THE "NEW ORDER"
309
weakness, to co-operate with the state, whose controlling powers
increased correspondingly. Political pressure groups operated for
or against the state, for or against other autonomous groups, or
against the indirect pressure of still unorganized activities. The
state-essentially a monopolistic enterprise like any other in the
capitalist society-used those various forces operating in society
to its own advantage.
80
In the attempt to support the monopolies
the state increased its own power. In tum, "the corporations only
assisted in the complete breakdown of individual freedom without
winning freedom for themselves.
..a
1
Within the general crisis con–
ditions the state became the strongest force in society. The new
and dominating position of the state monopoly within the monopo–
listic society allowed parties, competing for state control, to oppose
both the workers and the bourgeoisie.
82
J.
C. Calhoun, by the mid–
nineteenth century, sounded
"a warning against the danger to constitutional government
from a corporation of politicians having a cohesive group
interest and an economic base in the national treasury."
88
Parties developed corporate interests of their own. "The existence
of the state as an economic base has given the professional poli–
ticians a degree of independence from economic interest groups'm
and has thereby prepared the way which, finally-within the gen–
eral crisis conditions-led to complete control over all the economy
by a party-controlled state apparatus. The politicians found little
opposition
86
in the weakened bourgeoisie, because
"one of the most important developments during the last fifty
years was the separation of, and even enmity between, enter-
"Remember, for instance, the use the Roosevelt Administration made of the C.I.O.
movement in order to consolidate its power, won by virtue of the depression, and to
ilrengthen the government's position against all other groups.
"Robbins and Heckscher, op. cit.
The Journal of Politics.
Vol. 3, No. 1; p. 23.
"H. Goering writes in
Germany Reborn
(p. 67):
"It
will always remain Hitler's
greatest merit that he did not bridge the gulf between proletariat and bourgeoisie, but
filled
it by hurling both Marxian parties and bourgeois parties into the abyss."
11
Quoted by N.
E.
Long in
The Journal of Politics,
May 1941; p. 201.
"N.
E.
Long, "Party and Constitution."
The Journal of Politics,
May 1941; p. 202.
"The
New Statesman and Natwn
{November 23, 1940) writes: "It is the railway
mareholders who now clamor for nationalization since they know that the state must
pve
them what is known as a 'fair return in perpetuity.' The banks are quite indif–
ferent to such a threat of nationalization. They know they won't lose in the process,
and the big executives will find a peaceful home in the Consolidated Fund. There are
IIIIDY
captains of industry who would now like to be the Commissars of State-fostered
110nopolies with the same or larger incomes obtained free of risk. There is even a
borrid suspicion that some Labour leaders could be flattered by the offer of such
poets."
