Corwin Schott, critiqued previously, has come out again with a new incoherent paroxysm. Rather than admitting, as any intellectually honest individual would, that he was wrong, Schott lies to pretend that the true misunderstanding was that we agreed all along, as he says, stating that I “effectively repeated” what he believed. This is a dishonest statement made so that Corwin Schott can save face with the reality that he has no education and has done no research regarding the topics which he asserts himself as an authority on.
…I said that the NRA respcted independent trade unions while the German Labor Front (“DAF”) did not. He pretends I never said this, effectively repeating what I stated in the original article, and then spins it to engage in anti-Nazi virtue signalling (e.g., “They weren’t real real fascists!”)…
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Ignoring the multitude of typos within this amateur paragraph, Schott is simply ignorant of the point being made. Throughout this response, as the readers will note, Schott repeatedly attempts to attack the owner of this website who had no hand in the writing of this article while simultaneously attempting to address (in some parts) the topic of the response he is making. Rambling about the Nazis being real fascists or not is irrelevant to this discussion whatsoever. However, because of Schott’s insistence on red herrings, we will indulge his irrelevant non-sequiturs and respond to all that he has provided within his material.
First and foremost, Schott acknowledges that the NRA and the DAF’s relationship with labor was “different”, while completely ignoring the reality that these comparative engagements were in complete opposition to one another. One economic institution promoted unions through its codes, and unions relied upon the systemic effects of the codes to improve their power (as is the case of the NRA) while the other system (the DAF) crushed unions.
This is classic intellectual dishonesty. I never claimed the organizations were entirely identical; they both engaged in indirect representative bargaining, as evidenced by Zoltanous’ graph.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott would not be able to point out, within my response, where I stated that he believed that the NRA and DAF were “identical.” This is not just an innocent strawman, but a false equivalence. Schott is avoiding the discussion by tilting at windmills. The point posited by Schott was that the institutions themselves were similar due to indirect representative bargaining, as he reiterates here. Almost every single government on the planet within the last century has instituted indirect representative institutions which oftentimes, especially in the case of labor organizations of almost any kind, includes indirect representative bargaining. This criterion is insufficient, as was the point, to label two systems as “similar.” What Schott does not engage with, and attempts to slip out of having to answer, is the fact that the relationships between labor and the NRA & DAF, were diametrically opposed in how they responded to and engaged with labor demands.
Hopefully Schott will be able to comprehend why his comparison is insufficient to consign the DAF & NRA to similar roles at all. Their very nature is completely opposed and the only similarity between them can be found in many, if not most other labor organizations both contemporary to them, and in modern times, which oftentimes had entirely divergent interests. Pointing out a vague and shallow outline of these systems shows nothing which Schott intended to prove, which was the notion that these systems are similar at all. (Zoltanous making a graph also has no bearing on your point. A picture with lots of lines and boxes may look fancy, but this doesn’t form the basis of a corporative state.)
Whether or not the NRA and DAF had “similar objectives” is also well-established. I will not comment further as Mr. Berth never contradicted my article directly, so it would be a considerable waste of time to respond.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
The NRA and DAF’s objectives are indeed well established, and this is why the modern academia which Corwin will appeal to at the end of his article consistently agree that the purpose of the DAF was to promote the interests of large business owners over employees, while the imperative goal of the NRA regarding small business is considered broadly a failure by scholars such as Bernard Bellush, Ellis Hawley, and Barbara Alexander, not to say in the least that the NRA indeed did want to promote large enterprise. This isn’t to say, as Schott tends to be predisposed to believe, that simply because scholars say something that it must be true, but rather to demonstrate the complete consensus regarding these topics, of which the tangible evidence has already been provided within the previous article (Not that we should expect Schott to engage with it, as he has not). Schott ends his paragraph by stating that my response never contradicted his own analysis, which is simply untrue as demonstrated in prior paragraphs.
It is quite interesting to observe how a blog associated with a former Trotskyist allows such cowardly, moralistic language.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott may be suffering from some processing disability, because he fails to understand why the “moralistic” language is used in my response in the first place. As Schott stated in his original post, which he now apparently fails to recall altogether (probably related to an aforementioned processing disability), “small businesses … are far more abusive and exploitative. If you want to create a paradise for workers and ensure full employment, propping up monopolies and cartels is common sense…” My response regarding the labor of children in cobalt mines was missed by Schott. Schott had claimed that large businesses are less exploitative, and aid in the creation of a “paradise” (hold on to that term). My response was simply pointing out the rather easily comprehended fact that large enterprise requires more exploitation, which is especially prominent in third world nations. Schott missed this entirely, and instead decided to whinge about how I was the one using cowardly and moralistic language, completely missing the irony of this rebuttal being that his original statement was encouraging the goal of “paradise” and arguing against exploitation, albeit in a pathetic manner, hardly a non-moralistic argument in the first place.
If one delves into Marx’s works, it becomes apparent that he acknowledged child labor as a necessary phase during industrial development, much like slavery and feudalism were viewed in historical context. Yes, from a Marxian perspective, the fact petit-bourgeois firms will not employ “child labor” in the third world is actually harmful, because it confirms what I said in the article: That small businesses are stagnant.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Hardly any response needs to be made here, due to the fact that Schott is simply employing an appeal to authority with no further analysis. Marx believing in the historical benefits of child labor is not an argument for child labor, or anything related to the NRA. Though the official Marxian perspective is opposed to child labor. Marx in his own words was against the implementation of child labor in modern times.
In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association’, given while he was in the middle of writing Capital, Marx describes British industry as ‘vampirelike’, which ‘could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood too’.
Mark Neocleous, “THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE DEAD: MARX’S VAMPIRES”
Finally, regarding this point, Schott makes the perhaps mind-boggling non-sequitur that petit-bourgeois firms not hiring children is in fact harmful “because they are stagnant.” (A completely randomized chain of reasoning.) I’m glad we have Schott to enlighten us that the large bourgeois is not stagnant because they employ child labor, unlike the stagnant and destructive petty bourgeois which does not employ child labor. To be sure, this was not Marx’s position iterated within his Critique of the Gotha Program from which Schott likely pulls his belief of Marxian analysis of child labor.
Mr. Berth mentions the potential for the promotion of larger firms to lead to “liberalism.” (Although he does not define this clearly; so, I will assume he means economic liberalism, which is not necessarily incompatible with corporatism, as evidenced in modern social-democratic countries like Scandinavia or present-day Singapore where the bourgeois is still under the government’s boot.) He should also recognize that a society dominated by small businesses, which distributists advocate for, could ultimately regress into something far worse than neoliberalism: Feudalism.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Regarding this point, Schott quickly pivots away from addressing the issue which I presented: the fact that a society dominated by large private firms will always, due to their immense sway in economic control, will always attain massive influence in public policy. This will lead to the state being overwhelmed, as it is today, by private interests which would advocate for, as corporations do today, mass privatization, market deregulation and reduction in government spending. Brushing aside Schott’s impressive pivot, we arrive at yet another point of confusion, which is the idea that a society under the domination of small firms will produce neo-feudalism, while a domination of society by large corporations is less likely to. This is absurd. I would recommend that Schott looks up what a “company town” is, before saying something so stupid again, or he should take some time to research “Project Amazing”, definitionally small-scale spores of neofeudalism led by modern macro-corporations. We’re really off to a horrible first quarter of this “rebuttal”, which took Schott four days to come up with. If only the advice given to Schott, to refrain from using his mouth to spew excrement was taken more seriously, he would not be in this embarrassing predicament; as the old saying goes, it is better to be silent and thought of as stupid, than to open your mouth and be known as stupid.
Schott claims that economic liberalism is not opposed to corporatism, this is wrong:
Today we can state that the Capitalist mode of production is outdated, and with it the theory of economic Liberalism which illustrated and apologised for it.
Benito Mussolini, Speech to the Chamber of Corporations, 1933
Economic liberalism is inextricably linked to the capitalist mode of production, and is not compatible with corporatism, as corporatism is intended to be a holistic economic system which brings equitable benefits the entire system as a functional soma. Economic liberalism, and capitalism more broadly cannot do this, does not do this, and was never intended to do this.
This concept aligns with Marx’s writings, where he discusses the inherently reactionary nature of the petit-bourgeoisie and how policies favoring their dominance could result in the resurgence of feudal institutions. These insights are readily available in works such as “The Communist Manifesto,” which begs the question of why I am having to educate the blog’s owner, a former self-identified Trotskyist.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
In the Communist Manifesto referenced by Schott, on page 79, Marx points out how small peasants and the petty bourgeois in his time, were already in the process of falling into the proletariat, who they were already becoming far more dependent on in regard to their political interests and would eventually adapt to meet the proletariat’s demands entirely– in other words, allies of the proletariat. It is also true that Marx states that the lower middle-class fights against the bourgeoisie, to “save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. “This is why Marx considers them conservative or reactionary, while explicitly also not denying that they may be able to become revolutionary, and that they may become revolutionary regarding their future interests related to the proletariat. Schott seems to have a very horrible understanding of Marx. Regardless, this is one of the multitude of points within this essay where Schott engages is tangential ramblings that have nothing to do with anything that matters. Even if this blog’s owner understood nothing about Trotskyism or Marxism, which is not the case, this wouldn’t matter, as Marxism is not the angle that I was arguing from in the first place. It is the angle which Schott is arguing from. Fascism is not Marxism, and therefore is not bound to Marxist analysis. In other words, Schott introduces a Marxist analysis of the bourgeois in the first place and then complains about having done so.
In my opinion, so long as there exists a foundation of trade union representation, and both workers and employers have nearly equal influence over crucial aspects of daily governance, the risk of a “liberal” takeover becomes minimal.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
One cannot say for certain whether or not Schott truly believes in all seriousness that simply having a state-directed set of unions will negate the fact that he promotes a system in which macro-corporations dominate the economy, but it most certainly is presented as a utopian fairytale which can not be taken seriously to any degree. Any set of institutions which dominate the mode of production will dominate the institutions reliant on that. This includes the administrative bodies of trade unions, and the state, as is the case in the modern world. If Schott wants a nation ran by a tripartite system with high unionization rates, a large proportion of the employment sector ran by macro-corporations and expansive social safety nets, perhaps he should move to Sweden where his dumpster fire dream already exists.
Mr. Berth exposes his utter incompetence by baselessly insinuating that I am a fake Futurist. His feeble attempt to discredit me by associating my advocacy for realistic, standard class collaborationist policies with falsity simply does not work.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott is a fake futurist first and foremost because Marinetti expected futurists to be intelligent young men, which means that our poor friend here has already failed the litmus test. As well, Marinetti states within the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, that the Futurist is to pursue modesty, avoiding support for large profits, and disdain commercial and academic environments, which Schott supports within the first instance, and relies on personally within the second instance. Marinetti also hated the rich who Schott supports, believing all of them to have emerged from fraud and greed, as he states within the quotes below from Marinetti’s “Beyond Communism”, as well as showing his unwavering support for the “lower-middle-class” (the petty bourgeois more specifically later on in his essay).
Rich and poor exist; poor from bad luck, illness, incapacity, honesty; rich from fraud, astuteness, avarice, and ability;
MARINETTI, “BEYOND COMMUNISM”
…
“Soiled and moribund bourgeoisie” is an absurd description of that great mass of young, intelligent, and hard-working lower-middle-class people; students clerks farmers, businessmen industrialists, engineers, notaries, lawyers, etc., all sons of the people, all absorbed in working furiously to do better than their fathers.
…
The peasants and workers who fought in the war … could never have won without the example and intelligence of those petits bourgeois [piccoli borghesi], the heroic lieutenants.
What do these quotes show? According to Schott as a self-proclaimed futurist, (truly a leach with no principles), then Marinetti himself, inventor of futurism, who intertwined war with the intelligence of the heroic petty bourgeois, who considered the petty bourgeois a class of intelligent and virtuous laborers, who hated the rich, decrying them as greedy frauds, must be in fact nothing less than a reactionary enabler of neofeudalism. After all, if Marinetti supported the petty bourgeois to the vast extent which he did, then by Schott’s analysis of the petty bourgeois, Marinetti must be nothing other than such. And therefore it stands that if Schott were a true futurist, Schott is a reactionary neofeudalist by his own reasoning, a fact which is true regardless. Without a contextual understanding of the political aspects of futurism which the artistic and expressive sides are contingent on, you are simply a pseud.
It is worth highlighting that his own judgment is suspect, considering his unwarranted classification of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Engelbert Dollfuss as Futurists, lacking substantial evidence. I readily acknowledge that my approach to class collaboration may align more closely with regimes like the Empire of Japan or Salazar’s Portugal.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott really is losing a grip on the discussion topic. It may be lost on the readers how the futurism of Dollfuss or Rivera is related to the National Recovery Administration, or how much of this is at all. The unfortunate truth is that Schott was too unread to reply to anything that really mattered here.
As for admiration of Showa’s Japan & Salazar, it should be noted what levels of raw stupidity Schott is steeping to. Taxation was extremely high during the Showa period, a lifetime employment mandate was passed, prices and quality of goods dropped, bribery to influence legislation and remove competitors from the market was rampant, and social inequality grew exponentially during this period. Estado Novo experienced mass emigration in the 1960s, as well as social and economic stagnation.
In 1960, at the initiation of Salazar’s more outward-looking economic policy, Portugal’s per capita GDP was only 38 percent of the EC-12 average; by the end of the Salazar period, in 1968, it had risen to 48 percent; and in 1973, on the eve of the revolution, Portugal’s per capita GDP had reached 56.4 percent of the EC-12 average.
https://countrystudies.us/portugal/64.htm
Instead of addressing the implied substance of my point which Schott responds to– that the futurists were expected to and unanimously supported small firms, as I state, “Schott goes on to blabber about how it’s an admirable thing to favor large capitalist firms — a pathetic stance for a so-called “futurist” as he prides himself to be.”– Schott decides to ramble for the better part of three paragraphs about how he’s a real futurist because he’s a transhumanist American patriot who’s allergic to history, or something around those lines. The reader can go and view the full spiel on their own time. Here are some notable excerpts:
His feeble attempt to discredit me by associating my advocacy for realistic, standard class collaborationist policies with falsity simply does not work.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
To pretend to be a futurist while centering your policy points around being “realistic” is nothing short of laughable. The futurists were idealists, not pragmatists.
That is why my manifesto advocates for eventual measures such as the abolition of human reproduction through cloning and gene editing, communal child rearing, and forced ethnic integration (similar to Singapore’s approach).
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Transhumanism and failed social policies aren’t futurism. The one point he got here was the communal child-rearing, which would be better phrased as state child rearing. In Singapore, the ethnic integration policies can be correlated to a decrease in property values for ethnic minorities. A study of residential ethnic integration by Shin Bin Tan notes regarding the effectiveness of Singaporean integration policies:
“These findings highlight the need for greater attentiveness to residential integration policies’ impact on both socio-economic and ethnic integration, and not to assume that policies aimed at improving one would be sufficient to address the other.”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00420980221117918
Large corporations often excel in philanthropy. The majority of assets held by charitable foundations, which frequently address gaps in the welfare system in the United States, originate from corporate wealth.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Praising large corporations for utilizing the surplus labor value of their workers to fill in gaps in public services– public services which are required in the first place to make up for the inadequacies of the private sector and its inability to support its own laborers– rather than promoting improvements in the public sector’s social safety nets, is beyond ridiculous. An intelligent person would not seek out the root of the problems of poverty to aid those in poverty. In fact, if the wealth of the ultrarich leaches that this bonobo praises were distributed back into public social programs, then we would not have a fraction of the gaps in these programs which we have presently.
Store chains with over 500 employees typically offer wages that are 26–36% higher compared to smaller stores with fewer than 100 employees. This indicates that large corporations such as Walmart provide greater opportunities for social mobility and personal growth, including avenues for promotions and wage increases, compared to the neo-feudal “mom-and-pop shops” the author seems to romanticize excessively.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Walmart and other large corporations are notorious for paying poverty wages to their employees. There is a lack of state investment in small firms which give the larger firms the funding which they require to aid in higher wages. Walmart has admitted to the use of programs such as SNAP to generate profits off of government support. Walmart also consistently coaches their employees in the use of programs such as Medicade so that they do not have to provide benefits to their workers.
Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control … These factors include … changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement[al] Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans
https://web.archive.org/web/20140209135010/https://stock.walmart.com/financial-reporting/sec-filings/
In other words, Walmart, and these other similar large corporations, aren’t independently generating the wages of their workers. They are once again reliant on the government subsidies. Therefore, small or medium firms would benefit just as much as macrocorporations have from government aid and would be able to provide higher wages for their workers. Schott’s argument ultimately is driven by his love for Big Gulp and the exploitation of the working class, rather than a real care for the wellbeing of the nation and the people who reside within it.
The notion that Walmart provides further social mobility for its employees is an opinion which stands completely removed from the truth. As noted by Senator Sanders, Walmart pays starvation wages to its employees, hardly grounds for building social mobility. Walmart employees rely not on the support of their employer, but rather from public social safety nets. Senator Sanders noted “They are forced to rely on food stamps to feed their families, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer; public housing to put a roof over their heads, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer; and Medicaid to get the health care they need paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.”
Most Walmart employees make under $15,500 per year, and even with increases in pay, the corporation is still lagging behind national wage increases. Again, these are hardly grounds for the social mobility of employees of macrocorporations. There are problems with all other large corporations besides Walmart, though this was the example that stood out.
The average hourly pay of $14.26 translates to about $25,200 a year for 34-hour weeks, which is considered full time at Walmart. This income falls below the national poverty line for a family of four.
https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/news/2019/05/09/many-walmart-employees-earning-below/5204024007/
Small businesses meanwhile have been able to keep their wages growing faster than the annual inflation rate as of 2024 and the incomes of employers within small firms generally hardly exceed their employees, with their average salaries only exceeding the national wage average by 16%. What exploitation is there here again? The average small business owner hardly earns more than their own employees. How exploitative of them! Forbes notes that within the last year there was a “4.6% increase in hourly earnings” for small businesses, “which is notably higher than the current annual inflation rate of 3.2%.”
Wal-Mart’s compensation surpasses the industrial average by 25%. Furthermore, the average hourly wage for a full-time Wal-Mart employee stands at $13.38, significantly higher than the median wages of $9.70 per hour for cashiers and $11.01 per hour for retail salespeople.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Note Schott’s dishonesty here. According to Indeed, the average posted wage of cashiers is $14.64. As well, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for a cashier was $13.58 per hour as of 2022, while according to CareerExplorer the average wage was $13.11 for cashiers. Whichever you pull it, the $9.70 median wage for cashiers stated by Schott, is simply wrong. As well, the median wage for retail salespersons is $14.79 within the USA, again according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even within the source provided by Schott, none of the wages he mentioned for the average cashier or salespeople are referenced, demonstrating a continuation of the same pathetic train of intellectual dishonesty which has permeated his entire response.
Large firms pay 14% more than smaller ones do; and big companies can have a more significant positive impact on local communities compared to small businesses. Large firms have a higher sense of social responsibility than smaller firms, contrary to popular sentiment; the larger a firm, the greater their sense of responsibility, which may explain the higher philanthropy.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Massive corporations like Apple lobby for a minimum wage increase. The reasoning is axiomatic: Large firms have the financial capacity to pay their workers liveable wages, giving them a competitive advantage over smaller enterprises.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Do corporations do this because they care about their employees? No. The only reason that corporations lobby for higher wages is because they want to crush small upstart businesses which will have a harder time surviving the first five years. This is not intended so that a real livable wage can be achieved, and it evidently does not result in this.
As Lind and Atkinson both noted in their book, American trade unions in the early 20th century preferred larger enterprises (including monopolies and cartels) as they are easier to unionize. Large-scale enterprises have a higher unionization rate.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott claims most importantly that large-scale enterprises have higher unionization rates. Note that he provides no source for this claim. This is absurd. Walmart for one, has never experienced any unionization and has resisted unionization efforts completely. Apple withdrew from unionization efforts in 2022 and hired the Littler Mendelson law firm to represent them, popularly known for their staunchly anti-union stance. Starbucks vehemently fought against unionization, going so far as to ban pro-union buttons from their workplaces, which was ruled as a labor violation on Starbucks’ part. Microsoft does not recognize any trade unions within the United States. The list goes on. Yet another lie on Schott’s end? Or simply a demonstration of his lack of prowess regarding these topics?
Regulating five massive companies is inherently easier than regulating 5,000 small businesses. This is basic mathematics, though.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott will complain about “basic mathematics” here and yet fail to be able to do just that in the following point, but before we get there, it should be intuitively obvious that controlling monopolies and cartels that have full control over economic production will have much more say in public policymaking, and thus infinitely harder to control, than small firms which do not hold such power.
Small firms contribute a mere 16% to research and development (R&D) spending, while a substantial 81% of patents originate from big businesses, academia, and the public sector.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
Schott’s own sources (Table 51) shows that small firms generate a highly comparable number of patents in general. In 2012, small firms with 5-499 employees produced 15,000 patents, while in that same period of time, large firms with 10,000-24,999 employees produced 12,637 patents, exponentially less patents than said small firms per employee. This demonstrates that smaller firms are undeniably, absolutely more innovative than larger firms. In the meantime, it ought to be pointed out that to bump the number of patents up to 81%, Schott tied in the patents of academia and the public sector (the state) with big business to attempt to make the share of big business’ role in patents appear greater and more impressive than it actually is.
The last point underscores the fact that significant innovation primarily emanates from big capital, and to some extent, big government.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
For one, nobody denied that the government produces many patents. This is yet another instance of Schott starting to go down a trail that nobody was even arguing about in the first place. Unfortunately, however, the aforementioned “last point” has been completely discredited by Schott’s own source.
He insists I am some sort of deranged capitalist because he wants to manipulate into a false narrative.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
No. Schott is a deranged capitalist because he displays the characteristics of a deranged capitalist. This entire response to me has been almost exclusively him promoting the interests of deranged capitalists. Hardly anything Schott believes either here or in his Manifesto which we will cover shortly, is opposed to capitalist interest.
Yes, I am well aware that one of the stated goals of the National Recovery Administration was the promotion of “fair competition.” But this does not refute what the F.D.R. administration actually did. I already referenced Michael Lind and Robert D. Atkinson’s book where they mention this policy in passing, and I assumed it would not be controversial, but do not take it from just us. Senator Gerald Nye, who voted against the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), criticized the agency for its perceived bias toward big business and monopolies. While I may have a different perspective on the extent of the harm caused, it is worth noting that many academics and journalists concur with Nye’s assessment, highlighting how the NRA incentivized the formation of monopolies and cartels.
Corwin Schott, “The Seamusite Fascisti’s Terrible Response to Me”
It was not simply “one of the stated goals”, it was the stated goal. That was its only real purpose that required its existence, as was intended within its inception in the National Industrial Recovery Act, Section 3a: “Upon the application to the President by one or more trade or industrial associations or groups the President may approve a code or codes of fair competition for the trade or industry or sub- division thereof, represented by the applicant or applicants…” Attempting to brush the issue of Schott’s analysis under the rug by stating that it was simply “one” of the “stated” goals is dishonest. It was the goal. As for what the “FDR administration actually did,” which Schott conveniently forgets (something he has a habit of doing), and as I stated within the article which he forgot to make a real response to, FDR created a review committee in 1934 to analyze why NRA codes were negatively affecting certain small businesses and consumers. At the same time, the NRA’s own branches of the Consumers Advisory Board, Division of Research & Planning, and the Division of Review intentionally brought attention to many of the systemic errors within the NRA’s own policies regarding small business.
As covered by Lyon in his book “the National Recovery Administration, an Analysis and an Appraisal”, loss leader regulations were used by the NRA to protect small businesses as well as cost protection.
Price cutting is an unfair method of competition and is forbidden. Any member of the industry or of any other industry or the customers of either may at any time complain to the code authority that any filed price constitutes unfair competition as destructive price cutting, imperiling small enterprise or tending toward monopoly or the impairment of code wages and working conditions.
NRA Office Memorandum 228
The problem with the NRA was vagueness in codes, not antagonism to small firms. Leverret Lyon points this out in his book:
The first difficulty with such a definition is the determination of how small an enterprise is before it is small in the meaning of the term. What is the meaning of “imperiled”? It is hardly to be supposed that every existing unit must be protected, but if not, which ones should be denied protection?
Leverret Lyon, the National Recovery Administration, an Analysis and an AppraisaL
According to the NRA Release No. 4830, a formal emergency was declared to defend and preserve the independent dealers and small manufacturers against mass distributors and big business by setting costs lower. So in short, Schott is wrong. Schott failed to understand the purpose of the NRA and simply took its failures as policies which were intended to have the effects which they did. Time and time again, the NRA took measures to attempt to support small businesses as has been undeniably proven here. Any failures were simply systemic errors. The founders and administrators of the NRA would be horrified at the notion that the NRA was intended to prop up cartels.
I hope Schott realizes that his appeal to a Senator who disliked the NRA to affirm Schott’s positive view of the NRA is bad methodology. Deferring to only those who dislike a historical policy is not a reasonable method by which to gauge what the policy was intended to do or what it was structured for. Schott then proceeds to appeal to popular opinion and authority, which is (not that he would know) a logical fallacy. It is actually rather unimportant that “many” academics agree with something. This is not how logic or rational argument works. If I were to defer to popular opinion that Schott has an extra chromosome, would this make it so? Not at all. Schott demonstrates this all on his own accord.
In summary, Schott’s response was worthless. It was full of whinging, failure to understand the point at which disagreements emerged, appeals to Marxist theory directed at writers who are not Marxists, and finally a complaint about non-existent ad-hominems, calling my personal attacks against him “a wave of nonsensical ad hominems to boot.” Schott does not know what an ad-hominem is. “Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.” I engaged with the substance of Schott’s arguments just fine while simultaneously insulting him. Hopefully when Schott responds, he will not embarrass himself half as badly as he did here.
We aren’t finished here though in the slightest. Schott gave himself the liberty to include unrelated tangential points throughout his response, a thorough time waster if there ever was one, and so we will be critiquing Schott’s personal opinions in their entirety as well. For this, we would do best to refer to his “Manifesto.”
We believe that all traces of Judeo-Christian values, including their secularized caricature from so-called modern progressives, must be stamped out. Liberalism, which played a critical role in our foundation as a civilization, now holds us back in the age of unjust multipolarity. Both Judeo-Christian and liberal values preach the virtue of weakness; they must, therefore, face total eradication from the top-down. Furthermore, we must emphasize a patriotic commitment to our civilization and quell all hostile forces therein.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Judeo-Christian and liberal values being portrayed by Schott as planting “weakness” in society is historically inaccurate. From the inception of Judaism and Christianity, both of these systems engaged in, and brought themselves to power through violence, war, genocide, and general losing of the thread. There is no point in Christian history until the last century when Christianity does not promote, by in large, systematic oppression of at least some social groups, and there was no point in the foundation of judaism either which preached pacifism, subordination of religious belief, or anything related. The God of Israel is a war deity. See Exodus 15:3-4 “Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is his name. 4 He has cast Pharaoh’s chariots and his army into the sea. His chosen captains are sunk in the Red Sea.” Christianity spread almost entirely, disregarding the first three centuries, through conquest of foreign lands and expansionism, eventually laying the historical backdrop for what would be the very inception of justification for the genesis of imperialism. To call these belief systems perverse or repulsive is one thing, but to call them “weak” is an altogether different thing, and observably incorrect.
To call liberalism weak stoops to a new low. Robespierre, the first liberal revolutionary, instigated the French Revolution. This was an event which came from anything but the promotion of the values of weakness or passivity. This revolution was an incredibly violent period, penetrated in every instance of its being by motion and action against historical institutions, led by values instated by liberal humanism and a search to develop human solidarity. Whatever Schott believes “weakness” to be (which he does not elaborate on) none of the value systems which he mentioned can be relegated to that term. Humans, globally under liberalism have become the strongest and most efficient that they have ever been in regard to technology, innovation, transport, war, economic domination, and societal structuring.
The creation of a gender-neutral scouting organization which teaches all American children to be patriotic warriors; capable of surviving in both battle and in the wilderness, while destroying sex-based segregation in the process.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Marinetti (and all futurists to ever exist) hated gender neutrality and in fact advocated for gender segregation at least temporarily to assimilate females into masculine gender norms, however Marinetti believed that this segregation ought to be a permanent solution to what he considered to be the “feminization” of men.
“[T]hat mixing of males with females at a very early age, which is the cause of a harmful effeminacy in the male, will be abolished once and for all. Male children—in our opinion—must develop separately from little girls, so that their early games are unequivocally masculine, which is to say, totally devoid of all cloying affections, of all womanish refinements. They must be lively, combative, muscular, and violently dynamic.”
Marinetti
This silly policy idea promoted by Schott is not only a flagrant reversal of futurist concepts, but also an intellectually lacking position. This recommendation would in absolute certainty result in a constant disadvantage for women within this institution, but, as observed in the gender-neutral positions at Nuremburg within the Hitler Youth, in which nine-hundred young girls returned home pregnant, this proposal would inevitably result in skyrocketing teen pregnancies, which doesn’t seem to be something Schott would be at all opposed to, as he idiotically later argues to reduce the voting age to thirteen.
“Forced integration: Utilizing diversity quotas in housing and business, promotion of intermixing through taxes and subsidies, and the aforementioned patriotic youth organization to unify all racial and ethnic groups under the American civilizational identity.”
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Marinetti was completely opposed to this form of pseudo-equity which has failed everywhere including in Schott’s example of Singapore as previously covered in this article, as well as in America, and negates the futurist conception of meritocracy. In Singapore, property values are affected because when selling in an HDB neighborhood, you can only sell to people of your own race, significantly increasing price pressures and drawing out time to sell, leading to declines in economic growth and generating further disadvantages for ethnic minorities. For the futurist, merit is gained in society through labor & struggle, not through being of a specific disadvantaged social group. Schott’s overtly materialist approach to race betrays the idealist conceptions that underly futurist thought.
“Radical reform of the Bureaucracy which has now become an end in itself and a State within the State. … To make every administration an agile and practical instrument, reduce the number of employees by two thirds, doubling the salaries of the Heads of Service and making competitions difficult but not theoretical. … Abolish the filthy seniority, in all administrations, in the diplomatic career and in all branches of national life. Direct reward for practical and simplifying ingenuity in uses. Devaluation of academic diplomas and encouragement of commercial and industrial initiative with prizes. Elective principle in major offices. Simplified industrial-type organization in the executive branches.”
marinetti, “the political manifesto of futurism’
The relaxation of laws against free sexual expression, including public cross-dressing, which is increasingly under threat by the forces of reaction.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
No such laws exist. There are no laws against cross-dressing, homosexuality, or any expression of sexual freedom whatsoever. Schott has clearly never attended a pride parade.
The integration of Greenland into America to exploit its natural resources with liberty; by military force as a last resort if Denmark refuses to listen to reason.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Across all of Schott’s articles, there has never been a more absurd demand at all. To attack a longstanding ally of the United States for the purpose of theoretical extraction of resources which are already guaranteed to the American market by American hegemony is disappointingly stupid, akin to the ramblings of a mentally deranged asylum patient or the ravings of a mad man.
A strong Chief Executive, elected by Congress, who serves for life with enough power to carry out our objectives.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Key to futurist policy is democracy par excellence, and no man can maintain control for life while retaining the values of democracy. Marinetti pointed out, correctly so, that man should yearn to live fast and ought to die young, and that no man should rule past the age of 45. At every single point of recommendation, Schott violates any principal tenet of futurism, yet insists that the accusation of “false futurism” is a misconstrued accusation on my part.
The creation of a pro-worker welfare state: People will finance their own safety nets through compulsory savings accounts only they can fund and take out. This will ensure those who contribute the most to our civilization will never face poverty.
corwin schott, The Manifesto of American Futurists
Not only is this definitionally not welfare, but this is yet another example contradiction with futurism, as what Schott proposes here is a perverse reversal of what the futurists proposed regarding healthcare and other safety nets. The idea that a population should solely fund their own subsistence at the end of their life is not only antagonistic to the concepts promoted by futurism which intends to curate a system by which the people are cared for by, and care for the nation around them, but is an abandonment of the very humanism instilled in modern politics by Robespierre. Now when Schott leaves them by the wayside, his stance is not reminiscent of a futurist proposal, but instead rather quite similar to the propositions of figures such as Ayn Rand, almost as if to say to the people “And Atlas Shrugged.”
All manual workers who have performed military service in the areas of operations must be registered by the State in the “National Pension Fund for the Disability and Old Age of Workers” from the first day of their actual service. The state will have to pay annual contributions for the duration of the war. The registration of military combatants in the “National Fund” will take place ex officio and will be charged to the State for the entire period corresponding to military service, will produce a continuous burden on the interested parties for the rest of their lives.
marinetti, “the political manifesto of futurism”
Here, the words of Marinetti speak volumes, staunchly contradicting the proposals laid out by Schott, demonstrating once again, the anti-human sentiment at the heart of Schott’s Manifesto, atop his defense of big business, and atop his insistence on complete self-reliance, we see no government of revolutionary nationalism, social wellbeing or communal spirit, but instead a society of anarchistic and neofeudalistic capitalism– and an insult towards the futurists of the past and the futurists of the present.
To conclude, Schott has displayed a consistent and unending intellectual dishonesty, incompetence and disregard for historic accuracy, ideological consistency and baseline human decency. He provides no meaningful insight towards futurism, the National Recovery Administration, or general ideological discourse, and when he does attempt to, his insight is disgusting and irredeemable with no trace of an attempt to deliver meaningful information in any accurate sense, instead reliant upon crude and poorly shapen thought processes which make visible the mind of nothing but a deranged youth.
By Blackshirt Berth
The Seamusite Fascisti 