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PARTISAN REVIEW
being called an idealist.) I see a great advantage for socialism in the
fact that the coming struggles will take place in Europe, on a terrain
already swept clean by the collapse of capitalism, on the terrain of col·
lectivism. Even in times of relative peace, bureaucratic collectivism has
its own internal contradictions.
If
it should succeed in imposing itself
on the continent through a military victory, it would he infinitely more
powerful than capitalism ever was. Yet in the social decay and economic
ruin which would spread through Europe after a lost war, we would
glimpse, at death grips in the very heart of the new system, the forces of
revolution and of conservatism.
The forces on which socialism can count are the following:
a huge proletariat, worn out by long hours of labor, under-nourish,.
ment,
and
low wages
masses of soldiers who will have
had
their bellyful of fighting
farmers without bread, from whom are taken their sons and the
products of their labor
impoverished middle class people, intellectuals and white-collar
workers, who will feel the catastrophe with especial keenness
Opposing these will he the counter-revolutionary forces:
the ruling' hierarchy (who will try to escape by plane on the fifth day
of the awakening of the masses)
the middle ranks of the bureaucracy (one part of which will try to
get on the side of the stronger party at all costs)
the pretorians of the regime, the Gestapo, OGPU, and their hangers-on
-the swarm ofloathesome petty functionaries; these will form the shock
troops of the counter-revolution. Innumerable, this vermin begins with
the janitor.
...
To return to the
PARTISAN
REVIEW
articles a moment, may I say in
conclusion that I don't at all like the subtitle, "Is Fascism a 'New Order'?",
even with the quotation marks. Our language should he infused with our
spirit-language is not neuter. There is no
order
for us, in these times,
in the exploitation of man by man, and nothing
new
in despotism (indeed,
there have been plenty of totalitarian essays in the past). Nazism brings
an order new only in relation to capitalism, made up of old things that we
hate, a really phenomenal retrogression, war being the oldest thing
in
the world.
Yours, etc.
VICTOR SERGE
June 26, 1941
(Translated from
the
French by Dwight Macdonald)
