Observing the attitude of these toads toward the communist world, we witness a perplexing fact. Far from being in the vanguard of a broad action against international communism, as their privileged station would seem to demand, many toads promoted conciliation, ever ready to negotiate with and extend Western credit to the communists and their allies.
Henry Ford. In 1929, Ford accepted Joseph Stalin's invitation to build a model plant (NNAZ, today GAZ) at Gorky, a city now known under its historical name Nizhny Novgorod. He sent American engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help set it up.
This conciliatory attitude was one of the most shocking aspects of the counter-elite, which was frequently willing to prevent the collapse of regimes that presented themselves as the arch-enemies of capitalism. Such was the case, for example, with American investors who showered the U.S.S.R. with money, even during periods of great tension between the two states, thereby providing the Soviets with economic resources indispensable for their survival.
A comprehensive explication of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this work. However, the similarity between the role of the toads in the capitalist states and that of the nomenklatura in the communist regimes is revealing. In reality, the overwhelming state power of the communists enabling them to interfere in all spheres of life has much in common with the overwhelming economic power of the counter-elite capitalists. In sum, the nomenklatura is an image of the toads.
Gianni Agnelli. His relationships with the Left, especially with Enrico Berlinguer's Communist Party, were the essence of the relationships between labor forces and Italian industry.
Accordingly, it is not surprising ideological barriers were easily crossed between these analogous counter-elites ostensibly antithetical.*
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* William Domhoff points to factors that led to this common Weltanschaung: “Internationalism, acceptance of big government, and acceptance of the welfare state are three characteristics of present-day big business thinking which lead ultra-conservatives to compare a corporate America with the realities of Soviet Russia. There is a final rough similarity. The big businessman of today does not have a religious outlook on the world…. He has a secular view of the world, based upon his liberal and scientific education.” (Domhoff, The Governing Class in America, p. 295).
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), American Appendix, pp. 188-189.
Nobility.org Editorial comment: —
These inauthentic counter-elites give all elites a bad name.
Is it not suicidal, self-destructive, for big fortunes to aid and abet communism, a regime that outlaws private property? It seems so obvious. Yet toads have helped communism from its earliest days and continue to do so.
Why do toads act this way? Because they are not true elites; they do not sacrifice themselves to promote the common good of the nation. And because, as William Domhoff observes, they subscribe to a different mindset: “Internationalism, acceptance of big government, and acceptance of the welfare state are three characteristics of present-day big business thinking.”
