieri even more that the Nazi regime should not be classified as 'socialist.' But in my view, it demonstrates that all of its characteristics find their family resemblance in socialist regimes. Institutionally, the starting premise is that the individual is little or nothing, and must view himself as dependent upon and working for a wider 'common good,' other than his own personal self-interest.
"In the name of 'the people' those in political authority, whether in that position through votes or violence, establish in the name of 'the people' the hierarchy of social goals, purposes, and collective ends for which a set of government planning policies, interventions and welfare redistributions will be set in motion. Individual choice and decision-making as consumers and producers are significantly reduced or even totally eliminated with government central planning and decision-making replacing voluntary association and exchange.... Prices and production no longer fully reflect the valuations and appraisements of the multitudes of interacting buyers and sellers in the society – which means all of us.... Instead, government plans and interventions determine or heavily influence wages and prices, along with what gets produced and how much; which means everything concerning our personal lives, livelihoods and standards of living.
"In other words, extensive and intrusive government regulations, restrictions, redistributions, and imposed centralized plans demonstrate what Friedrich A. Hayek was arguing over 75 years ago in The Road to Serfdom: that the more government command and control replaces market-based choices, decisions, and opportunities, the less freedom we have over increasing corners and aspects of our lives....
"Ronald Granieri may very well pooh-pooh this because he may not consider some loss of personal liberty something much to despair when it’s replaced with compulsory political paternalism that 'guarantees' various material wants for some that he considers more important than the degree of freedom forgone by some others. But I would ask him to at least admit that this is freedom lost for a coerced 'security,' ... still a compulsory 'taking,' whether done by a voting majority or dictatorial elite.
"And I would further ask him to concede that whether he agrees with the ends and goals of other socialists, their use of command and control and their introduction of some form of institutional central planning to pursue their declared 'social good' makes their system just as much a 'socialist' one as any other that Ronald Granieri might endorse or look more favorably upon. So, whether he likes it or not, the Nazis, too, were socialists, just a different stripe than the ones he feels more comfortable with."
_(cropped).jpg)
