The virtue of excellence

Friday, October 14, 2011

On the early 1900s

The revolutions that shook the world between 1900 and 1940 were effectively indistinguishable. All parties (Germany, Japan, Russia, USA) shifted with new technology from small governments that simply couldn't do much to ubiquitous central governments that did. I deny that there are differences in kind in economics between Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini, Mao. All were essentially for centralization. That was the wave of the first half of the 1900s.

Everyone who was anyone in the early 1900s...all public intellectuals (except for crazy folks way out on the fringe -- Wilder-Lane, Rand, Nock, Hayek, Mencken, etc.) were for expanding the state. Which method of expanding the state was a relatively minor point.

1 comment:

rightsaidfred said...

Which method of expanding the state was a relatively minor point.

Mockery.