bombing barbarians

[Eddie Bettano]

Here, we often read comparisons of IG with US
companies or with multinationals. While IG had the
size, the internationalism of a multinational, IG
Farben and its wholly owned subsidaiaries operated
under strictly controlled governmet plans much like a
huge conglomerate of the former Soviet Union. Under
the government's plans IG still prospered and grew.
Under the "4 year plan" (1936-1939) sales rose 53%,
profits rose 50%, net profits rose 71%, employment
35%, and investments in plants and equipment rose 59%.
In each of these catagories, IG's performance
surpassed pre-Depression peaks. Exports, however, did
not rise. What was going on? The government wrote the
plan. It directed IG to put all its resources behind
new products (gasoline, nitrogen for explosives,
metals, rubber and plastics, fibers)  the governemt
would support by buying them. But the government did
close to nothing to finance IG. It only provided
alittle financing for the buna factories because they
were failing. IG was not  funded or given tax releif.
In fact, IG's tax rate was doubled between 1933 to
1939. 34% of net proceeds (sales miunus operating
costs). What the plan did was top force IG to
establish new fixed assets, financed with IG income
and prohibited the Concern from investing or using
profits for any other purpose save the purchace of
government bonds. It's important to recognize the
difference between this system and that in the US then
and now. The system then, for Germany, was a closed
system. Profits were reduced to mere bookkeeping entry
by the system of derived public financing. Of course
the men at IG, lots of honest, harworking, business
men, fought this closed system tooth and nail. They
were business men and this "Four Year Planning" and
the closed system took the business out of it
alltogether. They wanted to direct, fund, finance,
invest, the Concern toward purposes that served its
future competitiveness. Of course they did. Like most
smart and ambitious businessmen, they were not
soulless creatures anxious to the bidding of their
Satanic master. They were men. Business men.
Innovative, creative, smart, intelligent, hard working
men. They no more wanted to be parts in the machinery
of atomization, autarky, and control, then
businesspeople anywhere else in the world then or now.
 

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