Dr Joseph Goebbels on 'capital'

From here:

Wie unterscheidet sich schaffendes Staats- und raffendes Borsenkapital?

Das Staatskapital ist ein unmittelbar schaffendes, produktives Kapital. Es ist in seiner reinen Form, vor allem in der Kleinindustrie, noch national und erdverbunden, es arbeitet und vermittelt Arbeit, es besteht zu seinem groBten Teile in immobilen Werten und nicht in barem Gelde, es darf und kann nicht vernichtet werden, da es fur das Leben des Volkes unentbehrlich ist. Allerdings hat es sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu so ungesunden Formen entwickelt, daB es einer durchgreifenden Reform bedarf.

Das Borsenkapital ist kein schaffendes, sondern ein schmarotzerisch-raffendes Kapital. Es ist nicht mehr erdverbunden, sondern bodenlos und international, es arbeitet nicht produktiv, es hat sich in den normalen Verlauf der Produktion hineingedrangt, um aus ihr Prozente zu ziehen. Es besteht in mobilen Werten, das heiBt in barem Gelde, sein Haupttrager ist die jüdische Hochfinanz, die das Bestreben hat, die schaffenden Völker fur sich arbeiten zu lassen und dabei doch die Erträgnisse der Arbeit in die eigene Tasche zu stecken.

Roughly translated:

What is the difference between productive state capital and parasitic financial capital?

State capital is directly productive capital. In its purest form, especially with small businesses, it is still national and earthbound, it works and creates work, it is fixed and not just in cash, it may not and cannot be destroyed, because it is vital for the life of the nation. Admittedly, it has developed in an unhealthy way in recent decades and needs a wholesale reform.

Financial capital is not productive, it is parasitic. It is not earthbound, but stateless and international, it produces nothing but has forced itself on normal production in order to suck out a percentage. It is mobile, in other words in cash and is owned by Jewish high finance, whose aim it is to let the productive peoples do the work but keep the profits for itself.
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1. I can understand that the Germans were a bit miffed about the aftermath of the Great Depression, that seems to have hit them three times as hard as any other country (and probably wasn't particularly their fault), but that polemic is familiar to me and it always struck me is that he is confusing the distinct concepts of capital and ownership.

2. Let's agree for the sake of this discussion that 'capital' is stuff like machinery and special skills (i.e. stuff that results from people's efforts and ingenuity) which can be used to increase output in future. But everything has to belong to somebody (even if some things belong to a vaguely defined group of people like 'the nation' or 'society in general' or 'the state'), and that entails 'ownership'. If you're slaving away at your machine or your desk or wherever, you're not really bothered whose machine or desk it is, you just want to be paid a decent wage.

3. So if the Evil Capitalist who owns the bakery on one side of the street pays low wages, people will just go and work for the slightly more enlightened baker on the other side who pays better wages; so the Evil Capitalist goes out of business and ends up getting bought out by another baker-entrepreneur and that is the end of that. And maybe that baker-entrepreneur starts up his business with borrowed money, so in economic terms, the physical capital belongs to the bank. His workers still don't care as long as they get a decent wage, and the banker-entrepreneur is doing it entirely of his own volition.

4. But it is more or less impossible for Evil Bankers to buy up all the physical capital, underpay wages and overcharge for their output because this will always be competed away, because people can always make new stuff, change jobs etc.
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5. Returning to the present day, all this bank-bashing reminds me very much of Dr Goebbels' rant, and I think to myself, this is one path down which I will not go. But the self-same politicians who are at the forefront of bank-bashing are simultaneously merrily bailing out the banks in order to prop up land prices, i.e. transfer money from the productive economy to state-protected quasi-monopolists.

6. Land behaves exactly like a monopoly, if you think about it - it cannot be replicated and the income that you can generate from a bit of land depends on its location, not its physical condition, so cannot be competed away. In most cases, the income you can generate vastly exceeds the cost of 'production', which are precisely £nil in most cases. Interest payments are a just a way of divvying up the returns to 'ownership' and not a cost of 'production' of course, see first half of this post.

7. These bank bail outs (and tax breaks for land ownership or construction) are at their most extreme (i.e. criminal) in the USA or in Ireland, but are the prevalent economic philosophy in the UK as well, which I refer to as Home-Owner-Ism. Rising house prices are a very simple mechanism by which the relative return to working is depressed and the relative return to land- or home ownership (and the banks, who make money from rising land prices) is inflated, so this is hypocrisy of the highest ordure.

8. But like all forms of oppression, the trick is getting a simple majority of The Little People into thinking that they benefit from it as well - people will take a 2.5% VAT hike or a 2% National Insurance hike (which costs each worker or entrepreneur upwards of £500 a year each) on the chin as long you promise them a Council Tax freeze (which 'saves' each household maybe £50 a year), for example. Similarly, savers will put up with derisory interest rates of less than inflation just as long as the bank pass some of that benefit on to 'hard pressed borrowers', without anybody noticing that this is a £30 billion a year subsidy to banks and home owners.

Ah well.