SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
263
cism as a form of class rule and welcome even a foreign invader
as a means of getting it. They betray their national interests to
remain loyal to their class interests. Even those bourgeoisie who
are loyal, furthermore, can cause much trouble to a conservative
anti-fascist regime of the sort now being installed in this country.
Lacking any real mass support, such a government finds itself
unable to control individual capitalists even in the interests of
their own class. It must respect-as the Nazis need not-the
"rights" of private property and the whole archaic structure of
the law.
In the current issue of
Fortune
there is an authoritative
analysis of the war economy of the French and British empires.
Its general point is that the Allied war effort broke down because
it was not totalitarian.
Fortune
draws quite frankly some interest·
ing conclusions as te what must be done, under the present system,
to prepare effective war against German fascism. Three may be
noted:
(l)
That war can no longer be considered an "accident,"
an episodic interruption of "normal" peacetime conditions, but
rather must henceforth be considered "a recurring phase of demo–
cratic existence." (2) That the kind of
Wehrwirtschaft
built up
in Germany is something quite different from theM-Day adminis–
trative regulations now being prepared over here. ("Thus France
went to war under what are commonly described as totalitarian
controls.... And yet the state did not really take charge. It simply
established its civil servants and military officers inside the normal
economy, which was still run by much the same masters.")
(3) This
Wehrwirtschaft
is a totalitarian business, which subordi–
nates
all
classes to its purposes. ("In a war economy the govern–
ment makes the decisions. It commands a man's soul and his labor
and it rations his bread. The government fixes prices and wages
and profits.")
As to the political alchemy necessary to bring into being this
totalitarian
wehrwirtschaft,
on this
Fortune
is silent. Nor does the
American bourgeoisie as yet seem to realize that more than con–
servative repression and propaganda will be required, that an anti–
capitalist movement
from below
is necessary, something on the
Huey Long or Father Coughlin model. But they have seen what
happened to the European democracies, they have probably sev–
eral years of peace ahead, and they may well learn the lesson.
