Pollock classed the early New Deal with fascist state capitalism

Evidence

The Horkheimer circle arrived during a period in which the government was sympathetic towards intellectuals and prepared to entrust them with important tasks. It was a government which, by American standards, was left-wing, but at the same time successful and popular. The group arrived with a great deal of money, and at a moment when the numbers emigrating to the USA to escape the Nazis were still small. In an article in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (ZfS) on The Sociology of the American Party System', Gumperz had declared that the US party system was the most advanced in the world in the practice of politics as the art of producing consent to the political measures of a given system’. The Roosevelt administration had made an impressive attempt, in its very first year, to minimize the effects of the crisis by unconventional methods, under the label New Deal'; but in 1933 Pollock had mentioned the administration in the same breath as Italy and Germany as an example of state-capitalist intervention and elective dictatorship. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 598</cite> (#corroborates`, via linked claim)

Pollock’s theory of state capitalism ‘as a superior form of society to liberal capitalism’ is presented as a ‘model’ ‘in the sense of Max Weber’s “ideal type”’. This model ‘represents a consequent systematisation of trends [Pollock] believes to recognise particularly in National Socialism, but also in the United States’, respective manifestations of the ‘two most typical varieties’ of state capitalism: ‘its totalitarian and its democratic form’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 525 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pollock likened Roosevelt’s New Deal to European state-capitalist dictatorship in 1933. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 598; Pollock treated state capitalism as an ideal-typical model spanning Nazi and American varieties. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 525

Broader Connections

• Pollock likened Roosevelt’s New Deal to European state-capitalist dictatorship in 1933. #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 598
• Pollock treated state capitalism as an ideal-typical model spanning Nazi and American varieties. #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 525