The Nazis Capitalism And The Working Class

A contribution to the debate about the nature of Nazism and why understanding it still matters today.

The question of how the Nazis came to power in one of the most advanced countries in the world, both industially and culturally, remains a burning question. In this work the author discounts recent arguments suggesting that their success was the product of a profound and long-held anti-Semitism within the German national psyche and demonstrates that the Nazis were of marginal significance until the crisis in the German economy made their commitment to smash any gains for the working class from the German Revolution attractive to wide sections of the German ruling class.

This collection of essays, four of which are published in English for the first time, represents the life's work of the historian Tim Mason, one of the most original and perceptive scholars of National Socialism, who pioneered its social and labour history. His provocative articles and essays, written between 1964 and 1990, exhibit a combination of empirical rigour and theoretical astuteness which made them landmarks in the definition and elaboration of major debates in the historiography of National Socialism. These ten essays collect together Mason's most significant writings, including discussions of the domestic origins of the Second World War, the role of Hitler, and the character of working-class resistance, as well as his pathbreaking study of women under National Socialism, and examples of comparative work on fascism and Nazism. A complete bibliography of his publications is also appended.

This book analyzes the attitudes and policies of the Nazi leadership towards the German working class. The author argues that the regime did not securely integrate the working class and was thus less successful in imposing mass economic sacrifices in the interests of forced rearmament. With a growing labour shortage in the late 1930s, industrial conflict re emerged. These two factors slowed down military preparations for war and may well, it is argued, have influenced Hitler's foreign policy in 1938/39.The author has added a substantial epilogue to this edition in which he responds to the main criticisms, aroused by the German original, and assesses the relevance of more recent research to the arguments put forward.

The image of Hitler as a demagogic "pied piper" leading astray the "little people" of Austria is as misleading as it is powerful. Nazism and the Working Class in Austria is a case study of the ambiguous relationship between state and society under the Nazis. Workers did not seriously attempt or even expect to overthrow the Nazi regime in the face of unprecedented surveillance and terror; but neither were they converted, and their oppositional strategies and disgruntled political opinions reveal a truculent workforce, rather than one that was contented and converted.

This is a survey of German social democracy. It covers the movement's full span from its origins after the French Revolution to the present day and in setting the German experience firmly within its wider European context.

“The analysis unveils a sociotypology of [the working class] on the eve of the Third Reich, its potential for resistance as well as seduction.” —Political Psychology Building upon Fromm’s 1929 lecture “The Application of Psycho-Analysis to Sociology and Religious Knowledge,” in which he outlined the basis for a rudimentary but far-reaching attempt at the integration of Freudian psychology with Marxist social theory, this study is an attempt to obtain evidence about the systemic connections between “psychic make-up” and social development. Originally an investigation of the social and psychological attitudes of two large groups in Weimar Germany, manual and white-collar workers, a questionnaire was developed to collect data about their opinions, lifestyles, and attitudes—from what books they read and their thoughts on women’s work to their opinions about the German legal system and the actual distribution of power in the state. The Working Class in Weimar Germany can ultimately help us understand the establishment of fascism after 1933—that despite all the electoral successes of the Weimar Left, its members were not in the position, owning to their character structure, to prevent the victory of National Socialism.

One of our leading social critics recounts capitalism’s finest hour, and shows us how we might achieve it once again. In the past few decades, the wages of most workers have stagnated, even as productivity increased. Social supports have been cut, while corporations have achieved record profits. Downward mobility has produced political backlash. What is going on? Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? argues that neither trade nor immigration nor technological change is responsible for the harm to workers’ prospects. According to Robert Kuttner, global capitalism is to blame. By limiting workers’ rights, liberating bankers, allowing corporations to evade taxation, and preventing nations from assuring economic security, raw capitalism strikes at the very foundation of a healthy democracy. The resurgence of predatory capitalism was not inevitable. After the Great Depression, the U.S. government harnessed capitalism to democracy. Under Roosevelt’s New Deal, labor unions were legalized, and capital regulated. Well into the 1950s and ’60s, the Western world combined a thriving economy with a secure and growing middle class. Beginning in the 1970s, as deregulated capitalism regained the upper hand, elites began to dominate politics once again; policy reversals followed. The inequality and instability that ensued would eventually, in 2016, cause disillusioned voters to support far-right faux populism. Is today’s poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultranationalism inevitable? Or can we find the political will to make capitalism serve democracy, and not the other way around? Charting a plan for bold action based on political precedent, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? is essential reading for anyone eager to reverse the decline of democracy in the West.