264
PARTISAN REVIEW
What all those who are now supporting national defense under
Roosevelt-Willkie are really preparing is either American defeat–
or American fascism.
THE CASE FOR
A SOCIALIST
DEFENSE
It is not hard to demonstrate that a collective
economy democratically controlled by the
workingclass - which may he roughly de-
scribed as "socialist"-can produce a
wehr–
wirtschaft
far superior to anything possible under democratic
capitalism, and even considerably more formidable than the best
fascism can do. The problem, in war as in peace, is how to bring
order out of the anarchic chaos into which capitalism. throws the
industrial mechanism. This requires a centralized control by the
state, the resolution of the deadlocked class struggle, the enlisting
of the support of the masses, and the loosening of private prop–
erty's stranglehold on the productive forces. Fascism is a make·
shift expedient to accomplish these aims, an
ersatz
socialism which
suppresses the class struggle by force and smoothes it over
by
demagogy. But the old contradictions still exist beneath the sur·
face, holding hack the war effort and blocking all vistas into the
future. By replacing the historically obsolete bourgeoisie by the
great mass of workers, whose interests correspond with those of
advancing production, socialism permanently liquidates the crip·
pling class struggle and organizes national production along
rational lines.
Socialism can organize national production effectively he·
cause it can plan and direct without worrying about private prop·
erty rights and the antiquated mummery of profits, interest, gold
reserves, etc. Fascism, because it has to accomplish its collectivism
by stealth, so to speak, without disturbing the
forms
of capitalism,
wastes much energy in cumbersome bureaucratic strategems. (See
Guenter Reimann's
The Vampire Economy
for copious examples
of the waste and inefficiency caused by the Nazi effort to create
a collective economy
de facto
without expropriating the bourgeoisie
de jure.)
Obviously a socialist regime would rally enthusiastic mass
support, since (with profits out of the way and production ration·
ally organized) living standards could he maintained
if
not raised
