
The Supermanagerial Reich - techer
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-supermanagerial-reich/
======
yolesaber
Very powerful quote:

>Many in the United States fear a Trump election because there might be an
explosion of state repression against the vulnerable, particularly against
specific racial and ethnic minorities. And yet, the neoliberal state has
already created a penal system to rival the world’s most authoritarian
dictatorships. The United States imprisons more citizens (total and per
capita) than any other country on Earth, and African Americans and Latinos at
a vastly over-represented rate. Many fear Trump would bring massive
deportations of undocumented immigrants. And yet, the neoliberal state already
engages in mass deportations, at the level of millions during the current
administration, with countless more waiting in dire conditions in the world’s
largest network of immigrant detention camps. Many fear a Trump election would
bring mass persecution, surveillance, and restrictions for American Muslims.
And yet, the neoliberal state already spies on Muslims, administers religious
tests at borders, and polices Muslims for nothing more than their religious
practices. Many fear a Trump election might bring economic ruin, and yet, for
most Americans, wealth is vanishing, wages stagnant, real unemployment steady.

~~~
bsder
> The United States imprisons more citizens (total and per capita) than any
> other country on Earth, and African Americans and Latinos at a vastly over-
> represented rate.

The marijuana legalization votes are striking back at this. It's not a full
fix by any means, but it's sure going to reduce the number of people thrown in
jail-- _especially_ minorities.

~~~
rayiner
It's not much of a fix at all. Very few of the people in prison are there for
either possessing or trafficking in marijuana:
[http://m.gazette.com/legalization-didnt-unclog-
prisons/artic...](http://m.gazette.com/legalization-didnt-unclog-
prisons/article/1548308).

In Colorado, drug-related _charges_ are only down 23% post legalization. Of
course, marijuana charges rarely resulted in jail time to begin with, so the
impact on prison population is a lot less than that.

Even releasing _every_ drug prisoner would only have a modest effect on
incarceration rates: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-
offenders-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-
wont-end-mass-incarceration). It would drop the prison population by about
15%, but we would still have _ten times_ the incarceration rate of Denmark.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_In Colorado, drug-related charges are only down 23% post legalization_

 _It would drop the prison population by about 15%_

I mean those are pretty huge numbers really. An almost 1/4 reduction in
charges (which are the starting point for imprisonment) is massive IMO.

~~~
rayiner
Drug legalization is something we need to do, for sure. But it's frustrating
to see the conversation regarding prison reform always get co-opted by
legalization advocates. Denmark has less than 1/10th the incarceration rate of
the U.S. If we were listing the top 5 reasons for that disparity, drugs
probably wouldn't even make the cut (especially considering drugs--including
marijuana--are illegal in Denmark!)

------
lispm
There are so many things these articles overlook.

Germany was coming out of the WW1 as a loser. The war in Europe was nothing
like you've ever seen in America. Germany was paying reparations for many
years. Germany lost two million soldiers (out of ten million world wide). Many
civilians were killed. Poorness among the families of fallen soldiers. Many
were wounded. Several hundred thousand Germans died due to lack of food.

The crisis of Germany in the 20s and 30s was also nothing, literally nothing,
you have ever seen in the USA.

In 1923 one Dollar was 4.21 Billionen Reichsmark.

No kidding. 4.21 Billionen Reichsmark. That's a 4*10^12 in US numbers. The
equivalent of one dollar.

1929 was another economic crisis which reached into the 30s. Mass
unemployment, families looking for food, resignation, ongoing reparations,
social security not developed, politicians failing, feeling of a total
catastrophe - but this was based real problems. Not in 'the strongest nation
with the largest military.'

The problems of the US today are tiny in comparison. There are poor people in
the US. But it is nothing compared to the Weimarer Republik and their weak
democracy, which was under fire from communists, the Nazi party, conservative
parties, ... even the president did not support it and in the end caused its
collapse when handing over the government to Hitler.

Mostly the social democrats were supporting the democracy.

If you think the times of the Weimarer Republik are similar to the US today,
its political or its economic situation - this is total BS.

~~~
hga
_The war in Europe was nothing like you 've ever seen in America._

I think Southerners might disagree with that point, especially through the
post-Civil War Reconstruction AKA military occupation period.

Not saying they're directly comparable, but "nothing like you've ever seen in
America" significantly overstates the differences.

~~~
throwanem
This Southerner wouldn't disagree.

Militarily, while the Civil War is in some ways a prefigure of WWI, the
comparison only usefully reaches so far. In particular, Civil War artillery
lacked the absolute primacy achieved by later developments, permitting a much
more mobile style of warfare and preventing the stasis observed on the Western
Front. The Civil War's belligerents were also much more unevenly matched,
making it possible for a single engagement to produce a decisive strategic
outcome; no such possibility existed in WWI until much later in the war, when
new technology came along to counter the primacy of artillery and break the
stalemate of the trenches.

Politically speaking, too, we observe a qualitative postwar difference; harsh
as the military occupation of the South was in many ways, and in spite of
bastards like Butler, there existed a strong desire for conciliation and
reintegration of the erstwhile secessionists, which overall found considerable
success; while the cultural and economic differences underlying the war
largely still exist to this day, we've just passed the sesquicentennial of
Appomattox without at any point seeing a serious desire for, or risk of, a new
outbreak of warfare. Versailles, by contrast, while no doubt seeming justified
to its authors in the astonishingly punitive terms it imposed, produced a new
and much uglier war within just a few decades.

So, no, I can't really agree with you here. It's accurate to say that the
Civil War is by far the ugliest war whose effects our young nation has ever
directly felt. It is not at all accurate to say that those effects are in any
way comparable in severity to those of the First World War - which, indeed,
was nothing like we've ever seen in America, a fact for which, should you be
so inclined, I recommend you nightly thank God.

~~~
hga
But you're leaving out various post-WWI details, like how the strictures of
Versailles were weakened, how _some_ of the victors ... actually, didn't
entirely buy into it to begin with, and/or significantly softened their
stances after a while. The US post-Wilson, the U.K., and even Soviet Russia,
while not a signatory, engaged in significant cooperation with Weimar and
later Nazi Germany (after all, the German defeat of Imperial Russia was a
necessary precursor to their capture of the country, and their attempt to gain
territory to the west was stopped in Poland). After all, Germany was given
enough breathing space to rearm and try again, both before _and after_
Hitler's rise to power.

While I'll agree the desire for conciliation was much strong, on the other
hand, the harshness of the occupation, the severe losses of wealth ... I too
have Southern roots, my mother is Cajun, and one story in her family history
is how a great-great or so grandmother kept the Damn Yankees from stealing the
family horse by wrapping her arms around its neck and just not letting go. The
South indeed started from a lower base, and was sufficiently knocked down that
a new war was not in the cards, on the other hand, resistance to the military
occupation was also harsh and didn't end until it ended.

Some don't count overall conciliation and reintegration to have been completed
until 1994, when the Republican capture of the Congress included hitherto
unseen gains for the party in the South.

And let me emphasize, as I noted to masklinn, I'm not focusing on the winners
except as that is relevant to the losers.

------
rangersanger
Indeed, several very powerful quotes. This one was a bit of a gut punch.
"Votes exchanged for services rendered" is, retrospectively, exactly how I
(and everyone I know) has engaged with our American democracy.

>non-participation can (and is) often argued to be perfectly “rational” in a
kind of homo-economicus argument pushed ad infinitum. Reducing “democracy” to
its most transactional structure — votes exchanged for services rendered, the
formal motions of a liberal republican state for at least a plurality of
citizens — neoliberalism achieves a feat that the great revolutionary and
reactionary movements of the 19th and 20th century never achieved: unique
among critiques of parliamentarianism, neoliberalism discourages participation
without undermining legitimacy.

------
ciconia
What's most striking, of course, is how the Clintons, Obamas, Merkels and
Hollandes of the world have wholeheartedly embraced this "supermanagerial"
economic and political order, while paying lip-service to socialistic
ideology.

The meteoric rise of the alt-right is only matched by the abject failure of
the left.

~~~
pavlov
Merkel is part of the left now?

Her party is Christian Conservative, and she is a former East German with bad
experiences with the Communist government.

One has to be pretty far on the extreme right to call her a leftist.

~~~
adrianN
She's pretty far left if you compare her to US politicians.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Everyone on Earth is pretty far left compared to the US.

How many other countries have two giant gold fasces prominently displayed in
their main debating chamber?

~~~
hga
BS on your latter claim, fasces are _everywhere_ in the US
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces#Fasces_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces#Fasces_in_the_United_States)
as a homage to the Roman Republic on which ours was explicitly modeled (the S
in SPQR stands for Senate), and pretty much were already there before
Mussolini adopted them (and being an Italian in Italy, how could he not?).

------
doctorpangloss
The Nazis certainly didn't do anything for the Jewish supermanagers, besides
robbing and killing them, and then unsustainably mass-murdering or enslaving
their countrymen.

The electoral college discourages participation. People in California,
Illinois and New York aren't saying they don't vote "because neoliberalism."

Equating the murder of Jews in Nazi Germany to Black and Hispanic mass
incarceration offends the victims of both injustices. The article's
equivocating tone about this equating is offensive too. It's like they know
they're saying something incredibly flimsy just to push the drama.

------
Animats
This seems to be a personal opinion article. Much has been written about the
Nazi rise to power. The first four years of Hitler's rule, starting in 1933,
were good for Germany. He got Germany out of the postwar depression. If he'd
left office after four years, he'd be remembered as the Savior of Germany.
After four years, things started to go bad; two more years and WWII was under
way.

The Nazi party was closely allied with big companies. That was by design, and
there was no secret about it. That's what "national socialism" was all about -
industry and government working together. It worked more like crony capitalism
in practice, and less well over time.

One of the big problems in a dictatorship is how the second tier of control
works. The leader can't decide everything. There has to be delegation. But
how? Regional delegation results in regional leaders powerful enough to
challenge the national leader. Delegation by subject area (ministries)
sometimes works, but the military and security apparatus usually becomes the
center of power. Delegating power to businesses is a bit safer, especially if
you don't let them become monopolies in their sector. The Nazi Party used all
three forms of delegation, which the author describes as a mess. It's not an
unreasonable way to run things, though.

~~~
lispm
None of the first years of Hitler was good for Germany. Many people thought
it, but it wasn't actually. It was terrible for many, actually.

~~~
neffy
With any economic policy, including those, it depends on who you are. He did
get people jobs, albeit many of which were semi-disguised military training.
However, he did it by progressively and systematically pushing the jewish
population out, and looting them of their possessions.

A cynical way to look at a fair segment of economic policy is that it exists
as solutions to the desire of "I want your stuff"\- and at the extreme end of
both left and right, the answer is outright theft and murder.

~~~
lispm
Nazi Germany prepared for war and many people had to work for that. Germany
had less unemployment. But the things produced, were for a huge war machine.
Financed with debt and the hope to loot other countries. In other areas the
youth was forced to work for the regime.

Many people were happy that they were employed. 1933-39 Soon many of them or
their relatives were dead, because their work created the ships, the tanks,
the planes, the weapons, the industry for the war.

This large reduction of unemployment was what people thought of being
successful economic policy. If you talked to people from that time, they saw
Hitler's policy in rosy pictures. After the mass unemployment, suddenly there
was hope. But it wasn't for long. The financing was not sound. The purpose was
clear: fight a war, either win or die.

Hardly successful economic policy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany)

------
lispm
> Far from “state capitalism,” where the profit motive is eliminated and
> production is under the complete control of the state, Neumann noted that
> under Nazism, business — especially large corporate interests — was given
> extraordinary leeway. They did not have perfect free rein, but large
> business interests were relieved of many previous social democratic
> restrictions. Independent labor organizations were crushed, and business was
> allowed to coagulate into massive, profit-generating monopolies as long as
> it produced the necessary goods and services the party and the army
> required.

No, they were not given 'extraordinary leeway'. Example: 'Ownership' was newly
defined.

> complete control of the state

That was not necessary. It was set up a structure where people worked on a
common goal, in the end the Endsieg. But make no mistake, enemies ended dead.
The political leadership made it clear what the goal was: re-arming Germany
and beyond. Making the German military 'fit' for a new war.

> as long as it produced the necessary goods and services the party and the
> army required.

That's the key point from where to look. The economy was not having
'extraordinary leeway'. The economy had a purpose: making Germany fit for war
in the shortest time possible. From 33 to 39 build up a huge military machine,
able to win in the west and the east. In Nazi ideology the plan was to occupy
large areas in the east, kill the jews and enslave the slavic - new room, new
raw materials, new markets, ...

The economy was a tool. This has very little to do with capitalism, thus the
comparison between Nazi economy and a crisis of capitalism today will be
misleading.

