Totalitarian political regimes are symptoms of deeper economic systematization

Evidence

In this way the economic ‘base’ loses its role in supporting the social totality. National Socialism and bureaucratic socialism or, more generally, a new ‘integral statism’, can no longer be described only in terms of economic basic categories. Political analysis takes on greater importance to theextentthatliberalismappearsasanhistoricalepisode,afterthedownfall of which society reverts to direct methods of domination no longer mediated via the market. The fundamental economic factors leading to crisis are tending to become controllable by measures of state intervention, which can range from compensatory welfare legislation to overt terror. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 600 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In the rest of the study, however, these hopeful prospects had the ground cut from under them by Adorno’s hypothesis that the anthropological conditions' for manipulative mass psychology continued to exist, as did a susceptibility to totalitarian systems, caused by the technological and economic tendencies that were developing in society as a whole. Hopeful signs were also undermined by his statement about the virtuosity that moral defensiveness develops, which may correspond to the extent of unconscious guilt one has to suppress’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2029 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

At the same time, the economists who were on the road to ordoliberalism were not (necessarily) National Socialist economists. In spite of the totalitarian character of Nazi-Germany, it is very important to recognize and understand that different lines of economic thinking coexisted in Nazi Germany. Any analysis should therefore address the question of economics in Nazi-Germany in order to adequately address distance from and complicitness with the ruling powers and philosophies, as well as the changing perspectives and fortunes of individual economists over time. One must consider the multiform ways of relating to the Nazi regime (1) before and after 1933, when parliamentarian democracy and labor movement opposition were eliminated; (2) before and after 1938, when the pogroms against the Jewish population started in earnest; and (3) before and after 1942, which marked both the year when the Holocaust decision was taken and when the war fortunes turned against the Nazis in Stalingrad (Walpen 2004, 93f.). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 540 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reactionary anti-modern viewpoints often yield the most penetrating analyses of the modern — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 399; Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2029; State-capitalism theory downgrades the economic base in favor of direct political domination — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 600 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• State-capitalism theory downgrades the economic base in favor of direct political domination #complicates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 600
• Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments #corroborates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2029
• Multiple lines of economic thought coexisted within Nazi Germany despite its totalitarianism #complicates (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 540