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PARTISAN REVIEW
omy. The German big bourgeoisie no longer 'use' the Nazi bureau·
cracy, the relationship is reversed. Schacht, the responsible repre·
sentative of heavy industry and finance capital, has been deprived
even of his control of the Reichsbank. His policies have been
reversed. The National Economic Chamber and the other once·
powerful business associations have been stripped of the policy·
making powers they held up to 1936, and have been reduced to
the role of administrative agencies through which the policies
decided upon by the bureaucracy are transmitted to the business
community. The various bodies set up since 1936 to deeide
national economic policy have included few, if any, representa·
tives of the business community.* In a word, the bourgeoisie have
been displaced by a new ruling class, the bureaucracy; capitalism
has yielded to bureaucratic collectivism.
2.
Inside Germany: State Capitalism or Bureaucratic
Collectivism?
So much for the historical evolution of the present German
economy.
It
has been shown that there was a basic policy conflict
between the Nazis and the business community, that the policies of
the former have triumphed, and that the groups and individuals
representing the big bourgeoisie have been removed from the key
economic controls since 1936. The question must still be answered,
however: why isn't this simply the transition to 'State capitalism,'
the logical last stage of monopoly-capitalistic development? First
there was the monopolization of individual branches of production
-steel, coal, etc.-by powerful finance-capital groups. Now these
monopolistic powers have united to form a 'super-trust' embracing
the entire national economy, with the Nazis in political control as
the famous 'executive committee of the bourgeoisie.' The rise of
monopolies, the argument continues, has neither destroyed capi·
talism nor moderated the economic contradictions of capitalism,
but on the contrary has intensified these contradictions. So why
*Three such bodies may be noted. First, the Second Four-Year Plan Board, com·
posed exclusively of Nazi bureaucrats and Army officers, with not even Schacht on it.
Second, the Privy Council Hitler set up after the February, 1938, 'purge,' whose eight
members included not a single business spokesman. Third, the Economic General
Staff set up by Goering, after the war began, to run the national war effort. Of its 13
members, 1 was an Army officer, 3 were Nazi politicians, and 9 were State secretaries
in various ministries. There were jokes in business circles about 'the dictatorship of
the secretariat'-and not only jokee.
