PARTISAN REVIEW
tion.
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As long as the means of production oppose the workers as
capital, however, i.e., as long as a
third
party has control over
them, these means of production can be used only to create surplus
products for this third agency. So long, too, will the law of value
and not planning "regulate" production and distribution.
In the controlled economy the state acts-as previously the
private entrepreneur acted-as a
third factor
in addition to the
two needed for production: means of production and labor. This
third agency forbids, but at the same time cannot prevent; the
divorce between production and social needs. The controlling posi–
tion of any ruling class depends on its capacity to keep their sub–
jects subdued and "satisfied." Just to keep them subdued would
not be enough today because it would lead to a severe decline of
productivity. The rulers are forced to undertake actions that
secure a sort of social balance. Though each class, group, or state
acts and can only act to safeguard its own interests, it is forced
nevertheless to
react
to the actual social needs.
22
Previous processes of economic and political development
created a situation that endangered both the profits of a growing
number of capitalists and the lives of millions of people. There
was no longer in evidence any sort of "regulation" between pro–
duction and distribution that allowed for even a miserable social
existence. The
violated real law of value
asserted itself
capitalis–
tically
in a gigantic crisis. It forced the ruling classes of the most
depressed nations first to react to its demands and to try to bring
about a distribution of social labor that allowed for both the con–
tinuation of capital accumulation and the postponement of the
collapse.
However, the world is not so often radically re-divided as
the productive process changes nor so often as the composition of
capital is altered. Maintaining pro.fitability in the divided world
of many privileged groups, classes, nations demands re-organiza–
tion by force. In the world as it is, it would help Hitler very little
to declare himself not only a national but also an international
socialist. Other class societies would fight him just the same. It
"F. Engels in a letter to Kautsky in
Aus der Fruehzeit des Marxismus;
p. 145.
12
Hitler's rise to power, his foreign policy, and his internal program are all inter–
dependent. To revive German imperialism, all else that has been done in Germany
was also necessary-the "ending of unemployment," the increasing of state control,
the rearmament program, etc., and vice versa. These actions had their repercussions
because to ereate "social balance" in one class society is to dislocate it in another.
