4 ms·
The book you cite doesn't seem to support your argument. Firstly, you say they nationalized many industries but the book talks about individual companies. Nati
by thu2111 5y ago
The book you cite doesn't seem to support your argument.
Firstly, you say they nationalized many industries but the book talks about individual companies. Nationalizing an industry means nationalizing every company within that industry.
Secondly, this does not appear to have been motivated by the failure of capitalism but rather the opposite. It was done in response to union strikes. Unions are usually understood as being against capitalism and free markets; they want to replace individuals "voting with their wallet" by collectively taking control from management via committees of (frequently communist leaning or outright communist) representatives of the workers.
Thirdly, it says quite clearly that as late as 1943 the War Department had done so few of these seizures that it amounted to "barely a dozen". By the end of the war they had seized around 60. That's a drop in the ocean of the US economy, which is why it's not well known.
So this example doesn't really seem to argue against the notion that the US won because of free market capitalism. The only places where they had to step in and become authoritarian (very briefly) were places where capitalism was breaking down thanks to communist agitation.
- WalterBright 5y agoTo be fair, Roosevelt in his 1945 State of the Union Address advocated for imposing forced labor on American civilians. Fortunately, that went nowhere.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoMany people working in the US today would disagree. The fact that the forcing is done with debt and threats of homelessness and not at gunpoint is just an implementation detail.