Commanding Heights Essay
Commanding Heights documentary notes
Notes meant to amplify the documentary’s points are shown in square brackets. [ ]
Episode 1: The Battle of Ideas
Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes were contemporaries and economists with rival views. Their two schools of thought dominated Western economic theory in the 20th century. Each had their period of dominance over the mainstream. Hayek was a believer in free markets whereas Keynes believed in strong government regulation of markets.
Lenin opposed international trade and only wanted the USSR to trade with fellow Communist nations. He was therefore against the “global economy.”
Keynes was a prominent economic advisor to the British government during and after WWI. He strongly opposed the Treaty of Versailles terms that forced Germany to make ruinous war reparations to the Allies because he saw it would destroy their economy, which in turn would lead to sociopolitical instability.
During this period, Hayek became a central member of the “Austrian school” of economics. This was a small group of free market economists that formed in Vienna after WWI. They were marginalized during this period.
Lenin’s hardcore Communist policies were a disaster in the USSR: Food production and industrial output virtually collapsed and the county started falling apart. He had to abandon the most extreme Communist practices early on because they just didn’t work in real life.
Stalin introduced the economic practice of central planning to the USSR.
As Hayek predicted, German hyperinflation after WWI completely destroyed the value of all personal bank accounts and bonds held by average Germans. The hard-earned savings of millions of middle- and working-class Germans were wiped out. The German mainstream became outraged and desperate, and they blamed the democratic Weimar government for the problems and became open to extremist alternatives, such as Communism and Nazism.
[In Mein Kampf, Hitler cited broad-based anger
Notes meant to amplify the documentary’s points are shown in square brackets. [ ]
Episode 1: The Battle of Ideas
Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes were contemporaries and economists with rival views. Their two schools of thought dominated Western economic theory in the 20th century. Each had their period of dominance over the mainstream. Hayek was a believer in free markets whereas Keynes believed in strong government regulation of markets.
Lenin opposed international trade and only wanted the USSR to trade with fellow Communist nations. He was therefore against the “global economy.”
Keynes was a prominent economic advisor to the British government during and after WWI. He strongly opposed the Treaty of Versailles terms that forced Germany to make ruinous war reparations to the Allies because he saw it would destroy their economy, which in turn would lead to sociopolitical instability.
During this period, Hayek became a central member of the “Austrian school” of economics. This was a small group of free market economists that formed in Vienna after WWI. They were marginalized during this period.
Lenin’s hardcore Communist policies were a disaster in the USSR: Food production and industrial output virtually collapsed and the county started falling apart. He had to abandon the most extreme Communist practices early on because they just didn’t work in real life.
Stalin introduced the economic practice of central planning to the USSR.
As Hayek predicted, German hyperinflation after WWI completely destroyed the value of all personal bank accounts and bonds held by average Germans. The hard-earned savings of millions of middle- and working-class Germans were wiped out. The German mainstream became outraged and desperate, and they blamed the democratic Weimar government for the problems and became open to extremist alternatives, such as Communism and Nazism.
[In Mein Kampf, Hitler cited broad-based anger