Welcome to this throwback edition of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast,

where we remember the past and choose to repeat it.

Today's episode was originally published in May of 2022 and it actually dovetails well with a discussion

we'll be having on a future bonus episode regarding the rise of the far right in the EU in general and

Germany in particular.

The specifics are always going to be different,

but the general trend continues.

When you mismanaged capitalism, or more specifically,

leave what should be the public good up to the forces of the market,

there's going to be trouble.

Sources today include the Tom Hartman program, Robert Reich, Democracy Now, the Zero Hour, the Bradcast, Pitch Fork Economics,

and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. So how does, you know, specifically I suppose, inflation lead to fascism and how in a larger sense do economics swing the cycles of world history

throughout history? Well they do it over and over again it ought to be a basic understanding of the enormous importance and power

of economics in general and economic turmoil in particular.

Let me very briefly go with you through the German experience and show you how

impactful it is in terms of where we are now here in the United States in 2022. The German economy exploded in the second half of the

20th century. Together with the United States, Germany and the United States were the great challengers to the British

Empire. As the century progressed it became clear that one or the other would

replace the Britain as the dominant capitalist power in the world

and the British were powerless to stop it.

In the end, the Germans and the British went to war and the Americans went with the British in that

war, World War I. But it came as a cataclysm to the Germans because the working class

...