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PARTISAN REVIEW
time," somehow to retain a workable "maximum" of the traditional
"democratic'' amenities.
The author himself is well aware of the flagrant contradictions that
arise from this ambivalent attitude of an increasing part of the American
public to the new phenomena produced by the advent of fascism and
brought nearer our shores by the progress of the Nazi war in Europe,
Africa, and Asia. He compares the good American demagogue who blames
everything that is wrong with. America on Hitler, with the good Hitlerian
strategy to blame everything that is wrong with present-day capitalist
society on the Jews. There is no doubt, in fact, that the recent spread of
anti-Hitlerism and war hysteria among people who formerly showed little
concern with broader humanitarian problems, expresses, among other and
more immediate material interests, a growing sense of insecurity and a
"split personality" problem. For these are the social classes which hitherto
felt confident of their ability to make their business go in spite of the
unnecessary additional expenses due to a more or less verbal allegiance
to the "democratic" and "liberal" traditions.
In defining our own position toward Dennis' book we accept, for the
purpose of discussion, his postulate that "definitions must be made by
those who make history." We admit that "democracy" in the concrete -is
equivalent with "capitalism," and we do not demur to the peculiar form in
which he unites New Dealism, Russian Communism, Fascism and Nazism
under the common denominator of "Socialism." We accept the historical
fact that both branches of traditional democratic socialism (the Utopian
as well as the so-called "scientific'' socialism of the Marxists) so far have
turned out to be equally Utopian and unable to prove their theoretical
claims by historical action.
We must insist, however, on a very real and historically well estab–
lished distinction which is entirely ignored by Mr. Dennis. There is one
common feature in every revolution of the past including that great bour–
geois revolution of the 18th century which impressed him so much that he
wants to declare it "permanent" and to regard the social revolution of
our time, as assumedly performed by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and the
New Dealers, as a mere "continuance" of the same
permanent capitalist
revolution.
All genuine revolutions of the past have achieved a new free–
dom for all by the emancipation of a hitherto suppressed class. They have
destroyed the obnoxious privileges of a ruling minority and opened new
avenues of human progress and the pursuit of happjness. Nothing of this
is to be found in Dennis' description of his "new revolution" nor, indeed,
in the historical events to which that term is meant to refer.
According fo Dennis' own words this "new revolution of the 20th
century" is "the product of necessities and frustrations rather than of
opportunities and aspirations." It finds its ultimate aim in that it "simply
wants more or better order,'' more "control" and more "discipline" for
the purpose of preserving and reinvigorating the decaying economic and
class structure of present-day capitalist society. Those are the characteristic
