SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
255
keeping method of the State. It is also true that the bourgeoisie
are still greatly favored over the workers and that they are allowed
profits (within limits fixed by the State). But they seem to have
been relegated to the position of the Merovingian kings who kept
the
forms
of imperial power while the Mayors of the Palace exer–
cised the substance-until they finally thrust aside the kings alto–
gether and set up their own Carolingian dynasty.
THE REVOLUTION
Does the Nazi bureaucracy represent a new
OF OPPORTUNISM
ruling class in the sense that the bourgeoisie
once did? And is fascism a new form of
society as capitalism once was, and with comparable chances of
permanence and stability? These are the key questions of our
time. Here I have space only to suggest, briefly, the lines along
which I think some answer may he found.
(l)
The Nazi bureaucracy represents a different form of
political domination from the old bourgeoisie, based on political
control
of the means of production rather than on private
owner–
ship
of them. A suggestive parallel is what has happened in our
own large corpo-rations, where a similar split between ownership
and control has taken place, and where the legal owners, the stock–
holders, have been pushed aside by those in actual control, the
management and directors.
(2) What makes this new form of state power-which I see
also existing in Russia today-so haffiing, especially to Marxists,
is
that the new rulers carefully preserve the old property forms.
Thus
Hitler has left untouched the legal and financial structure
of
capitalism, just as Stalin has religiously preserved the forms of
eocialized economy. From this, many Marxists conclude that Ger–
many
is still a capitalist state and Russia a workers state, quite
overlooking that an entirely new content has been injected into
these forms.
(3) This new content comes from the
manipulation
of the
old forms for objects which these forms did not historically come
into
existence to fulfill. Thus Hitler manipulates the forms of Ger–
man capitalism not for capitalist profits, hut to build up a strong
lltional war economy-and to keep his bureaucracy in control of
it.
For similar ends, Stalin manipulates the forms of socialism,
perverting them from their historical functions into an apparatus
for keeping his gang in power.
