Monopoly capitalism during Nazi Germany and the violation of human rights

This paper argues that the authoritarian and totalitarian exacerbation of capitalism, in the first half of the 20th century, originated in the crisis experienced by free market capitalism, due to the dynamics of the liberal society. The result was a massive violation of liberal human rights that had enabled the consolidation and legitimation of free market capitalism itself. Thus, the text suggests that an authoritarian tendency, linked to the unstable dynamics and the tendency to crisis of capital reproduction, is inherent to modern liberal society. This structural feature is illustrated through the debates at the Frankfurt School on the end of liberal capitalism. Within this general horizon, the paper gives special consideration to the critical analysis carried out by Franz Neumann, in tension with Friedrich Pollock's "state capitalism" thesis on the totalitarian transformation of the Weimar Republic.