10 PROPOSITIONS
273
The experience of the British labor movement, after a year
of 'realistic' collaboration with Churchill and the Tories against
Hitler, should teach us something. As has been the case for half
a century, from Millerand to MacDonald and Blum, this 'col–
laboration' really means submission of the ruled to their rulers.
To the increasing dismay of liberals, the centre of gravity of the
Churchill-Labor government has shifted steadily to the
right
in the
past year.* Similar effects are beginning to appear in this coun–
try: the use of the Army to break the North American Aviation
strike. In both countries, the logic of politics has turned the pres–
ent governments against the greatest living force against fascism:
the labor movement.
All this might be stomached as a 'lesser evil' to a Nazi victory
-but it is just the point that 'all this' is making such a victory
increasingly likely. Thus in England the political suicide of the
Labor Party, in restoring to power the Tories, has given back the
conduct of the war precisely to those who can never win it.
The lesser evil policy means toleration of the existing social
system. But capitalism is
intolerable,
in a functional as well as a
moral sense. It has become archaic to the point where the ruling
class can no longer defend its own interests within that form.
Evidence: the failure of England, even after a year of total war,
to create a real war economy; our own increasing difficulties along
that line; the political ineptness of the 'democracies' in the war to
date; the lack of war aims; the constant indications that almost
no one,
including the capitalists,
any longer seriously believes that
the old order will survive this war. The alternatives the 'lesser
evil' policy of supporting Roosevelt-Churchill presents are: mili–
tary defeat, owing to the superiority of fascism in total warfare;
or victory under a fascist system of our own.
6.
The workingclass alone can lead a successful fight against
Nazism because it alone can overmatch the Nazis in
(
1)
mili–
tary methods,
(2)
war production,
(3)
war aims.
(1) Hitler's advanced methods of waging war reflect his
advanced politics-advanced in the sense that they manifest a
greater awareness of the present state of the world and a more
serious resolution to meet its problems than shown by the hour-
*See Orwell's letter in this issue; also the account of the recent British Labor
Party convention, in
Time
for June 16.
