PAIUISAN REVIEW
Or coal or iron will have to be purchased by means of goods that will
then be insufficient for a given barter agreement. In other words,
in
the case of national socialism, the location of the frontier posts is
of great importance: trade within economic units and trade between
economic units become different in character.
Inevitably, a partisan of national socialism inclines to the
theory of the
Grossraum.
The authoritarian organization of an
economic whole develops the more smoothly, the less obstacles are
encountered by the
will
of the planners. By definition, the planners
do not dispose over the people and the raw materials situated on
the other side of the customs line. They cannot foresee the free
prices of the raw materials they must import, nor can they foresee
the changing tastes of those who by buying their manufactured
products, supply them from the outside with foreign currency. Com–
pulsory subjection to the foreign customer means the survival of a
principle which the planners are attempting to suppress at home.
Subjection changes into sovereignty on the day when sellers and
buyers have been reduced by force of arms to the common law of
a planned economy.
Russia, though lagging behind in her equipment, was better
adjusted to the so-called Marxist experiment because she was less
dependent on international trade than any other European country.
Capable in an emergency of being more or less self-sufficient, she
could resist the blockade and apply to the full the idea of authori–
tarian planning. But when applied to national economies that are
traditionally bound up with world economy, the same method in–
evitably gives
rise
to imperialist temptations. The ambition for con–
quest and the dream of rationalization are combined in the
Grossraum
theory.
Thus we are far from denying the imperialistic potentialities of
the economic policy adopted by the National Socialists. We maintain
only that the Third Reich was not driven to imperialism by residues
of capitalism in its structure.
If
the private entrepreneurs or managers
had been replaced by government-appointed managers, if the Ruhr
had been nationalized, if the planning had been total, the imperialist
temptation would not have been mitigated. Rather, the opposite
is true.
If
German heavy industry had become collective property,
it would not have been less disproportionate to the needs of the
