SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
2'61
American capitalism. They insist that the outcome of this war is
as much a matter of indifference to the working class as was the
outcome of the last war, and they fail to see any essential differ–
ence between M-Day dictatorship and fascism.
For my part, as I have already indicated, I agree both that
German fascism is "different" and that M-Day dictatorship is not
fascism. But it is from these very propositions that I infer the
necessity of a socialist defense against fascism.
It is precisely because fascism
is
qualitatively different from
democratic capitalism, in the sense that it is a more advanced and
effective form of · organizing national production, that it must
inevitably displace the latter, whether by internal treachery or by
external military conquest, or by both as in France. I don't think
Hitler can be "stopped" by a more primitive form of the same sort
of exploitative class society. Nazism can be conquered only by
another fascist state, that is by a
total
regime imposed by the pres–
ent ruling class, or by a different kind of total state: a socialist
workingclass state. This latter would be able to organize produc–
tion even more efficiently than fascism, and would attract the widest
sort of mass support. It could put up an effective resistance to
fascism both internally and on the battlefield. Fascism is conquer–
ing because even an imitation socialism, still riddled with the con–
tradictions of capitalism, has proved superior to the old order.
Why would a
genuine
socialism not prove even more effective?
As forM-Day not meaning fascism, this of course is just why
'twill not be enough to insure a victory over a fascist power.
If
a
ialist defense is rejected, therefore, the choice seems to me to
not between victory under Willkie-Roosevelt or defeat by Hitler,
ut rather between defeat under Willkie-Roosevelt or victory under
native fascist regime (perhaps led by one of those individuals).
e lesson of France seems clear to me: democratic capitalism is
istorically obsolete, and in a struggle with fascism it must either
defeated by its relative inefficiency and by the treachery of the
urgeoisie and the apathy of the workers, or else it must itself
o fascist as the price of victory. The present stampede by the left
tellectuals and politicians and the labor movement to line up
hind the Roosevelt-Willkie national defense program seems to
e suicidal. The American workingclass is rushing back into the
use of democratic capitalism just as the whole structure is
llapsing.
