END OF GERMAN CAPITALISM
215
crisis of capitalism has reached such proportions that economics
has become 'politicalized,' so to speak. Politics dominates econ–
omy, rather than, as in the last century, the opposite. The great,
perhaps the fatal, error made by Marxists in the post-1918 period
was to attach too much significance to economic forms, -whether
capitalist or socialist, and too little to new methods of political
control which have arisen and which have been used to manipulate
these forms in such a way as to negate their content.
J.
Outside Germany: Nazism and World Capitalism
The internal economic policies of the Nazis flowed logically
from their conception of the relationship of Germany to world
capitalism. It was on the field of foreign policy that the decisive
struggle took place between the Nazi bureaucracy and the German
business community. As
in
the conflict over internal economic
policy, the Nazis won because their conceptions were closer to the
realities of modem power politics than were those of the bour–
geoisie. And the Nazi economic policies have had the same destruc–
tive effect on the world market and the world' capitalist system as
they have had on the capitalist structure of Germany itself.
By the year 1936, it was clear that Germany would have to
choose between two possible foreign policies: (1) to try to fit Ger–
many into the world market, obtaining from the 'have' powers
concessions of colonies and access to raw materials, coming to
some agreement with them on tariffs and trading areas, and gen–
erally attempting to gain enough outlet in the world market for
profitable use of Germany's tremendous productive capacity; (2)
to
tum away from the world market and international collabora–
tion, concentrating the entire national energies on building up a
war machine powerful enough to smash the rival imperialisms so
as to take by force what Germany needed and, above all, to estab–
lish a political dominance over Germany's beaten enemies that
would guarantee her future.
The first course meant, in essence, to attempt to reconstruct
the depression-damaged world market and to create, through com–
ing
to a peaceful agreement with the other great imperialisms, a
stable new world-capitalist order in which Germany would have a
position truly reflecting her economic power. This policy was
favored by practically the entire business community, which saw
