THE "NEW ORDER"
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opportunity to reach them will struggle unless the whole basis for
social privileges is done away with. This, however, can be done
only by those who have never a chance to rise, that is, by the pro–
letarian masses.
Capitalist production necessitates a social situation wherein
the means of production belong to one class in society. Another
class must have at its disposal nothing but its labor power. The
divorce of the laborers from the means of production is the pre–
requisite for and the basis of capitalistic production. So far as
this fundamental capitalistic relationship is concerned nothing has
changed in the totalitarian systems. What has been altered is the
relationship between government and individual capitalists. In the
democracies, individual ownership predominates over govern–
mental control; in the fascist states, governmental control over
individual ownership. In Russia, alone, individual ownership has
been done away with altogether and the state has complete control
of the productive apparatus and natural resources.
The trends of development indicate that the democracies
travel in the direction of fascism and the fascist nations in the
direction of the Russian system. But in all these states the real
basis of capitalistic production has not been abolished. However
different the world may look to individual proprietors who have
been displaced by governmental agencies, for the great mass of
the population nothing of real importance has taken place. They
have changed their masters as they changed them before in the
hiring and firing process, or when they shifted from private to
governmental employment.
If
the "fascist revolution" involves no
more than the change of control of the means of production from
the hands of private entrepreneurs into those of government offi–
cials, nothing new has evolved as regards the relationship between
capital and labor.
The capital-labor relationship is the only one that really
concerns the working class.
Unable or unwilling to alter it by their
own independent actions, the workers remain apathetic toward
the struggle between fascism and democracy. They are not opposed
to state control of the economy. So long as they are willing to work
for capital at all, they are just as willing to work for the govern–
ment as for private enterprises. That the workers in the democratic
nations nevertheless participate in the fight against fascism is not
