SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
2'65
without slackening the war effort. We see already what is in store
for the masses under the present defense program. And it is well
known that the fascist war effort has considerably worsened the
living standards of the German workingclass.
Thus socialist propaganda, corresponding to reality, would
be much more effective in building morale than is the propaganda
of either Roosevelt or Hitler. Socialist repression, also, being
exercised against the former ruling class-a small minority–
would be much less damaging to the war effort than the large-scale
repressions necessary in both the bourgeois democratic and fascist
forms of
wehrwirtschaft.
The huge repressive apparatus the Nazis
must maintain against the masses, like the equally large bureau–
cracy they must keep up to control private business, is both a drain
on the economy and a soqrce itself of damaging friction.
Socialist propaganda would be effective not only inside the
United States but also throughout the world, notably in the enemy'i
camp. We must remember that the Allies found it impossible to put
down the Bolshevik revolution by intervention because the French
and English workers refused to fight their class brothers, striking
behind the lines and mutinying in the army. And that Hitler in his
propaganda finds it well to appeal to the "workers of the world"
against the "plutocrats." A socialist workingclass regime would
arouse a "fifth column" in any capitalist or fascist army far more
formidable than the "fifth columns" Hitler arouses (also of class
brothers-this time of the ruling class) .
Above all, socialism would be superior to democratic capi–
talism in that it would be fighting, not a
defensive
war, to preserve
a "lesser" against a "greater" evil, but a crusade which would
take the
offensive
for a positive social good, for a form of society
which is historically progressive, which does not conflict with but
carries further industrial progress, and which for the great mass
of people represents a giant stride forward towards a better kind
of life. And it would be superior to fascism in that it would look
towards the future, presenting a consistent and progressive new
form of society, whereas, as we have seen, fascism is a negative,
reactionary movement, with no general solutions for the future and
no historical perspective beyond war, repression and death.
Let us grant all this, comes the reply, but the socialist program
today remains an abstraction. How can even the first steps be taken
