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rotorguy64's review against another edition
2.0
This is my second book by Gottfried Feder, whom I've read to understand the Nazis better.
To start with the one saving grace of the book: Feder was a lot more liberal and, at times, commonsensical than the Nazis turned out to be. For example, he saw the Führer as a spiritual leader who should not concern himself with questions over details, but should delegate those to his trusted followers. Evidently, this was not at all Hitlers conduct. Feder also wrote in support of cuum cuique, federalism, and property rights. That he never argued from first principles detracts a good deal from his considerations, however. He is unable to resolve problems like where to draw the line between illegitimate hoarding of money and merely not spending it, or how altruistic you have to be with your own property. He also didn't derive the sovereignty of the state, but accepted it as an axiom. His expositions, therefore, are largely uninteresting. They were also not nearly as influential as you'd believe, given that he was one of the founding members and earliest ideologues of the DAP, predecessor party of the NSDAP, and a personal acquaintance to Hitler. Hitler took some of his antisemitic rhetoric from him, perhaps remembered his economic theories sometimes, but he forgot all about the federalism and the limited role of the Führer.
Feders real passion, it seems, didn't lie with political theory or philosophy, anyway. He made up for that with an unhealthy obsession over "interest slavery" that must be seen to be believed. Over a third of the book, perhaps as much as half of it, is taken up by a long, redundant, and unsystematic diatribe against interest. These passages are as good as exchangable with Feders [b:Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money|19196430|Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money by Gottfried Feder|Gottfried Feder|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386215218s/19196430.jpg|7331267]. If you've read one, you've essentially read the other. Here, Feder goes into a bit more detail, but it's not the kind of detail that would help him make the case. Once more, he's oblivious to the function of interest on money, as an expression of time preference, and thus to the fact that interest is indispensable for economic calculation. Why this is the case, I talked about in my other review. It follows that everything Feder has to say against international finance misses the point, and not because there is nothing to be said about that. And all his calculations (of which there are many!), and his examples and anecdotes, are just as useless.
He went as far as to proclaim that the first goal of the Nazi State would be the breaking of interest slavery, which - so Feder - would allow the state to finance itself entirely through the revenue of state-run enterprises. That would get him quite some sympathy from me, being the libertarian I am, but Feder was also a huge fan of conscripted labor, protectionism, public works, nationalizations, and fiat money. He uncritically repeats every single cliché there is, and even comes up with an elaborate plan to create public housing by giving out interest free loans for building purposes. Feder believed that this would create new value at no cost, thus commiting the fallacy that Bastiat wrote an aptly named book on, [b:That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen|1609227|That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen|Frédéric Bastiat|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348628428s/1609227.jpg|149037]. Feder saw that housing would be created, but he didn't see that for this, resources would be diverted from other uses. Not to mention, his scheme is a blueprint for creating an economic crisis, and an even better one than the policies that caused the 2007-2008 recession.
I would only recommend this book for purposes of research. It's sterile at best, misleading at worst, and extremely boring on top of it. The lowpoint was perhaps his enumeration of all the types of educational facilities that the Bavarian government was funding, in a run-on sentence spanning eighteen lines, shut between two other sentences detailing the expanses of the Bavarian government.
To start with the one saving grace of the book: Feder was a lot more liberal and, at times, commonsensical than the Nazis turned out to be. For example, he saw the Führer as a spiritual leader who should not concern himself with questions over details, but should delegate those to his trusted followers. Evidently, this was not at all Hitlers conduct. Feder also wrote in support of cuum cuique, federalism, and property rights. That he never argued from first principles detracts a good deal from his considerations, however. He is unable to resolve problems like where to draw the line between illegitimate hoarding of money and merely not spending it, or how altruistic you have to be with your own property. He also didn't derive the sovereignty of the state, but accepted it as an axiom. His expositions, therefore, are largely uninteresting. They were also not nearly as influential as you'd believe, given that he was one of the founding members and earliest ideologues of the DAP, predecessor party of the NSDAP, and a personal acquaintance to Hitler. Hitler took some of his antisemitic rhetoric from him, perhaps remembered his economic theories sometimes, but he forgot all about the federalism and the limited role of the Führer.
Feders real passion, it seems, didn't lie with political theory or philosophy, anyway. He made up for that with an unhealthy obsession over "interest slavery" that must be seen to be believed. Over a third of the book, perhaps as much as half of it, is taken up by a long, redundant, and unsystematic diatribe against interest. These passages are as good as exchangable with Feders [b:Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money|19196430|Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money by Gottfried Feder|Gottfried Feder|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386215218s/19196430.jpg|7331267]. If you've read one, you've essentially read the other. Here, Feder goes into a bit more detail, but it's not the kind of detail that would help him make the case. Once more, he's oblivious to the function of interest on money, as an expression of time preference, and thus to the fact that interest is indispensable for economic calculation. Why this is the case, I talked about in my other review. It follows that everything Feder has to say against international finance misses the point, and not because there is nothing to be said about that. And all his calculations (of which there are many!), and his examples and anecdotes, are just as useless.
He went as far as to proclaim that the first goal of the Nazi State would be the breaking of interest slavery, which - so Feder - would allow the state to finance itself entirely through the revenue of state-run enterprises. That would get him quite some sympathy from me, being the libertarian I am, but Feder was also a huge fan of conscripted labor, protectionism, public works, nationalizations, and fiat money. He uncritically repeats every single cliché there is, and even comes up with an elaborate plan to create public housing by giving out interest free loans for building purposes. Feder believed that this would create new value at no cost, thus commiting the fallacy that Bastiat wrote an aptly named book on, [b:That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen|1609227|That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen|Frédéric Bastiat|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348628428s/1609227.jpg|149037]. Feder saw that housing would be created, but he didn't see that for this, resources would be diverted from other uses. Not to mention, his scheme is a blueprint for creating an economic crisis, and an even better one than the policies that caused the 2007-2008 recession.
I would only recommend this book for purposes of research. It's sterile at best, misleading at worst, and extremely boring on top of it. The lowpoint was perhaps his enumeration of all the types of educational facilities that the Bavarian government was funding, in a run-on sentence spanning eighteen lines, shut between two other sentences detailing the expanses of the Bavarian government.
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