And for those who missed it the first time:
Quote:
The concept of privatization seemed very much in the air in the late 1970s and
early 1980s. Under prodding by Margaret Thatcher, 5 percent of the shares in
British Petroleum were sold in a public offering in November 1979, the first of the
major flotations in this period (Vickers and Yarrow, 1988, p. 316). My goal here is
not to comment on the merits of privatization as a policy, but rather to investigate
the history of the term “privatization” in economics and to shed some light on the
context in which the word was coined. Although the origin of the term is often
attributed to a 1969 book by Peter Drucker, I will show that this attribution is
incorrect, and that the terminology of privatization played an evolving role in
German economic policy from the 1930s through the 1950s.
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The Coining of “Privatization” and
Germany’s National Socialist Party
Quote:
Nationalization was particularly important in the early 1930s in Germany.The state
took over a large industrial concern, large commercial banks, and other minor firms.
In the mid-1930s, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership to the private sector.
In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in western capitalistic countries,
none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization was
used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.
In addition, growing financial restrictions because of the cost of the rearmament
programme provided additional motivations for privatization.
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Against the mainstream: Nazi
privatization in 1930s Germany