This series is going to serve as a rejoinder to Mr. Philip Kobina Baidoo, Jr.’s piece “Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–War and Capitalism.” We shall provide the author’s citations at the end of the series. Please read on:
Author: Peter Kropotkin
Title: “War and Capitalism”
II. THE GREAT FINANCIAL HOUSES.
“All States–we saw in our previous article–as soon as the great industries and the huge trading concerns develop among their people, become unavoidable involved in wars. They are driven to them by their own manufacturers, and even by their own working classes, in order to conquer new markets–that is, new sources of easily obtained riches. Moreover, in every State there exists nowadays a class–a clique, I should say–infinitely more powerful than the manufacturing class, and which also incites to war. It is composed of great financiers and rich bankers, who intervene in international relations, and who foment wars.
“It happens nowadays in a very simple way.
“Towards the end of the Middle Ages most of the large Republican cities of Italy ended by running up huge debts. When the period of decay of these cities had begun, owing to their continued endeavours to conquer rich Oriental markets, and the conquest of such markets had caused endless wars between the Republican cities themselves, they began to contract immense debts to their own rich Merchant Guilds. A like phenomenon of bankers are willing to lend against a mortgage on their borrowers' future income.
“Of course, it is principally the small States which are preyed upon. Bankers lend them money at 7, 8, and 10 per cent., and as a rule the loans are "realised" in such cases at no more than 80 per cent. Of the borrowed sum. So that, after deducting commissions to banks and middlemen, the State very often does not receive even as much as three-quarters of the amount inscribed in its ledger.
“On these swollen or "watered" sums the State that has contracted debts must in future provide both for interest and sinking fund. And when it does not do so at the appointed term, the bankers are quite willing to add the arrears of interest and sinking fund to the principal of the debt. The worse the finances of the indebted State grow, the more reckless the expenditure of its rulers, the more willingly are new loans offered to it. Whereupon the bankers, after setting themselves up as a "Concert," combine to lay hands on certain taxes, certain duties, certain railway lines.
“In this way the financiers ruined Egypt, and later on caused it to be practically annexed by England. The more foolish the expenditure of the Khedive, the more he was encouraged. It was annexation by small doses.2* In the same way Turkey was ruined, in order to take her provinces little by little. The same means, we are told, were employed towards Greece, when a group of financiers egged her on to war with Turkey, in order to seize part of her revenues. And in the same way Japan was exploited by the great financial houses of the United States before and during her wars with China and Russia.
“As to China, for several years she has been partitioned by a syndicate representing the great banks of England, France, Germany, and the United States. And since the Revolution in China, Russia, and Japan demand to be allowed to take part in this syndicate. They want to profit by it in order to extend not only their spheres of exploitation, but also their territories. The partitioning of China, prepared by bankers, is thus on the order of the day.
“In short, there is in the lending States a complete organisation, in which rulers, bankers, company promoters, concocters of business schemes, and other interlopers, whom Zola has so well described in "L'Argent," joined hands in order to exploit whole States. Thus, where simple folk believe they have discovered deep political reasons, there are only plots hatched by the filibusters of finance, who exploit everything: political and economical rivalry, national enmities, diplomatic traditions, and religious conflicts.
“In all the wars of the last quarter of a century we can trace the work of the great financial houses. The conquest of Egypt and the Transvaal, the annexation of Tripoli, the occupation of Morocco, the partition of Persia, the massacres in Manchuria, the massacres and international looting in China during the Boxer riots, the wars of Japan–everywhere we find great banks at work. Everywhere financiers have had the casting vote. And if up till now a great European war has not burst out, it is simply because the great financiers hesitate. They do not quite know to which side the millions involved will cause the scales to turn; they do not know which horse to back with their millions.
“As to the hundreds of thousands of human lives which the war would cost–what have the financiers to do with them? The mind of a financier works with columns of figures which balance each other. The consequences do not come within his province; he does not even possess the necessary imagination to bring human lives into his calculations.
“What an abominable world would be unveiled if only somebody took the trouble to study finance behind the scenes! We can guess it sufficiently, if only from the wee corner of the veil lifted by "Lysis" in his articles in La Revue, which appeared in 1908 in a volume entitled "Contre l'Oligarchie Financière en France" (" Against the Financial Oligarchy in France").
“From this work we can, in fact, see how four or five large French banks–the Crédit Lyonnais, the Société Générale, the Comptoir National d'Escompte, and the Crédit Industriel et Commercial–have come to possess the complete monopoly of great financial operations in the French money market.
“The greater part, about four-fifths, of French savings, amounting every year to nearly £80,000,000, is poured into these great banks; and when foreign States, both great and small, railway companies, towns, or industrial companies from the five continents of the globe present themselves in Paris to make a loan, they turn to these four or five great banking companies, which have virtually the monopoly of foreign loans, and have at their disposal the necessary machinery to boom them.
“Needless to say that it was not the skill of the directors of these companies that created their lucrative position. It was the State, the French Government, in the first place, that protected and favoured these banks, and raised them to a privileged position which soon became a colossal monopoly. Whereupon the other States–the borrowing States–strengthened this monopoly. Thus, the Crédit Lyonnais, that monopolises the Russian loans, owes its privilege position to the financial agents of the Russian Government, and to the Tsar's Ministers of Finance.
“The amount of business transacted every year by these four or five financial societies represents hundreds of millions of pounds. Thus, in two years, 1906 and 1907, they distributed in loans £300,000,000, of which £220,000,000 were in foreign loans ("Lysis," page 101). And when we learn that the "commission" of these companies for organising a foreign loan is usually 5 per cent. For "the syndicate of intermediaries" (apporteurs, through whose instrumentality the new loan is brought about), 5 per cent. For the "guarantee syndicate," and from 7 to 10 per cent. For the syndicate or trust of the four or five banks we have just named, we see what immense sums go to these monopolists.
“Thus, on single "intermediary" who "brought out" the loan of £50,000,000 contracted by the Russian Government in 1906 to crush the Revolution, actually received–so "Lysis" tells us in his just-mentioned book–a commissioned of 12,000,000 francs (£480,000).
“We can, therefore, understand the occult influence on international politics exercised by the powerful directors of these financial societies, with their mysterious bookkeeping and with the plenary powers that certain directors exact and obtain from their shareholders- because they must be discreet when nearly half a million pounds have to be paid to Monsieur So-and-so, £10,000* to a certain Minister, and so may millions, besides the orders of the Légion d'Honneur, to the Press! There is not, says "Lysis," one single large newspaper in France that is not paid by the banks. This is clear. One can easily guess how much money was distributed in this way among the Press during the years 1906 and 1907, when a series of Russian State loans, railway loans, and loans for real estate banks were being prepared. How many "quill-drivers" waxed fat on the loans–we see it in "Lysis's" book. What a windfall, in fact! The Government of a great State at bay! A revolution to be crushed! Such luck is not to be met with every day!
“No doubt everybody is more or less aware of that, and there is not a single politician, in Paris or elsewhere, who does not know the workings of all this jobbery, and who does not hear mentioned the names of the women and men who have received large sums after each loan, great or small. Russian or Brazilian. And each one, if he has the slightest knowledge of business, knows to what degree this organisation of great financial houses is a product of the State, an essential attribute of the State.
“And it would be such a State–the powers and prerogatives of which our politicians are so careful not to lessen–that most of the social reformers expect to be the instrument for the emancipation of the masses! What nonsense!
“Be it stupidity, ignorance, or imposture–it is equally unpardonable in people who believe themselves called to direct the fate of nations.”
We shall return…
RREFRENCE
dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/warsandcap.html
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Dear Readers,
The historical record is clear on the continuity between the German-orchestrated Namibian (South West Africa) Genocide and the Holocaust. I will first implore all of you to read following books (this is merely a short list):
1) "Hitler’s Black Victim’s: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, African and African-Americans During the Nazi Era" (Clarence Lusane)
2) “Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940” (Raffael Scheck)
3) “The Angel of Death Has Descended Violently Upon Them: Concentration Camps and Prisoners-Of-War in Namibia, 1904-08” (Casper W. Erichsen)
4) “Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts” (Parsons & Totten)
5) “Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History” (Dirk Moses; read Dominik Schaller’s essays “From Conquest to Genocide: Colonial Rule in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa” in Moses’ book)
6) “Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus” (Naomi Baumslag)
7) "Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation" (David MacDonald)
8) "The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and The Colonial Roots of Nazism" (Erichsen & Olusoga) (this text deals with the Herero and Namaqua Genocide; readers may also want to read the Whitaker Report (United Nations, 1985)
9) “Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia” (Jeremy Sylvester)
10) "Herero heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890-1923" (Jan-Bart Gewald)
11) “The Killing Trap: Genocide in the 20th Century” (Manus Midlarsky)
12) “Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory” (Rene Lemarchand)
13) “The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing” (Michael Mann)
14) "Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany" (Andrew Zimmerman)
15) "In Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century" (Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes)
16) "A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures—Continental Europe and its Empires" (Prem Poddar/David Johnson)
17) "Sterilized By The State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th North America" (Desmond King/Randall Hansen)
18) “Exterminate all the Brutes” (Sven Lindqvist)
19) “The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy” (Edited by Susanne Zantop and Co.)
20) “When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda” (Mahmood Mamdani)
21) “German Colonialism and National Identity” (Edited by Jeurgen Zimmerer & Michael Perrauden)
22) “The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century” (Helmut Smith)
23) “Let Us Die Fighting: the Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism (1884-1915)” (Horst Drechsler)
24) “South-West African Under German Rule: 1894-1914” (Helmut Bley)
25) “The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa” (George Steinmetz)
26) “The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany” (Mathew Jefferies)
27) “German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany” (Edited by Mohammad Salama & Volker Langbehn)
28) “Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm 11, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers” (Jeremy Sarkin)
Reader may also want to take a look at the following published papers;
1) "The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich" (Michael H. Kater). Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Vol. 85, No. 3, p. 515-516 (2001).
2) "From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe" (Benjamin Madley). European Quarterly. Vol. 35, No. 3, p. 429-464 (July 2005).
The Question is: Has Mr. Baidoo ever heard of the “CONTINUITY THESIS”? We guess not. This is clear from his articles. From all indications, at least, we submit that Mr. Baidoo should have mentioned this concept together with its body of critique. Generally, a number of these references provide insights into the continuity between the European Holocaust and the Namibian Holocaust. They also provide extensive information on Germans, who were involved in the Namibian Holocaust, influential men who later ended up joining the Nazis and lending their eugenic expertise, Namibian Holocaust experiences, etc., to the Nazis.
What is more, the Namibian government, universities and research institutions across the world (Europe, America, Canada, and Australia), and the United Nations have all the records showing what happened and the links as well continuity between the Namibian Holocaust and the European Holocaust. In fact, leading German historians have written about the connections and continuities between the Namibian Holocaust and the European Holocaust. The BBC and other Western media have run documentaries on this question, among other things showing the men who run the Namibian Holocaust and how they later ended up contributing and proving a blueprint for the Nazis. Finally, Prof. Ben Kiernan, one of the world's leading authorities on genocide, has a center at Yale University with all the records (start by reading Kiernan's book "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur."
The facts are all there. Mr. Baidoo is simply ignorant about these historical matters. He needs more reading to catch up. To sum it up, the historical record is more than clear on the continuity between the Namibian Holocaust and the European Holocaust. This goes beyond Mr. Baidoo’s limited horizon! It is a shame how Mr. Baidoo goes about turning my write-ups upside down. We therefore encourage readers to go back and read “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can Of Worms I Opened–Mein Kampf.”
What took him so long to come with this new shameful fabrication? Mr. Baidoo is a shameless caricature! He is taking full advantage of the fact that the editor of Ghanaweb did not give my rejoinder, particularly the first of my Hitler’s Mein Kampf two-part series, the same publicity he gave Mr. Baidoo’s “Hitler’s Mein Kampf” series, to lie about my first rejoinder. As a matter of fact, nothing he says about my article in his part two of “War and Capitalism” was covered by me in “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”
That said, we believe it is appropriate to give Mr. Baidoo some good education here, one of the many themes we raised in the first Hitler’s Mein Kampf” two-part series. Medley writes in his essay “From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe,” already referenced, the following:
“Like Hermann Göring, German army officer Franz Ritter von Epp played a major role in developing and promoting Nazi colonial ideas. However, while Goring’s connection to German South West Africa was second-hand, von Epp spent two years there, participating in the Herero genocide. He acted as a direct human conduit through which German South West African ideas and methods flowed into the highest echelons of the Third Reich. Von Epp employed and influenced future Nazi leaders, played a crucial role in developing the Nazi Party, and was a Third Reich leader until his 1945 capture by the US Army. Arriving in German South West Africa on 1 March 1904, von Epp was in one of the first waves of volunteer soldiers sent to suppress the Herero Uprising.
“Serving as a Company Commander, under von Trotha, von Epp led soldiers in a number of operations against the Herero, including the decisive Battle of the Waterberg and its genocidal aftermath.
“Von Epp was also in the colony during the establishment of the concentration camps and did not leave until 1906. Following military service in World War I, von Epp employed, influenced, and nurtured numerous future Nazi leaders from successive positions of authority. In February 1919, he formed the right-wing Freikorps Epp and led the unit in crushing the revolutionary, socialist Bavarian Räterepublik before briefly installing himself as dictator of Bavaria. Then, from late 1919 to 1928, he commanded the Reichswehr’s new Battalion Epp, based in Munich.
“The list of men employed by von Epp following the First World War reads like a who’s who of early Nazi leadership. Both Rudolf Hess, who later became Nazi Party deputy leader, and Gregor Strasser, who later led the Nazi Party’s left wing, served under von Epp. So did Walther Schultze, who as Nazi National Leader of the Association of University Lecturers removed Jews from German university posts and participated in the Nazi euthanasia program. Ernst Röhm, who founded the SA, or Storm Troopers, served as the general’s aide-de-camp for nine years.
“Von Epp’s influence on the early Nazi party may even explain how Rohm’s SA became the ‘brown shirts’. In 1924, Hitler, Göring, Röhm and other Nazi leaders chose to dress the party’s brown-shirted Storm Troopers in the same colonial Schutztruppe uniform that von Epp had worn in German South West Africa.
“Most importantly, von Epp influenced and nurtured Röhm’s then close friend, Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler. Von Epp employed Hitler first as a paid informer who, immediately following von Epp’s seizure of power in 1919, fingered communist soldiers under von Epp’s command. Later, von Epp employed Hitler as an ‘educator’ charged with instilling nationalist and anti-Bolshevist sentiments in the soldiers of the new Battalion Epp.
“It was while serving von Epp in this capacity that, according to Ian Kershaw, Hitler ‘stumbled across his greatest talent. As Hitler himself put it, he could “speak.’’’
“Von Epp thus helped launch Hitler’s political career and likely steered the future dictator toward right-wing politics; during this period both men joined the forerunner to the Nazi Party, the tiny Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei, or German Workers’ Party. Von Epp was a committed Nazi during the movement’s uncertain, early years. In May 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag on the Nazi ticket along with Gottfried Feder, Wilhelm Frick, Joseph Goebbels, and Gregor Strasser. He entered the Reichstag as one of only a dozen Nazi delegates among 500 Reichstag members. As a Nazi leader, von Epp was deeply influenced by his military service in German South West Africa and he, in turn, profoundly influenced Hitler’s colonial policies.
“Once in power, Hitler rewarded von Epp for his loyal work. On 10 April 1933, Hitler appointed von Epp Governor of Bavaria, a position he held for 12 years. In Bavaria, he presided over the construction of Dachau, as well as the murder of virtually all Bavarian Jews and Gypsies. On 5 May 1934, Hitler appointed him Leiter, or head, of the Colonial Policy Office of the Nazi Party, a position from which he helped to plan colonial policies. As Klaus Hildebrand has observed, in1939, Hitler gave von Epp ‘responsibility for preparing and developing future colonial plans and concerns’ Von Epp continued to serve the Third Reich loyally until the very end, dying in US custody on 31 January 1947.
“Like von Epp, anthropologist Eugen Fischer played an important role in developing and realizing Nazi colonial and genocidal ideas. Moreover, Fischer’s personal experiences in German South West Africa shaped how he thought about these issues. However, Fischer’s ideas focused less on colonialism than on racism, and whereas von Epp was indirectly involved in Nazi mass murder, Fischer was intimately involved. In 1908, while Herero and Nama were dying in concentration camps, Fischer arrived in German South West Africa and began a pseudo-scientific study of 310 children. He aimed to gather two kinds of data from each child: physical characteristics, like eye and hair color, and measurements of intelligence. Fischer then compared these two data sets and fabricated correlations between physical traits and intellectual acumen. The children Fischer studied were Basters, members of an Afrikaans-speaking Namibian minority descended from intermarriage among Boers, Britons, Germans, and Khoikhoin.
“His findings, published as DieRehobother Bastards in 1913, had a tremendous impact in Germany. According to Henry Friedlander, ‘This study not only established [Fischer’s reputation] but also influenced all subsequent German racial legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws’. Fischer argued that the offspring of interracial unions are of ‘lesser racial quality’ and that his subjects’ cognitive abilities were inversely proportional to their African physical characteristics. He continued: ‘Without exception, every European people that has absorbed the blood of the inferior races–and that Negro Hottentots, and many others are inferior is something that only dreamers can deny–have paid for this absorption of inferior elements by intellectual and cultural decline’…
We call on Mr. Baidoo to go ahead and read the rest of Benjamin Madley’s essay, check out his extensive bibliography, and come back to tell readers what he found in the essay, including informing his unsuspecting readership the thematic correlations he finds between Madley’s article and our “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler’s Mein Kampf 1.” Mr. Baidoo may then want to also petition the editor of Ghanaweb to re-publish the latter essay so that readers will have the opportunity to see his lies by, among other things, reading our piece for themselves and making up their own minds. As probably should be expected of us, we went ahead to re-publish “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler’s Mein Kampf 1” again on Modernghana so that Mr. Baidoo never had the chance readers to deceive and to mislead by readers.
And by distorting our work he ended up totally avoiding a discussion of the capitalists who financed Hitler and the Nazis, built and ran some of Hitler’s gas chambers and extermination camps, how capitalist Henry Ford’s newspaper “The Dearborn International” and its serial publication and book “The International Jews” may have influenced the writing of “Mein Kampf” and Nazi politics, how a capitalist corporation produced the poison gas used in the Holocaust, how American capitalist corporations and institutions financed Germany’s eugenics, how capitalist states like Britain and the US knew about what the Nazis were doing to the Jews and others but sat on the information, how the South West African (Namibian) Holocaust preceded the European Holocaust, the role of Wall Street, as well as our bibliography on capitalist collaboration with Hitler and the Nazis. And more.
Mr. Baidoo avoided these complicated questions and instead settled on the trivia: Blackmail and fabrications. This is unfortunate because the references we gave him are based on extensive data from archival and declassified records from all the majors players involved in our discussion.
Some of the references even came from individuals who prosecuted Nazi war criminals (Please go back and take a look at “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler’s Mein Kampf 1.” Note: Our references are a fraction of the lists at our disposal). We wish this could be repeated on Ghanaweb. We tried on numerous but without success. We also provided Modernghana readers with references to help them know when and where Mr. Baidoo is lying and distorting facts. We are doing the same here so that Ghanaweb readers will know where and where Mr. Baidoo is lying and distorting facts. So far, we have exposed most of lies and distortions. Other Ghanaweb readers have done similarly, exposing his logical flaws and factual errors. This is good because we cannot continue to allow others to mislead and mis-educate the reading public. It is a shared responsibility to do right by the reading public by providing it quality information. It turns out every time we expose his lies, ignorance, and fabrications Mr. Baidoo comes up with more lies, distortions, fabrications, and insults.
It looks as though he is operating from a standpoint of frustration. Unfortunately this exercise on our part to expose him is not ending any time soon. We strongly believe this time he did not take it lightly when we exposed his lies about Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. Alas, he had to fabricate another lie about the content of “Re: Nkrumahism, The Can of Worms I Opened–Hitler’s Mein Kampf 1” just to make up for his perceived and real deficits, whatever they are. As a result, we will continue to post the latter essay in the “comment box” under Mr. Baidoo’s Ghanaweb articles until readers finally come to know what our essay actually says as opposed to his twisted logic and outright fabrication. Granted, how far will this shameless man go to distort, fabricate, and lie about others’ work at the same time as he tells his unsuspecting readership he is a “principled man” and “a Christian”?
Finally, readers may have to read more about the Namibian Holocaust, Lothar von Trotha, Dr. Brofinger, Frantz von Epp, Heinrich Goering (the father of Hermann Goering (Field Marshall of the Luftwaffe), perhaps the most powerful Nazi personality after Hitler), Eugen Fischer (Chancellor of the University of Berlin (he was an important figure in the Namibian Holocaust). Fischer also taught Nazi physicians such as Otmar Vershuer who in turn taught Josef Mengele, “Nazi Angel of Death”), Ernst Rohm, Von Zulow, and so on. But having said that, lying will get him nowhere as far as we are concerned. We shall continue to put him in his place as long as we write for Ghanaweb and other websites where his articles are published. We promise him that for sure!
Thanks.
