-THE DISCUSSION CONTINUED
421
planned economies, because of the clash of interests (material and imma–
terial) between the rulers and the masses. Nor should we neglect the
factors of psychology and tradition. From this standpoint, the struggle
bears quite different aspects, according to whether the new managerial
class is the product of an anti-workingclass and anti-Marxist counter–
revolution, respectful (in theory) of private property, wedded to the prin–
ciples of authority and hierarchy, as is the case in Germany and Italy–
or whether it is a class of usurpers who still invoke an ideology and tradi–
tion conflicting with its usurpation and standing for the democracy of
work and the complete liberation of man. I emphasize this in order to
emp~asize
that even from the viewpoint of the 'managerial revolution'
deep antagonisms exist between Nazism and Stalinism. In every case,
finally, when confronted with a planned economy, we should pose the
question: Planned by whom? Planned for whom? Planned for what
end? It is on this front that socialists will fight in the future, side by
side with the masses.
2.
The position which Dwight Macdonald takes on the war seems badly
formulated:
"first
a democratic socialist government. . . ." I think we
must stick close to reality and that we cannot take flight in speculation.
This condition,
"first,"
being clearly unrealizable at present, it is bad
propaganda. Better to recognize frankly that the Churchill regime is
fighting
in spite of itself
for the European revolution, the defeat of the
Nazis being the precondition of that; adding that in this struggle (in
which we are
not
engaged in spite of ourselves-quite the contrary) we
have other jobs than to give aid to governments which are subjectively
reactionary, that is accomplices of the enemy, and objectively the play–
things of historical necessities which they don't understand. We have our
own jobs and it is only in doing these without compromise that we will
contribute to the downfall of the Nazis-never
in
becoming conformist.
Thinking over Macdonald's thesis itself, I find no objections. It fol–
lows in the line· of my own thought and of discussions I have had on the
subject with a French socialist, very conservative but a good Marxist
scholar-Lucien Laurat, now a prisoner
in
Germany. The article expresses
in
a closely reasoned and conclusive form something that many of us had
already come to believe in a less systematic way, and is perhaps an impor–
tant theoretical contribution. I am curious to know the arguments that are
being made on the other side.
Apropos of the allusion to the possibility of a permanent state of
war: in '36 I proposed to some Spanish friends that we should formulate
alongside the immediate demand for workers' control of production,
workers' control of the army as well. The idea still seems a good one.
For a host of reasons, I don't believe in a Nazi victory. Even should
I be forced to accept one, I would abandon neither Marxism nor socialism,
the quest for truth and the defense of mankind being independent of vic–
tories or defeats in the march of history. (I'm not at all worried about
