The Robber Barons concept is a myth invented by a socialist.
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The American State Religion
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I agree with rockfox that left and right are mostly meaningless terms. In the US, there is a political philosophy called libertarianism. To people beset by irritating and crushing bureaucracy and senseless laws this has great appeal, representing sweet relief, but they seldom consider the downside. ...Libertarianism is a selfish dream, for it completely abandons one’s fellow man. ‘So long as me and mine do well, the rest of the world can go to hell.’
Keith Martin try to explain this:
German National Socialism was not 'Socialism' as one may think.
Why not read of it from one who knows what it was?
Nationalism and Socialism
by Hermann Göring
My dear citizens! We are living through a National Socialist revolution. We emphasize the term “socialist” because many speak only of a “national” revolution. Dubious, but also wrong. It was not only nationalism that led to the breakthrough. We are proud that German socialism also triumphed. Unfortunately, there are still people among us today who emphasize the word “national” too strongly and who do not want to know anything about the second part of our worldview, which shows that they have also failed to understand the first part. Those who do not want to recognize a German socialism do not have the right to call themselves national.
Only he who emphasizes German socialism is truly national. He who refuses to speak of socialism, who believes in socialism only in the Marxist sense, or to whom the word “socialism” has an unpleasant ring, has not understood the deepest meaning of nationalism. He has not understood that one can only be a nationalist when one sees social problems openly and clearly. And on the other hand, one can only be a socialist when he clearly sees that nationalism must triumph to protect the living space of a people from outside forces.
Just as nationalism protects a people from outside forces, so socialism serves a people’s domestic needs. We want the people’s strength to be released within the nation, forging the people once more into a strong block. The individual citizen must again have the sense that, even if he is finds himself in the simplest and lowest position, that his life and opportunities are assured. He should see that his own existence is rooted in the existence of his people and that he must serve his people will all his strength. If I want to ensure that each individual has the ability to survive, that each individual German can be active, can work, can support himself once more, I must also work to ensure that conditions beyond our borders make that possible.
We did not make a national revolution in the sense of a barren, outdated hyper-patriotism, but rather this revolution is in the truest sense of the word a National Socialist revolution. Previously the two fought each other, divided by hatred and unfortunate enmity. Nationalism and socialism stood opposed: the bourgeoisie supported nationalism, the Marxists socialism. The bourgeoisie fell into a barren hyper-patriotism, lost in pacifistic cowardice. On the other side, a Marxist layer of the people, a Marxist class, wanted nothing to do with the Reich or a people. There was no bridge between them.
Marxist socialism was degraded to a concern only with pay or the stomach. The bourgeoisie degraded nationalism into barren hyper-patriotism. Both concepts, therefore, must be cleansed and shown to the people anew, in a crystal-clear form. The nationalism of our worldview arrived at the right moment. Our movement seized the concept of socialism from the cowardly Marxists, and tore the concept of nationalism from the cowardly bourgeois parties, throwing both into the melting pot of our worldview, and producing a clear synthesis: German national Socialism. That provided the foundation for the rebuilding of our people. Thus this revolution was National Socialist.
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So, they were socialist, just not Marxist. I can't see how you can in any way take this quote that describes what type of socialism they had, and because it is not Marxism, conclude that it is not socialism either, when the whole point of the quote is to describe clearly that they were socialists! It was socialism. Their own flavour of socialism of course, different to other flavours, but still socialism.
What I gleaned from Mein Kampf and other sources is that Hitler was neither exclusively left-wing nor exclusively right-wing. He was a traditionalist and nationalist who opposed capitalism, Marxism, and unlimited individualism to an extent. He understood the importance of the collective well-being of the German folk for keeping the nation healthy and the state functional and advanced. The well-being of the state relies on the well-being of the nation/folk and on the well-being of the individual but also relies on individual sacrifice for the nation and state. That's why he did implement policies that could be considered left-wing like the NSV to uplift the individual. Also, Hitler clearly stated that he believed that Marxism was a tool used by Jews to achieve international capitalism. National socialism is about race whereas Marxism is about class. Hitler believed poverty and immorality of Germans within Germany was due to the Jews and their aspiration for supremacy.
Adolf Hitler was a National Socialist who had run and won against international Socialism and Communism both of which Hitler hated. Hitler's so called Socialism was capitalistic and companies remained privately owned. Pride in the quality of the workmanship of the workers and a decent wage for the work done was strongly encouraged by him. The German entrepreneurs and their workers were under strict government regulations which gave both equal rights with the state intervening in cases of conflicts and the government imposing its decisions if the disputes would have put the economy in danger.
Morally the Hitler government leaned to the right and Conservatism.
He expected excellence and wanted a nation in which people would be proud of their contribution to society and he wanted to have that pride socialized and its foremost contributors rewarded as he saw fit. He expressed this condition of the German nation as national racial (Aryan) solidarity.
Hitler created a work-force which was to be truly free due to the fact that unemployment and poverty enslaves and hurts people and creates divisions and misery.
In other words, just like the socialism of the USA, New Zealand, and other Western countries today, where we're technically allowed to still "own" our companies and property - but the government tells us how to run them, gradually seizing more and more control while leaving a deception of freedom. There's nothing new under the sun.
If we were to criticize Hitler, it would not be for how well he ran the German economy! We know for a fact that he did an amazing job of turning the German economy around. Private ownership works, and has been proven to be tremendously successful. The French Revolution predated Marxism, and what we witnessed was the calloused result of a society that demanded equality. Robespeirre defined virtue as supporting the revolution. Today, we have these Marxists running around doing this virtue signaling, and it is eerily similar to the French Revolution. If you don't support leftist policies, off with your head!
I also think that the words Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Free Market, Capitalism and possibly a few other words in economics are extremely emotionally loaded and have different meanings and interpretations here in America. I think you and many others on this forum define anybody to the left of Reagan or any government involvement as socialist or Marxist which is too extreme in my opinion. Clearly there is no common understanding of the meaning of socialism and capitalism. I believe Hitler defined the word in a nationalistic sense as describing the German people. He clearly did not support the state supported socialism of the USSR. You can clearly understand that if you would have read the links I posted. I think Hitler is a blend of left wing and right wing thinking.
Fascism is a capitalist response to socialism
A fascist economic system is capitalist, but with a mixture of very heavy government influence. In fascism, the government reinforces, supports, and sustains private capitalist workplaces. It rigidly enforces the employer/employee dichotomy central to capitalist enterprises. Private capitalists support fascism when they fear losing their position as capitalist employers, especially during social upheavals.
Under fascism, there is a kind of mutually supportive merging of government and private workplaces. Fascist governments tend to “deregulate,” gutting worker protections won earlier by unions or socialist governments. They help private capitalists by destroying trade unions or replacing them with their own organizations which support, rather than challenge, private capitalists.
Frequently, fascism embraces nationalism to rally people to fascist economic objectives, often by using enhanced military expenditures and hostility toward immigrants or foreigners. Fascist governments influence foreign trade to help domestic capitalists sell goods abroad and block imports to help them sell their goods inside national boundaries.
Usually, fascists repress socialism. In Europe’s major fascist systems—Spain under Franco, Germany under Hitler, and Italy under Mussolini—socialists and communists were arrested, imprisoned, and often tortured and killed.
A similarity between fascism and socialism seems to arise because both seek to strengthen government and its interventions in society. However, they do so in different ways and toward very different ends. Fascism seeks to use government to secure capitalism and national unity, defined often in terms of ethnic or religious purity. Socialism seeks to use government to end capitalism and substitute an alternative socialist economic system, defined traditionally in terms of state-owned and -operated workplaces, state economic planning, employment of dispossessed capitalists, workers’ political control, and internationalism.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/socialism-for-dummies-or_b_768464
I found this presentation interesting. It explores the substance behind the many isms.
It wasn't a myth to the extent that people like John Rockefeller tried to establish a monopoly on oil, he used violence to shut down competitors, and when Standard Oil was finally broken up for being an illegal cartel Rockefeller managed to make himself even wealthier as a result.
120 years later we're faced with the monopolies of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Wal Mart, and etc. who protect their market shares with highly illicit practices.
Nothing changed, the robber barons just discovered that so long as they support Democrats they can get away with their behavior.
Rockefeller's innovations brought us goods we didn't even consider having. Gasoline was considered to be a waste product because it was too volatile. Using pipelines to transport fuel, was a concept no one had ever considered before. The only reason Vanderbilt invited Rockefeller to the initial meeting, was the fact that there were more trains available than were necessary for passenger traffic.
In general, people fared much better when the innovators of the 19th century began producing goods and bringing them to market. The price of goods went down and the standard of living went way up. Rather than using a steam driven automobile, which was prone to catch fire, the so-called Robber barons innovated a starter switch, which made it much easier to start an automobile. The fact is, those so-called robber barons were not even barons to begin with. A baron is someone born into wealth, but while that could be said for J.P. Morgan, it could not be said for people like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, or his protégé, Tesla, who incidently made it his life goal to make electricity free for everyone. To claim that they were robbers, is based on gross ignorance of many of the industrialists, whose attempts at wealth, involved getting grants from the federal government, but their ventures were abysmal failures. The most successful businessmen of the 19th century, did not rely on government subsidies. In fact, Vanderbilt was successful in putting Collins out of business, and driving him into bankruptcy. Collins was robbing the American taxpayer blind!
It was a revisionist historian, Matthew Josephson, in the 1930s who invented the myth that the capitalist industrialists were robber barons. He was extremely sympathetic to Communism, and he was heavily influenced by Charles Beard, a professor who was known to promote Socialism. "The Robber Barons", was written in 1932, when industrialists were being demonized as scapegoats for the Depression, that was caused by the Smoot-Harley tariffs, high interest rates, making it difficult to get capital for investments, and high taxation.
Here is an excellent link to an article that explains that Josephson was not a true historian, but rather an elitist who created a false history out of whole cloth:
https://fee.org/articles/how-the-myth-of-the-robber-barons-began-and-why-it-persists/
In general, people fared much better when the innovators of the 19th century began producing goods and bringing them to market. The price of goods went down and the standard of living went way up. Rather than using a steam driven automobile, which was prone to catch fire, the so-called Robber barons innovated a starter switch, which made it much easier to start an automobile. The fact is, those so-called robber barons were not even barons to begin with. A baron is someone born into wealth, but while that could be said for J.P. Morgan, it could not be said for people like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, or his protégé, Tesla, who incidently made it his life goal to make electricity free for everyone. To claim that they were robbers, is based on gross ignorance of many of the industrialists, whose attempts at wealth, involved getting grants from the federal government, but their ventures were abysmal failures. The most successful businessmen of the 19th century, did not rely on government subsidies. In fact, Vanderbilt was successful in putting Collins out of business, and driving him into bankruptcy. Collins was robbing the American taxpayer blind!
It was a revisionist historian, Matthew Josephson, in the 1930s who invented the myth that the capitalist industrialists were robber barons. He was extremely sympathetic to Communism, and he was heavily influenced by Charles Beard, a professor who was known to promote Socialism. "The Robber Barons", was written in 1932, when industrialists were being demonized as scapegoats for the Depression, that was caused by the Smoot-Harley tariffs, high interest rates, making it difficult to get capital for investments, and high taxation.
Here is an excellent link to an article that explains that Josephson was not a true historian, but rather an elitist who created a false history out of whole cloth:
https://fee.org/articles/how-the-myth-of-the-robber-barons-began-and-why-it-persists/
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According to Merriam-Webster
4: a man who possesses great power or influence in some field of activity
a cattle baron
OK, fine they fit that definition, but what is so objectionable about having great wealth? They certainly don't fit the more commonly understood definition of someone who is born into great wealth. Those men, for the most part, earned their wealth through ingenuity.
That confirms they were a third way, but doesn't really explain what they meant by socialism. In America we associate it only with marxism. But social democracy is the reigning political philosophy in Europe, and not much different than what the US practices.
I went through a Libertarian phase long ago, before I understood how markets truly worked. We have a sort of two ditches logical fallacy in US politics. The left thinks corporations are evil and the government can do no wrong and the right thinks corporations are good and government is evil. Both are wrong. Market libertarians are a form of the latter, thinking the market can do no wrong. That is mistaken, our markets are only possible because of government regulation. Without it modern society would not even be possible.
The problem with our current system is it is hyper-individualistic. If a person can increase his profit by shipping every last job overseas and impoverishing the nation that birthed him he will not only get away with it, he will be rewarded. He can murder people for profit by the hundreds of thousands and receive only a paltry fine, if that. This is the unregulated market. All in all it makes the people a slave to the market when the market should instead serve our needs. You can't ensure that without some form of regulation. For an everyday example of that played out in corporate mindset see: Human Resources.
History is replete with their abuses. One cannot seriously read mid-American history and not see evidence of that all over the place. And the perverse affects of their actions affect us yet today in immense ways. Far more than most could ever imagine.
I'm not envious and am no friend of marxists. It's not that the robber barons had great wealth. It's how they got it and what they did with it. Corrupt through and through. You might want to stop a second and think why a person would even pursue great wealth?
I agree. But some of them maintained their grip on the markets with unfair monopolistic practices that shut out potential competitors.
The major problem with monopolies is that they stifle innovation and they become lethargic. Whether the monopolies are capitalist or socialist they deliberately and maliciously stomp on innovation and see it as a threat to their power. Preventing the rise of monopolies is in the best interest of the public except to the extent that someone enjoys the fruits of their innovations via the patent process.
That's partially true, partially false. Monopolies don't give the consumer buying power, but they certainly did NOT stifle innovation in the 19th century! You gotta understand that at that time, the laws against monopolies were new and were written specifically to target those people. It is no different than today, when we see laws that are perceived to be unjust and are targeting people in a certain group, so those groups whom the new laws targeted, felt that they were unjust. Vanderbilt put Collins out of business, because he ran his steamships, much better and more efficiently than did Collins, not because he engaged in any unfair practices. Once he became the only player in the market, he was able to charge whatever he wanted to charge, but in practice, what we saw in the 19th century, was consumers ability to buy more goods than before. The cost of everything dropped. Incomes went up.
One notable exception is when Carnegie had Frick running his operation. Workers decided to stage a sit in, and they had the whole Pinkerton fiasco. Another disaster associated with a mentor of Carnegie, was when the workers decided to torch the trains that were no longer able to carry Rockerfeller's oil. Both of these were partly to blame on these so-called robber barons, but a portion of the blame rightfully belongs on those workers who felt a sense of entitlement.
In Texas, we think differently than other places. We call it "At Will employment". It never feels good to lose a job, but when you get out there and conduct a diligent search, when the economic engine is running properly, finding a replacement job is not all that difficult. Recessions are at their worst, when they linger for a period beyond what an employee is able to save or receive in their severance package, and I had one instance where I received nothing...no notice, nada. I landed on my feet, because the competition for skilled labor was fierce. The amount I received from Unemployment was minimal, but the company I went to work for, was trying to find the best and most talented workers, and they paid a competitive salary, much more than what I was making before, and offered relocation benefits and a hefty sign on bonus.
This whole notion that companies are required to pay a "living wage", is stupid. The government is supposed to decide for everyone, what amount we should live on. How is that supposed to work. The cost of living in one place, you can live quite well on $15.00 an hour. Other places, not so much! And how does inflation factor into all this? What's next? are they going to tell landlords how much they are allowed to charge for rent? Are they going to tell the automobile dealerships how much they can charge for a vehicle? Why not have price fixing at the grocery stores?
In short, there are good practices that benefit consumers, that end up driving bad competitors out of the market. There are also reasonable restrictions on one business using the intellectual property of another business, which is why companies often have patent frenzies, and they pay workers nice bonuses to come up with new patents. To some extent, that freezes competition out of the market, and with the pace of development of high tech, that freezing out is so extensive that the only way a competitor can combat that, is to come up with their own patented ideas for their products. I brought up the Vanderbilt/Collins situation, because it clearly demonstrates that you can have monopolies, not necessarily because of unfair business practices on your part. There are a few other examples that Burt Folsom has brought up as well, of colossal failures on the part of businesses, who did in fact go to the government for subsidies time and time again, while the entrepreneurs who competed against them and drove them out of business, received no such funding from the federal government, and in the case of Vanderbilt, offered to provide his service for half of the subsidy money that Collins was asking for.
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