Forget Obama’s purported “socialism”—historians are saying the current crisis of capitalism is going to drive all governments towards statist economic policy.

“Laissez-faire, c’est fini,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy. “We will intervene massively whenever a strategic enterprise needs our money.”

Such language can now be heard daily across Europe. It can only intensify as the fall-out from the EU’s €1.8bn trillion (£1.4 trillion) bank rescue becomes clearer, and as Europe’s elites discover that their own banks are the most leveraged in the world and have played their own Wagnerian part in Gotterdammerung.

Professor Hobsbawm, who spent his youth watching Hitler’s rise in Berlin, has a warning for those who think this will help the Left in any recognizable form. “In the 1930s, the net political effect of the Depression was to enormously strengthen the Right,” he said.

More at the Telegraph.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

11 replies on “Marxism Rising”

  1. When you reward the weak for not being productive or to lazy to go to work, you get more weak and dependent. Babies and children are weak and need to be dependent on there parents. This is a natural course of life. However, it is not natural for grown men and women to cry for help because they lack the heart or desire to succeed. Good parents will prepare their children for life’s difficult times. The parents who are takers will teach their children how to take more from the productive classes. The Obama’s of the world want America to become the land of the takers from the rich and dependent on the state to provide, not the home of the free and the land of the brave. People who would trade their freedom for dependence never win. They will always be destitute and live in despair. They do not understand that the elitist want them on the bottom. Socialism is a time tested failure just read your history books. The so called workers who welcome this take from the rich and give to the lower-middle class and lower class will get what they deserve. They will stay lower-middle class and lower class. When the state desides to throw you a few more crumbs you will be more then happy to take more, but do not think you will become one of them. The elites don’t want your kind. I for one will say, I told you so. Be free America!

  2. It’s equally likely to help either the left or the right. Perhaps in Germany depression helped the Right, but in America, it seems to have helped the Left (FDR?). Though we also had a war or something around that time.

    It’s most likely to help whoever is opposed to whoever was in power at the time things went to hell. So. And.

  3. people will make a choice – for ‘socialism’ or fascism. in ’32, the choice of roosevelt was not a victory for ‘the right’, professor. and neither is ’08.

  6. The “Free Market” has always been a fucking joke.

    See especially The Rise And Decline Of Economic Liberalism, by Frederic Clairmont and Forces Of Production, by David Noble; as well as Main Currents In Modern American History, The Triumph Of Conservatism, and Railroads And Regulation by Gabriel Kolko.

  8. I tuned into AM right wing radio on the commute home and caught hour two of what sounded like a three hour tirade by Michael Savage on the brownshirt army of Obama socialists about to seize power in America; how they would find ways to seize our guns and solidify state control.

    I was laughing and thinking how idiotic and paranoid it all sounded until I suddenly realized that this is what the left has sounded like for the last eight years.

  9. yes, it could help the right, esp. if the left continues to be lazy, unorgznied, afraid to call bullshit on the right, for exmample all these Obama supporters who seem to think that after he wins the election it’s over and done and we can all go home and celebrate victory and all problems are solved

    it’s jsut the start of huge poltiical fight

    and yes the right likely will pull some neofascist shit

    so the left better fucking be ready to respond (peacefully) assertively.

    Like they FAILED TO DO in response to Hitler, enough. In fact everyone failed to respond enough even the right.

    He got into office with aminority and used illegal street beatings the fire etc. to create a crisis to take over

    this tactic is replicated over and over to put the right into power

    you have been warned, pls. don’t let the right do this here.

  10. Demagoguery of all stripes picks up steam during hard times. People long for easy answers. Many have speculated that the soft socialism of the New Deal was FDR’s preemptive move against a very real and powerful Red socialism movement that was gaining traction. The potential for social unrest was terrifying to the monied classes (of which FDR was a member.) Roosevelt’s policies seemed to relieve some of this pressure from the working class.

    Of course, that didn’t stop some of the captains of finance and industry from planning a fascist coup of the Roosevelt administration.

  11. @8: you’re joking, right?

    quick, name the left’s equivalent to michael savage, in terms of outreach & degree of vitriolic, hateful, paranoid lies & distortions. mike malloy? randi rhodes?

    you’re not paranoid if they really are trashing the constitution & conducting class warfare.

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