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/'ARTISAN REJIJEW
problems precisely because it was conservative. Writing in 1935 in
Palme Dutt's
Labour Monthly,
a Marxist economist, R. Brown,
predicted the
Plan'~
collapse because: (1) "The State planning of
foreign trade is impossible under a system based on anarchic pri·
vate capitalist production." (2) "The Fascist State is endeavoring
to control prices but is actually powerless even to carry out a real
system of rationing war materials and foodstuffs." Brown's pre·
diction was accurate: the "New Plan" did collapse, and for the
reasons he gave. He was also correct when he noted: "Finance
capital is completely opposed to any State control of production or
markets." As he pointed out, the Nazis faced a dilemma: a great
deal
more
State intervention was necessary, and yet their big bour·
geois 'masters' were insisting on
less.
Hence Brown concluded,
logically enough in his terms, that the 'New Plan' would not be
extended but curtailed, and that economic breakdown would fol·
low. He was, of course, unable to foresee that the dilemma would
he resolved by the dethronement of the 'masters' by the 'puppets,'
and that the relatively mild 'New Plan' would be succeeded by the
totalitarian Second Four Year Plan.
When the New Deal's economic program collapsed, also be–
cause it was a conservative
capitalist
measure where much sterner
remedies were needed, the only effect was the severe depression
of 1937-8. In Germany, however, the failure of Schacht's program
had more serious results, for three reasons: ( 1) the economic crisis
in Germany was so severe as to make it politically impossible to
permit a depression; (2) both the politicians and the big bour–
geoisie, for reasons of foreign policy which did not then obtain
here, agreed that an extensive rearming program was immediately
necessary; (3) political power was held not by a reformist govern–
ment of the traditional democratic-capitalist type but by a totali–
tarian party with a large mass base, a "radical" (demagogically)
program, and a ruthless and opportunist leadership which was not
particularly interested in preserving capitalism, or indeed in any
general principles. This party was able to take the drastic social
and economic measures necessary to meet the situation.
These measures received their formal expression in the Sec·
ond Four Year Plan, a turning-point in the development of German
economy comparable to the Moscow Trials in the political evolu–
tion of Stalinism. Hitler proclaimed the Plan in an appropriate
