Mein KampfChapter 8 Part IBy Richard E. Noble“...in the measure in which business rose to become the determining master of the state, money became the god whom now everybody had to serve and to worship...”
And what was the God that Adolf worshiped? He certainly wasn’t immune to any of the trappings of money or the power that follows with it.
‘Money’ it seems is another scapegoat. In a real sense money is a neutral or no-charge particle. It can be used positively or negatively. The human being has the problem with it. Why is there such hatred from the poor towards the wealthy? Why is there such a bitter disdain from the wealthy towards the poor? Are we again dealing with ‘ego’?
From my perspective, as long as I am able to pursue the things that make me happy, or provide me with joy, I feel fulfilled. Is the evil that is most associated with ‘money’ actually the lack of restraint upon the human competitive instinct? We are a competitive beast and we seem to be intensely competitive over anything. We challenge one another in play, in work, in love, in child raring, in our beliefs, in our hatreds; we are competitive beasts in thought and deed. Is not what we call ‘War’ simply unrestrained competition? We challenge life itself, and isn’t this once again man’s discontent with the basic life situation? Some of us must push life to its very limits just to show how brave we are. In our competitiveness are we not challenging death, our innate fear, and our lack of understanding for: why are we here; where did we come from; and where are we going?
Adolf Hitler is without any doubt a very competitive beast. At this point he has lost in the contest (WWI). Losing has caused such an insult to his competitive pride that he is attempting to rebuild himself and his followers. He is telling the losers that they could have been winners if they had only done such and such or acted in this or that manner - and it is working. His followers and those of his defeated nation are so starving for praise that they are willing to believe almost anything. Even that they are a super race chosen by God to rule the world. One still must wonder if there isn’t an elitist history ingrained in the German character. In other words which came first, Hitler and his elitist notions and speeches, or an elitist thinking German who was simply waiting to hear someone tell him what he already knew? We know that his talk of Jews was not his creation and that the German people were well tuned to hear, believe and act upon these type words. Adolf was telling these people what they wanted to hear.
But an even bigger question is, Are we all basically elitist at heart? Is our own country and society elitist?
Do not all religions claim to be God’s favorites and chosen? Does not almost everyone believe that in this universe God has designed a personal plan for him or her? If we do not believe this, do we not hope it? And if someone were to tell us that our nation is the greatest that were ever on this earth, are we not disposed to believe? Is this the problem? Wanting to believe that we are something special, chosen by the God of all Gods to be something special and rule throughout this whole universe? Is this not some sort of sick ego-mania?
People who think themselves to be Napoleon or Julius Caesar we strap up and lock in a padded cell, but as a human race we find no trouble in believing that we are the reason for the Universe. WE are the reason for all things. It is us and us alone who are the sole concern and purpose for all of the creations of this Universe. Is this not some sort of elitist egomaniacal insanity?
Yet we accept all of this as the Roman accepted Zeus and the Greeks accepted Athena. Is man not predisposed to some sort of egomania, along with his disposition towards hate and violence? We wonder why we have not been contacted by other creatures from out of Space. Could it not be that we are the insane asylum for the diseased and sick of the Universe - a dumping ground for the terminally insane?
I prefer to believe that we are some sort of evolving social beast struggling to overcome his personal selfishness and self-centered tendencies on a road to becoming domesticated or civilized. Our tendencies toward dominance, competitiveness, and self gratification are what must be dealt with.
“...a symptom of serious economic decay was the slow extinction of the personal right of possession and the gradual handing over of the entire economy into the possession of stockholders’ companies ... Only with this had labor truly sunk to the level of an object of speculation of unscrupulous hagglers; but the alienation of property from the employee, however, was now increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange began to triumph and proceed to take slowly but gradually the life of the nation in its charge and control.
“The internationalization of German economic life had been introduced even before the war by the roundabout way of the stock issues. Indeed, one part of German industry still tried to guard itself with determination against this fate; but then, in turn, it fell victim to the combined attack of greedy capital which fought this battle especially with the aid of its faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.”
Well, I must admit, I am at a loss when it comes to the stock market, and what in effect it really is. In our own day and age it looks to me to be some sort of Dog Track, or gambling casino for the better-off. Our gold and silver standards have fallen throughout the world. I have just heard on the news that many countries are right now in the process of selling their gold reserves (I have also never understood the human fascination with gold.)
Gold has traditionally been the ‘reason’ for paper money. Now without gold to back it up, paper money’s reason becomes, as far as I can see, the stability of the country from which it is issued, and more specifically the world’s view of that countries stability. So it seems now that we have money whose only backing is public and world public opinion. This looks like an area for great deception and future manipulation. An open invitation to the scheming, and unscrupulous among the world’s richest and most powerful.
The stock market is a place where promises are bought and sold. You can buy promises at the stock market with money, pieces of paper, whose backing is speculative, superficial, and determined by opinion and faith. So in effect you buy promises at the stock market with pieces of faith-paper in the hopes of getting more of the same. This all sounds somewhat reminiscent of the American Indian selling the Island of Manhattan for a bag of beads. The Indians sold an island which they didn’t own to another group of people who gave them a payment of counterfeit value. A sort of double swindle, if you will.
I am sure that my evaluation of the stock market (valueless pieces of paper, chasing notes of hopeful promises) stems from my basic lack of understanding of economics in general.
I also understand somewhat the value of paper money. Paper money adds to a country an ability to control and stabilize the economy. More paper can be added to meet the demands of a growing population and increases in goods to purchase; no gold discoveries or conquests are necessary, just faith and the rule of law.
Adolf mentions one German industry that was trying to fight the international, stock market take over trend. I would guess that he is talking about one of his eventual backers, Krupp Industries. According to William Manchester Krupp at one point in his armament business was forced to go to the Rothchilds for a loan. Krupp supposedly posted signs in his factory telling his workers that they would get no raises until “the Jew” had extracted his pound of flesh.
Little Alfreid Krupp was not a very grateful borrower, was he? Maybe he should have just done the decent thing and went out of business.
The Rothchild banking empire is a point that must be investigated. Certainly their hold on banking and the international implications of banking investment had to play some part in these updated versions of anti-Semitism. An investigation into the fundamentals, ethics and historical evolution of money lending would be interesting. And if the Jews were smart enough to control the whole world, so what? Isn’t what matters whether the Jews are moral decent human beings who have a respectful concern for their fellow man? Far better that a moral, respectful, kind hearted Jew, would rule the world than Adolf’s plan, don’t you think? Comparatively, we would all be taking music lessons and each of us would have his own violin, as opposed to being Einsatzgruppen and each family having its own Krupp cannon.
The extinction of the personal right of possession? What are we talking about here? The rise of the corporation? The idea that a business can be owned by many, and not just one? If the ‘stock holders’ of the German companies were all native born Germans, would this be good or bad? Could we not look at the stock market and the corporation, as democratic inventions for sharing the wealth and profits and expanding the businesses themselves? Again, is it that the stock market is evil and ff so, why? Is the corporation an evil idea? Why … because they are without loyalty to the nation and its people? Is this the fault of the corporation or the individuals who comprise it? Is making money an evil thing? Is making a lot of money an evil thing? If you yourself are able to compile all of the money profits in the entire world, is this an evil thing? What is evil? If a corporation were to control all of the business actions of the nation, but yet paid all of its employees decent wages which enabled them to care for all of the needs of themselves and their families, would this be an evil corporation? What if the stock holders of this corporation were the employees themselves? So what are we talking about?
If the whole world were eventually to become international corporations whose stock holders were all of the citizens of the world, whose employees were all of the citizens of the world, would this be an evil thing? Is Adolf an advocate of the small business man?
Autonomy? Does Adolf believe that all companies should be kept small and run by one individual? Is Adolf a ‘trust buster’? How does this conform to his idea of Socialism? In a Socialist state does not the state itself become a corporation? And in a Socialist state does not the state incorporate the powers of the individuals? Or is Adolf simply arguing about who should be in charge of the re-delegation?
‘Greedy Capitol’? Greedy capitol with its stock market and international attitude is destroying individual nationhood. And the greedy capitalist is doing this with the grassroots help of the anti-capitalistic Marxist labor movement. In other words, the anti-capitalistic Marxist and the laborers within that movement are being secretly manipulated by the rich internationalist capitalist whom the Marxist are at present trying to kill, to undermine the sovereignty of the nations of the world. And, of course, I needn’t forget to add that the rich internationalist capitalists who are behind all of this are all Jewish. And I wonder if they are not also in cahoots with the international pacifists who are also trying to convince the German people that war is not a good thing to do, thus trying to turn, not only Germany, but all of the nations of the world into cowards who will refuse to participate in their individual nation’s glorious Wars. And who, I wonder is the top internationalist, capitalist, pacifist Jew that is behind this conspiracy? This man or group is a very clever person or people.
Albert Einstein? I’ll bet it was he! There he was walking around telling everybody not to fight when all the time he had an atomic bomb right in his pocket. Ahh Haahh!
Adolf obviously is objecting to non German influences in his country’s affairs. So now it is incumbent upon him to define a ‘German’. He must do this so that we will know when a business is in the hands of a German or a Foreigner whose concerns are not truly on behalf of the host nation. And Adolf is obviously not willing to look upon himself or his nation as the ‘losers’ in an international conflict.
If Germany were truly occupied by foreign powers, they would have carted his ass off to jail at the first excuse and left him there permanently. And why didn’t they? Is it that his anti-Bolshevik stance, his praise of individualism, and his support of a ruling elite, had the western Aristocracy convinced that at heart he was truly one of them?
Was his attitude towards the Jews simply looked at as a ‘German’ thing, or was it also an accepted belief throughout the Western world? A belief held, possibly, without so much vindictive, but nevertheless accepted as basically true?
A footnote on page 320 notes the Nurnberg Laws which were passed in the year 1935. These laws established that no German could marry a Jew, and that extra marital relations between Jews and Germans were forbidden. What is interesting to me about this is that these laws and others like them were passed in 1935. But yet the claim is that ‘nobody knew’. The German people after the war kept claiming that they had no idea what little Adolf was up to. And the so called ‘free’ and as we assume today ‘informed’ world had no idea what Adolf and his playmates were up to when it came to their treatment of the Jews. Is the truth that the world didn’t know, or that they didn’t really care, or possibly that deep down in their heart of hearts, they silently agreed?
In the next few pages Adolf gives his analysis of the German Monarchy. All of which seems to boil down to the notion that true leaders are born but not breed. A true leader is a man of ‘will’, a man of determination, a man with no fear of death, whether it is his own or that of those that he must slay. He goes on to state that a nation or a state owes its existence not to business but to ‘eternally ideal values’. And we should all have some idea of what Adolf’s idea of ‘eternally ideal values’ are. I find myself here thinking once again of Bertrand Russell’s comments that Nazism is and was a leftist movement, or of leftist origin and inclination. Adolf to me seems to be about as far right as anyone can get. He is not against Monarchy because he believes in Democracy, far from it. He is against Monarchy because it doles out leadership and demands loyalty on the basis of heredity, rather than on the ‘eternally idealist values’ of natural leadership proven on the battlefield and in the streets. In this respect Adolf is truly a man of the ‘people’; a man of modest or poor rank and status. But though of poor rank and low social status not lacking in the least for ego, and individual pride for his own personal achievements. There is absolutely no question in anyone’s mind or shouldn’t be at this point that Adolf considers himself to be a born, natural, leader - Adolf, the Sergeant General, or more accurately, the Corporal General.
I understand perfectly where Adolf is coming from. I too consider myself a General. I am the leader of my personal army of one, and in order to keep my army in tact, I must be constantly cautious, and always willing to defend myself against attack from all of you other Generals serving in your own army of one, and also all of those Generals serving in the army of the many. And the same ‘natural’ principles apply ... courage, determination, belief, confidence, no fear of death and dying. But I would also add intelligence, understanding, a thirst for acquired knowledge, and recognition of the natural right of all other Generals to defend their territory in a like manner.
Adolf next gives his views of ‘Readers’.
“...Thereby one can divide the readers as a whole into three groups. First, those who believe everything that they read; Secondly, those who no longer believe anything. Thirdly, those who critically examine what they have read and judge accordingly...”
Dahh! And what category do you place yourself in?
Adolf is obviously a Platonist. He likes to divide everything up into categories, and then come to some simplistic conclusion based on his oversimplification of the situation. But this is the way that the human mind works. This is the way of human logic. This is the way of the cave man and the modern man. This is the way of the child and the adult, the male and the female.
Everyone who reads thinks of themselves as a critical reader. And I would venture to guess that even those who don’t read at all would submit themselves to be critical if they chose ever to take up reading. It is good to be critical, even better to be correct. It is easy to be the former but very difficult to even determine the latter.
Naturally, all of us in Adolf’s third category will next be told or led to believe how intelligent and critical we are to believe what he has to say. Heil Hitler!
“...But what food was it that the German press of the pre-war time put before these people? Was it not the worst conceivable poison? Was not the worst kind of Pacifism inoculated into the heart of our people, at a time when the rest of the world was about to throttle Germany slowly but surely? Did not this press, even in times of peace, instill into the brains of the people doubts about the rights of their own state, in order to restrict it from the beginning in the choice of the means for its defense? Was it not the German press which knew how to make palpable to our people the nonsense of ‘Western Democracy’, till finally, captured by all of these enthusiastic tirades, it thought that it could entrust its future to a league of Nations?...”
Adolf, obviously still does not realize or accept that Germany has actually lost the war. He talks like an innocent man behind bars. He complains of the food, his living space, and his overall mistreatment. He wrote this book in prison and it is too bad for the world that he wasn’t kept there. But it is clear from his point of view that Germany did not start the war and his country’s only shame comes from not bringing it to a positive German conclusion. He hates the league of nations, his Weimar government, his country’s traditional leadership, the democratic socialists, the Marxist communist, the stock market, capitalists, the foolish Kaiser of the past government, the cowardly pacifist or peace mongers, the appeasers. He is against anybody and everybody who is not willing to take up arms and renew the fight. He is a man with a direction and a purpose and fully committed to his goal. And let us not forget his hatred of the press and their vicious inability to tell the German people the truth. And, of course, the truth was whatever Adolf said it was. Adolf would rather have had his countrymen fight to the last man than to quit the struggle. And that too may have been the best course for the victors to have taken.
Most historians and war generals on both sides agree that Germany was at a point of inevitable defeat, but instead of closing in for the kill, they accepted a surrender proposal. They learned their lesson, and at the culmination of World War II no compromise was accepted, other than total surrender and occupation.
“...the activity of the so called liberal press was the work of grave diggers for the German people and the German Reich. One can pass by in silence the Marxist papers of lies; to them lying is as necessary to their life as catching mice is to the cat; but its task is only to break the people’s folkish and national spine in order to make it ripe for the yoke of slavery of international capital and its masters, the Jews...”
This argument of ‘internationalism verses nationalism’ is alive and vibrant today. The gradual and continuous trend is towards internationalism. Today we have the United Nations. We have what are called multinational companies. We are having buyouts on a grand scale. The big money and trade throughout the world is turning to monopolistic control. Historically, and traditionally, nations have been trying to fight the growth and power of monopolistic growth to stimulate competition. But the monopolistic trend has superceded the boundaries of nation states and now operates above and beyond the laws of nations. In response, the nations of the world are leaning towards a new world government, and a system of international law. This idea is nothing new. The abuses of international monopolies are readily apparent.
The human race knows from the past the power of monopolies. What we don’t know is the individual nations’ reactions and adaptations to such an undermining influence to their power and nationhood. Nor do we know the grassroots individual reaction to international monopolistic influences of their everyday competitive lives.
Will international monopolies not only be able to rule over the marketplace but eventually take over the political structures of independent nations to the point of controlling not only their economies but also their armies? Will the wars of the future be caused by competing monopolies and loyalties be drawn according to one’s economic position and dependence on a particular monopoly? Or will monopolies eventually become so big that they are unmanageable on a huge monopolistic scale and will stumble back into fragmentary segments and smaller competitive units. Will loyalty to one’s job supersede national loyalty? Will Monopolies form their own independent armies, as did the British East India Company? Or will individual nations appalled by the power and growth, revive nationalistic appeals to the peoples of their countries and institute practices curtailing the trading power of Monopolies?
We are once again in a ‘free’ International market place. Will the monopolies of the future act more civilly in a more civilized world? Or will uncontrolled competition lead to more brutality and slaughter for the human race?
Adolf saw this trend towards internationalism as destructive, but yet he was unable to control or curtail its inevitableness even during his own reign. When Adolf tried at one point to limit the sales of Krupp Industries, Alfried told Adolf to back off or he would take his factory to Moscow. The best commitment that Adolf could get from Alfried was that Alfried agreed to sell the latest innovations in military weaponry to Germany, his homeland, and only sell last years gun, bomb, plane, or tank to the enemy, or potential enemies. And when we look at the arms industry today are we not in the very same position? Are we not, and will we not continue to be in an inevitable arms race due to traditional economic factors regardless of nationhood?
