Economists From Germany

"National autonomy in economic matters should not be an obstacle to a free world economic system. But to achieve free convertibility within the European Payments Union only would lead to further upheavals. The dollar and the pound sterling should be included in any such step, if a new single world market was to be created. A free political order implied a free economic order; this would stand foremost amongst the preoccupations of the new Bundestag."

"[Erhard said that] no other country had advanced to such a degree as western Germany in the past five years. They could not stand still, however; production must be raised and consumption increased. ... Abroad...it had become the habit to speak about the German "miracle". In fact, there was no miracle. What had been achieved in the past five years was due to German initiative and industriousness. Western Germany to-day had one of the soundest currencies in the world; bottlenecks had been overcome and the trade balance was favourable. He looked forward to widening consumption so that such things as refrigerators, washing machines, motor-cycles, and motor-cars could be made available to new classes of the community. Plans were in hand for stimulating consumption to this end."

"[Erhard said that] in the next four years he would fight unrelentingly against all forms of restrictive practices. The threat to the German economy came not so much from the Social Democrats as from opposition within the economy to free competition. "I will not retreat one step from my stand on the subject of cartels and professional rings. It will be a hard fight." He warned industrialists that they endangered the whole economic system by their predilection for cartels in the search for an illusory security. There was no security for the owner of a business."

"A collectivist-totalitarian economic system, which in the final analysis serves only to glorify and increase the power of the state, can achieve great success in the easily controllable field of the basic industries but it will always remain incapable of serving man, in other words of providing the rich abundance of goods which gives the individual consumer a free choice and which enriches and beautifies his life."

"Ludwig Erhard had by this time [1975] retired from any involvement in active politics, but apparently he had heard that my politics (and economics) were sufficiently different (that is to say similar to his own) to make a discussion appealing. I was glad to discover that the former Chancellor, as well as being the architect of German prosperity, had a considerable presence and shrewdness. He asked me a number of searching questions about my economic approach, at the end of which he seemed satisfied. I felt I had performed well in an important tutorial."

"In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder [Miracle on the Rhine]. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty -- that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders -- the German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled."

"In January 1947, the US and Britain established a common economic policy for their zones. France joined the following year, making it the ‘Trizone’. The economist Ludwig Erhard was appointed as director of the Economic Council and oversaw the smooth transition to the new currency, the Deutschmark. He coupled it with eliminating both price controls and rationing. Erhard’s bold economic policy inspired a recovery that eventually enabled political reconstruction based on a constitution approved by the Allied Powers."

"May I tell you the story of when I last spoke to Dr Ludwig Erhard? We were alone for a moment and he turned to me and said, “I hope you don't misunderstand me when I speak of a social market economy (sozialen Marktwirtschaft). I mean by that that the market economy as such is social, not that it needs to be made social.”"

"Like everyone else, I was familiar with Erhard's heavy bulk, and I knew his reputation for stubbornness. But when I met him, I found that he was subtle and highly intelligent – although we did not always agree. The prestige he enjoyed was well deserved: he had shown clear-sighted courage in successfully imposing and carrying out his ideas. He had no reason to doubt the superiority of the so-called ‘liberal’ economic policies that had worked so well in his own country. He was no nationalist, but the Schuman Plan had no place in his vision of an international economy based on pure free trade. Where we were proposing a code of good conduct, he scented the danger of dirigisme; where we were organizing European solidarity, he suspected protectionism."

"What Erhard said was breath-taking in its simplicity. Provided the state defends the currency, he said, there is no need to control prices, wages, goods, capital or anything else. In fact, so long as these controls remain, we shall continue to suffer from both inflation and scarcity. Abolish the lot and all will come right. The miracle was that he got away with being allowed to do it. ... In the early stages of his policy, Erhard was surrounded by capitalists and unionists, economists and bankers, crying “Woe, woe” and warning of the dire and imminent consequences of removing what they imagined were the foundations on which the fabric of things rested. As he used to say, “My room resounds with catastrophe from morn to night.” But he was right, and they were wrong: the new mark stayed rock hard and Germany in a decade was contemplating the economies of her victors with patronising contempt."

"Erhard was a man who had his moment in history and grasped it. As head of the Economic Department of the administration which preceded the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, he was the author of the decision to combine the currency reform of 1948 with the abolition of rationing, and of restrictive regulations concerning production, distribution and capital movements. Many have argued that Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ (and not less the political miracle) owes much to these decisions which at the time were regarded as either unrealistic or indefensible by many, including the Occupation Powers."

"Heartiest congratulations on your great victory. I look forward to an early chance to meet with you again and to discuss our great common tasks in working for the peace of Europe, the reunion of Germany, and the steady growth of the Atlantic community."

"In a community of free people the freedom of economic activity is an inseparable part of the whole, and only this freedom will ensure a life worth living."

"Who carries the real responsibility and who is responsible to whom? Naturally the Christian reply is: Let every man carry responsibility, and in fact each man is responsible to his conscience, his fellowmen and finally to God. But when I, for example, have the pleasure of holding discussions with representatives of various groups, I seldom feel that they are aware of this responsibility; on the contrary, I hear talk of nothing but a unilateral responsibility to the interests they are representing. In such cases, if the concept of 'responsibility' is not turned upside-down, it is at least so devalued and falsified that one can only speak of rank misuse."

"Stability is not everything, but without stability, everything is nothing."

"The idea of interest on loans is the diabolical invention of big loan-capital; it alone makes possible the lazy drone's life of a minority of tycoons at the expense of the productive peoples and their work-potential."

"This [mammonist] mindset is embodied and reaches its acme in international plutocracy. The chief source of power for Mammonism is the effortless and endless income that is produced through interest."

"The only cure, the radical means to heal suffering humanity is the abolition of enslavement to interest on money."

"Mammonism is the heavy, all-encompassing and overwhelming sickness from which our contemporary cultural sphere, and indeed all mankind, suffers. It is like a devastating illness, like a devouring poison that has gripped the peoples of the world."

"By Mammonism is to be understood: on the one hand, the overwhelming international money-powers, the supragovernmental financial power enthroned above any right of self-determination of peoples, international big capital, the purely Gold International; on the other hand, a mindset that has taken hold of the broadest circle of peoples; the insatiable lust for gain, the purely worldly-oriented conception of life that has already led to a frightening decline of all moral concepts and can only lead to more."

"The abolition of enslavement to interest on money signifies the only possible and conclusive liberation of productive labor from the hidden coercive money-powers."

"The abolition of enslavement to interest signifies the restoration of the free personality, the redemption of man from slavery, from the curse whereby Mammonism has bound his soul."

"The interest slavery of the nation means the rule of the bank and stock-exchange. The breaking of interest slavery is by far the greatest task of National Socialism."

"Nazi leaders almost without exception ensured that their ‘anti-capitalism’ remained highly selective. Their definition of capitalism and capitalists made it possible to exonerate some of Germany’s most rapacious and reactionary employers from the charge of profiteering."

"The interest capitalistic inflation however is like a devouring fire which is not extinguished until it has consumed all the treasures of the world and made the whole of mankind interest-slaves of international finance—or until the interest slavery is broken."

"Gottfried Feder gave the Nazi Party an ideology. Its essential points were paramount State ownership of land and the prohibition of private sales of land, the substitution of German for Roman law, nationalization of the banks and the abolition of interest by an amortization service. It was he, too, who inspired the Party with its doctrine of the distinction between productive and non-productive capital and of the necessity for destroying the ‘slavery of profits.’"

"All state revenues flowing from direct and indirect sources pour constantly into the pockets of big loan-capital."

"Removal of the housing shortage through comprehensive new housing buildings throughout the Reich by means of the new non-profit Construction and Economic Bank to be created according to Art. 21."

"The introduction of a year of compulsory work for every German."

"Suppression of all harmful influences in literature and the press, stage, art and cinema."

"Mammonism is the sinister, invisible, mysterious reign of the great international money-powers. Mammonism is however also a mindset; it is the worship of these money-powers on the part of all those who are infected with the Mammonistic poison."

"Mammonism is the unlimited hypertrophy of the — in itself healthy — human drive for acquisition. Mammonism is the lust for money grown into a madness, which knows no higher goal than to pile money on top of money, which seeks with unequaled brutality to coerce all forces of the world into its service, and must lead to the economic enslavement, to the exploitation of the work-potential of all peoples of the world."

"Our anti-Marxist battle is directed against the state-disintegrating doctrine of the Jew Karl Marx, against the people-disintegrating doctrine of class-struggle, against the economy-disintegrating doctrine of the denial of private property and against the purely economic materialistic conception of history."

"But for National Socialism with this demand for social justice stands and falls the question of destiny for the German people, whether the German people can find its way to a noble nation, or whether it will eke out a miserable life in degradation and corruption as a fellaheen nation."

"Our anti-Mammonistic battle, which is ranged above the other two battle-fronts, is directed against the world-encompassing financial power, that is, against the permanent financial and economic bleeding and exploitation of our people through large loan capital. This battle however is, on the other hand, also a powerful intellectual struggle against the soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life."

"In any case, legal tools must be created so that all these activities or enterprises that are directed against the national health in a physical or intellectual way may be suppressed. The same is true of the exploitation of the distress of the population through profiteering and usury."

"In our Mammonistic blindness we have unlearned how to see clearly that the doctrine of the sanctity of interest is a monstrous self-deception, that the gospel of the loan-interest that alone makes one blessed has entangled our entire thinking in the golden web of international plutocracy."

"Therefore we demand as a fundamental law of the state: ..."

"All of our tax-legislation is and remains, so long as we do not have liberation from enslavement to interest, only a tribute-obligation to big capital, and not, as we would imagine, a voluntary sacrifice for the accomplishment of labor for the community."

"Liberation from enslavement to interest on money is the clear motto for the global revolution, for the liberation of productive labor from the chains of the supragovernmental money-powers."

"But the capitalist idea of profitability actually becomes an economic nonsense in the branches of our economy that today rule everything, in the banking and stock-exchange system. The fact of the ruling position of the banks proves most strikingly the economic senselessness of the capitalist idea. With the ‘productions’ of the banks and stock-exchanges never yet has a child been fed, never yet has a freezing person been clothed, in general never has even the smallest requirement that is necessary for life been supplied."

"Usury and racketeering, as well as ruthless enrichment at the cost and harm of the people, will be punished with death."

"Nationalisation of the Reichsbank Pub. Ltd. Co., and the central banks."

"Generous development of old age insurance through nationalisation of the life-annuity system. To every needy German national comrade an adequate pension will be guaranteed from a certain age or in the case of a premature occurrence of permanent inability to earn a living."

"But that the state in general sees as right the sole means of accepting interest-bearing loans - thus debts, when it needs money and applies its other sovereign rights today only in an underhand manner to collect the incurred debts from the people, these are conditions for which one seeks in vain for a reasonable explanation. There is indeed no reasonable explanation for it, but only the fact that our entire thought even in national financial political matters is directed or corrupted in a private capitalistic manner."

"National Socialism like Anti-Semitism glimpses in the Jewish-materialistic spirit the primary root of the evil, but it also knows that this most powerful battle of world-history cannot remain standing in purely negative anti-Semitic demands, therefore the entire national- and economic programme of National Socialism rises far above the certainly ground-breaking but negative anti-Semitic battle by positively giving a creative constructive image of how the National Socialist state of work and performance should look. If this main goal is reached, then the National Socialist Party will be dissolved."

"Japanese exporters are organized in export cartels by the State. The State restricts competition among exporters and importers. The same thing is done in Germany and Italy. Moreover, it is not only in totalitarian States that payments for imported goods have become dependent on governmental decisions."

"Of all businessmen the small shopkeeper is the one most under control and most at the mercy of the Party. The Party man, whose good will he must have, does not live in faraway Berlin; he lives right next door or just around the corner. This local Hitler gets a report every day on what is discussed in Heer Schultz’s bakery and Herr Schmidt’s butcher shop. He would regard these man as ‘enemies of the State’ if they complained too much. That would mean, at the very least, the cutting of their quota or scarce and hence highly desirable goods, and it might mean the loss of their business license."

"[F]ascism is a new brand of feudalism in which the private capitalist has become merely a tool of the State—where absolute power has entirely taken the place of money power."

"A foreign visitor to the Berlin Stock Exchange would easily be deceived. There are announcements of daily quotations and price changes as though a free Stock Exchanged still existed, but nowhere would he find the former ‘public’— private buyers and sellers—as represented by independent brokers, bankers and ‘visitors.’"