4
PARTISAN REVIEW
decisive-unknown factors in the equation now being worked out
abroad: the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and the United
States of America.
The ambiguity in the American position is solely in the condi·
tions and timing of our intervention on the side of the Allies. There
is no question that a German victory would be a disaster to Ameri·
can capitalism, and that, when and if the Allies seem to be in
serious danger of losing the war, the United States will come to
their .aid with whatever manpoweJ,' and munitions seem necessary.
But our sister "democracies" are also our rivals for world power
and our competitors in those export markets which monopoly capi·
talism finds ever more essential. The more the Allies are exhausted
by the war, the better for the interests of American capitalism. The
aim of our diplomacy, therefore, is to wait until the last possible
moment, but not to dela} our entrance into the war so long that the
Allies are defeated before American aid can reach them. It is a
nice calculation, and in working it out, the Roosevelt Administra·
tion will be guided primarily by the interests of big business.
It
is
not a question of the United States letting itself be used as a pawn
by French and British imperialism, as the isolationists charge. Nor
is it the reverse of the medal, as maintained by the liberal weeklies
and the left-wing New Dealers: a matter of an idealistic America
bringing aid to its sister democracies in order to save the world
from fascism. No, the United States is also an imperialist power,
the mightiest of them all, it also has a huge economic stake in the
struggle, and it will intervene for one purpose only: to protect its
own imperialistic interests.
I.
The position of the Soviet Union, the other great "neutral," is
more ambiguous, and requires more detailed analysis.
So far the most important result of the war has been the
exposure of the real political content of Stalinism. Ever since Hit·
ler came into power, the Third International has posed as the great
champion of the democratic masses ·against the menace of fascism.
But with the first gun fired in Poland, its big pretensions fell away,
its humanitarian vaporings condensed into cynical
realpolitik.
The
transition was made in the abrupt and whole-hog style habitual to
