The Vampire Economy: Guenter Reiman
The Vampire Economy, by Guenter Reimann (1939) is a rare and wonderful thing: a detailed account of how the Nazis crushed the private sector and hamstrung the economy with vast regulations, violations of property rights, inflation, price controls, and taxes.
It is now available in PDF, and also as a print on demand book.
The author emigrated from Germany and worked on Wall Street after the war. One very odd thing: Reimann was a member of the Communist Party.
THE business organization of private enterprise has had to be reorganized in accordance with the new state of things. Departments which previously were the heart of a firm have become of minor importance. Other departments which either did not exist or which had only auxiliary functions have become dominant and have usurped the real functions of management.Formerly the purchasing agent and the salesmanager were among the most important members of a business organization. Today the emphasis has shifted and a curious new business aide, a sort of combination "gobetween" and public relations counsel, is now all-important.
His job—not the least interesting outgrowth of the Nazi economic system—is to maintain good personal relations with officials in the Economic Ministry, where he is an almost daily caller; he studies all the new regulations and decrees, knows how to interpret them in relation to his particular firm and is able to guess at what may be permitted or forbidden. In other words, it is his business to know how far one can go without being caught. He also develops special knowledge on how to camouflage private interests so that they appear to be "interests of the community" or of the State.
Graphic from page 2
Comments (11)
Mises Institute, I could kiss you.
Published: February 12, 2007 1:34 PM
I neither want to sound ungrateful or sound as though I'm making demands on anyone, so drop the following if it appears at all naive and thoughtless:
Is there any way that Mises.org could post a more blown up version of that image? I'd love to pass it along to a few people that I know. . .
Published: February 12, 2007 2:26 PM
"[H]ow the Nazis crushed the private sector and hamstrung the economy with vast regulations, violations of property rights, inflation, price controls, and taxes."
Are not these tactics the same as those employed by the staunch interventionists that control government, academia, and the media in virtually the entire Western world? While our interventionists would never admit the truth, in important aspects their economic policy is quite similar to that of the Nazis.
Published: February 12, 2007 2:28 PM
Dan,
Try this:
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3029/germanengineertireskf4.jpg
Published: February 12, 2007 3:58 PM
"While our interventionists would never admit the truth..."-quote
This is the problem. Interventionists never base their idealogy on logic, only on emotional 2 second catch phrases. No one can debate against emotional arguements. Instead we are left with people like Mr. Obama, of whom people think is the next best thing since sliced cheese.
Published: February 12, 2007 9:03 PM
1. "in impt respects [current govt]policy is quite similar to that of the Nazis." Exactly: see The Road to Serfdom. That's just what Hayek showed.
2. "One very odd thing:Reimann was a member of the Communist Party." Again, see RtS: both sets of totalitarians were great rivals for political power in the inter-war period. The Nazis naturally persecuted their opposite numbers.
Published: February 12, 2007 10:23 PM
Yes, Hayek was quite accurate, prescient in his analysis in "The Road to Serfdom".
Published: February 13, 2007 11:47 AM
Thanks. I was favorably impressed with Reimann's accuracy of vision.
Published: February 14, 2007 5:04 PM
just wait...so it shall be under globo-carbon-control.
Published: February 15, 2007 3:03 AM
For fans of (alternative) history, this story (I HAVE read the book, recently) has interesting implications for the mid- and long-term fitness of the German war machine that so terrorized the world in the late Thirties and Forties.
This war machine SEEMED to remain potent (including economically) right through to the end, but from this analysis, it can readily be seen that, like the Soviet Union, it was doomed from the outset by internal weaknesses that only grew with time, like cancer.
This cancer, obviously, is gnawing today at the vitals of the American war machine, too. War machines have an especial susceptibility to this malady. Something to do with the essential nature of war, I think.
Published: February 15, 2007 10:13 AM
Book has been delivered (to Germany) today. Great quality, great content. Thank you MI for making this book available again, thank you especially for making shipping to European customers using lulu.com much cheaper. I hope shipping from the mises.org shop will be as cheap as lulu.com one day. I am sure you would have many more customers over here.
Published: February 23, 2007 2:24 PM