Industry—which especially today is seen by many as the rescuer saving them from hardship and anxiety, hunger and distress—can indeed under certain conditions provide a people with survival possibilities beyond those offered by its own land and territory. However, this is based on a number of preconditions, which I must very briefly mention here.
The point of this type of industry lies in a people producing more of certain necessities than it needs for its own requirements, selling this excess outside its own national community, and with the resulting revenues purchasing the foodstuffs and also raw materials that it lacks. Thus, however, this type of industry is not simply a question of production, but also—at least just as much—a question of sales.
There is much talk, especially at the present time, about increasing production, but it is completely forgotten that such an increase is of value only as long as a buyer is at hand. Within the circle of a nation’s economic life, every increase in production will be profitable to the degree that it increases the number of goods which are thus made available to the individual. Theoretically, every increase in the industrial production of a nation must lead to a reduction in the price of commodities and in turn to an increased consumption of them, and consequently put the individual Voelk Comrade in a position to own more vital commodities. In practice, however, this in no way changes the fact of the inadequate sustenance of a nation as a result of insufficient soil. For, to be sure, we can increase certain industrial outputs, indeed many times over, but not the production of foodstuffs. Once a nation suffers from this need, an adjustment can take place only if a part of its industrial overproduction can be exported in order to compensate from the outside for the foodstuffs that are not available in the homeland. But an increase in production having this aim achieves the desired success only when it finds a buyer, and indeed a buyer outside the country. Thus we stand before the question of the sales potential, that is, the market, a question of towering importance.
The present world commodity market is not unlimited. The number of industrially active nations has steadily increased. Almost all European nations suffer from an inadequate and unsatisfactory relation between soil and population. Hence they are dependent on world export. In recent years the American Union has turned to export, as has also Japan in the east. Thus a struggle automatically begins for the limited markets, which becomes tougher the more numerous the industrial nations become and, conversely, the more the markets shrink. For while on the one hand the number of nations struggling for world markets increases, the commodity market itself slowly diminishes, partly in consequence of a process of self industrialization on their own power, partly through a system of branch enterprises which are more and more coming into being in such countries out of sheer capitalist interest. For we should bear the following in mind: the German Voelk, for example, has a lively interest in building ships for China in German dockyards, because thereby a certain number of men of our nationality get a chance to feed themselves which they would not have on our own soil, which is no longer sufficient. But the German Voelk has no interest, say, in a German financial group or even a German factory opening a so called branch dockyard in Shanghai which builds ships for China with Chinese workers and foreign steel, even if the corporation earns a definite profit in the form of interest or dividend. On the contrary, the result of this will be only that a German financial group earns so and so many million, but, as a result of the orders lost, a multiple of this amount is withdrawn from the German national economy. The more pure capitalist interests begin to determine the present economy, the more the general viewpoints of the financial world and the stock exchange achieve a decisive influence here, the more will this system of branch establishments reach out and thus artificially carry out the industrialization of former commodity markets and especially curtail the export possibilities of the European mother countries. Today many can still afford to smile over this future development, but as it makes further strides, within thirty years people in Europe will groan under its consequences.
The more market difficulties increase, the more bitterly will the struggle for the remaining ones be waged. Although the primary weapons of this struggle lie in pricing and in the quality of the goods with which nations competitively try to undersell each other, in the end the ultimate weapons even here lie in the sword. The so-called peaceful economic conquest of the world could take place only if the Earth consisted of purely agrarian nations and but one industrially active and commercial nation. Since all great nations today are industrial nations, the so called peaceful economic conquest of the world is nothing but the struggle with means which will remain peaceful for as long as the stronger nations believe they can triumph with them, that is, in reality for as long as they are able to kill the others with peaceful economics. For this is the real result of the victory of a nation with peaceful economic means over another nation. Thereby one nation receives possibilities of survival and the other nation is deprived of them. Even here what is at stake is always the substance of flesh and blood, which we designate as a Voelk.
If a really vigorous Voelk believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an economically weak Voelk does not wish to let itself be killed by an economically stronger one, as the possibilities for its sustenance are slowly cut off, then in both cases [it will seize the sword] the vapors of economic phraseology will be suddenly torn asunder, and war, that is the continuation of politics with other means, steps into its place.
The danger to a Voelk of economic activity in an exclusive sense lies in the fact that it succumbs only too easily to the belief that it can ultimately shape its destiny through economics. Thus the latter from a purely secondary place moves forward to first place, and finally is even regarded as State-forming, and robs the Voelk of those very virtues and characteristics which in the last analysis make it possible for Nations and States to preserve life on this Earth. A special danger of the so called peaceful economic policy, however, lies above all in the fact that it makes possible an increase in the population, which finally no longer stands in any relation to the productive capacity of its own soil to support life. This overfilling of an inadequate living space with people not seldom also leads to the concentration of people in work centers which look less like cultural centers, and rather more like abscesses in the national body in which all evil, vices and diseases seem to unite. Above all, they are breeding grounds of blood mixing and bastardization, and of race lowering, thus resulting in those purulent infection centers in which the international Jewish racial maggots thrive and finally effect further destruction.
Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the inner strength of such a Voelk swiftly disappears, all racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the prerequisite which a Voelk urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle for world markets is eliminated. Weakened by a vicious pacifism, Voelks will no longer be ready to fight for markets for their goods with the shedding of their blood. Hence, as soon as a stronger nation sets the real strength of political power in the place of peaceful economic means, such nations will collapse Then their own delinquencies will take revenge. They are overpopulated, and now in consequence of the loss of all the real basic requirements they no longer have any possibility of being able to feed their overgrown mass of people adequately. They have no strength to break the chains of the enemy, and no inner value with which to bear their fate with dignity. Once they believed they could live, thanks to their peaceful economic activity, and renounce the use of violence. Fate will teach them that in the last analysis a Voelk is preserved only when population and living space stand in a definite natural and healthy relation to each other. Further, this relation must be examined from time to time, and indeed must be reestablished in favor of the population to the very same degree that it shifts unfavorably with respect to the soil. For this, however, a nation needs weapons. The acquisition of soil is always linked with the employment of force.
If the task of politics is the execution of a Voelk’s struggle for existence, and if the struggle for existence of a Voelk in the last analysis consists of safeguarding the necessary amount of space for nourishing a specific population, and if this whole process is a question of the employment of a Voelk ‘s strength, the following concluding definitions result therefrom:
Politics is the art of carrying out a Voelk ‘s struggle for its Earthly existence.
Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary, necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a Voelk.
Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary employment of force for this in the form of its race value and numbers.
Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf
by Adolf Hitler
http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=8nt0-BeF2rUC&pg=PA46&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=hunger&f=false
特に今日にでは多くの者が、困窮と不安、飢えと悲惨から自分たちを救ってくれるものとして経済を考えている。確かに経済は、一定の条件下であれば、土地との関係から外れたところでの生存可能性を国民にあたえることができる。しかし、それには数々の前提条件が必要となるので、ここで簡単にふれておかねばならない。
こうした経済システムの意味は、ある国が何らかの重要な商品を自国で使用する以上に生産しているというところにある。その国は余剰分を自国領土の外へ販売し、その収益から食糧や、自国にない原材料を購入する。したがってこの種の経済は、生産の問題だけでなく、少なくとも相当程度、販売の問題を包含している。
特に今は生産拡大についての議論が盛んだが、まったく忘れられていることがある。そのような増産に価値があるのは、あくまでも買い手がいての話だということである。
一国の経済生活のサイクル内でなら、とにかく生産が増大すれば、それによって個人が入手可能な商品の数が増えるから、その分だけ有益だろう。
論理的には、国の工業生産が増大すれば必ず商品価格の下落につながり、その代わりに商品の消費が増大して、その結果として、個々の民族どうしは重要な商品をより多く所有できるようになるはずである。
ところが実際は、それによってはまったく変わらない事実がある。土地不足の結果としての国家の食糧不足である。
なぜならば、確かに工業生産は、分野によっては数十倍にでも増大させられるが、食糧生産ではそれができないからである。
ひとたび国家が食糧不足に陥ったときにそれが是正できるのは、余剰工業生産物を一部輸出して、それで母国で入手できない食糧を外から買って埋め合わせできる場合だけである。
しかし、この目的での生産拡大によって望む結果が達成されるのは買い手がいる場合、それも国外に買い手がいる場合に限られる。よって、ここで販売可能性という問題がたちはだかる。つまりは市場ということだが、この問題は非常に大きい。
現在の世界の商品市場は無限ではない。工業生産の盛んな国は着実に増えている。ヨーロッパ諸国はほぼすべて、土地と人口の不適当かつ不満足な関係に苦しんでいる。
そこでどの国も、世界輸出に依存している。近年ではアメリカが輸出に転じ、東洋でも日本が輸出国となった。
こうして自動的に、限られた市場をめぐる競争が始まる。
この競争は工業国が増えれば増えるほど、逆に言えば市場が縮小すればするほど激しくなる。
なぜならば、世界市場をめぐって競争する国が増える一方で、商品市場は少しずつ減少していくからである。
これは一つには、自力で自国を工業化していった結果であり、また一つには、そうした国々で急増している支店経済システムのためである。このシステムは資本家の利益しか考えないものだ。
なぜなら、われわれは以下のことを念頭におかねばならないからである。すなわち、たとえばドイツの造船所で中国の船を建設すれば、ドイツ国民にとって大きな利益になる。
それによって、もはや不十分となった国土からは得られない食糧を手に入れる機会が、一定数のドイツ国民にあたえられるからである。
しかし、たとえばドイツの金融グループなり工場なりが、いわゆる支店造船所を上海に作り、中国人の労働者を雇い、外国の鉄鋼を使って中国のための船を建設したとすれば、たとえその企業が利子や配当のかたちで莫大な利益をあげたとしても、ドイツ国民には何の利益にもならない。
それどころか、その結果はドイツの金融グループが数百万、数千万と儲けるだけであり、他方、注文が失われた結果として、ドイツの国家経済からはその儲けの数層倍もの金額が引き去られてしまうのである。
今日の経済は純粋に資本家の利益によって決定されつつあるが、これが進めばそれだけ、金融界と証券取引所の一般的な視点が決定的な影響力を持つようになる。
そうなれば、この支店経済システムはますます拡大し、かつて商品市場だった国の工業化と、とりわけヨーロッパにある母国の輸出可能性の収縮とが人為的に行われることになる。
現在はまだこうした将来像にほほ笑む余裕のある者が多いが、この状況が進めば、三十年以内にはヨーロッパはその結末の下でうめき声をあげることになる。
市場の困難が増大すればするほど、残された市場をめぐる競争は激化する。この競争の第一の武器は価格と品質であり、各国は競って相手よりも安い値段で売り込もうとするが、最後には、やはり究極の武器は武力ということになる。
いわゆる平和経済による世界征服が実現するのは、地上の国々がすべて純粋な農業国で、工業の盛んな貿易国が一国だけの場合に限られる。
今日の大国はすべて工業国だから、いわゆる平和経済による世界征服とは、平和的手段を用いての闘争にほかならない。そしてその手段が平和的なものであるのは、各大国がそれで他国に勝てると考えているかぎりにおいてのことである。そして、他国に勝てるということは、平和経済で他国を殺せるということである。