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PARTISAN REVIEW
better to come to an understanding than to fight. Inside the national
boundaries, this means concentration of capital and monopolization. And
beyond the frontiers, the great trusts sketch out the first bold strokes of
the world economy of tomorrow. But at the same time, imperialist com–
petition being sharper than ever, the web spun by international capitalism
is constantly being torn by the struggle for a new division of the world.
To the concentration of capital the workers replied by organizing
trade unions, mutual aid societies, cooperatives for the collective defense
of their class interests. Just as the division of surplus value is settled by
the relative strength of various capitalist groups, so the burden of the
labor that produces surplus value is distributed according to the strength
of the various workingclass organizations. Wage increases won by the
better organized workers are shifted onto the backs of weaker sections of
the workingclass. Thus if the high union rates of the printing craft makes
it expensive to print the firm's catalog, the management can simply cut the
wages of .the unorganized office workers. Under capitalism, bosses and
workers alike try to 'get out from under' by shifting the burden to their
class brothers. Camoflauged in one place, capitalist competition reappears
in another.
The general tendency to organization, which might have led to a revo–
lutionary change if it had followed class lines on an international scale,
has led to fascism because basic class interests have been concealed by
secondary interests. We have seen miners-or rather their leaders-sup–
porting the maneuvers of Mr. De Wendel to get permission to continue to
export Briey iron ore to Nazi Germany. Or the miners of the Pas-de-Calais
joining with the coal barons to raise tariffs at the expense of the con–
sumer. Fascist propaganda has cleverly exploited these apparent identities
of interest between worker and boss. Fascism's great aim has been real–
ized: the ruling class has tamed the opposition of its own workingclass,
the better to conduct its imperialist struggle.
The chief economic feature of .fascism is that the fascists have applied
to labor power the same methods of monopoly control and rationalized
exploitation as are applied by capitalist trusts to raw materials! markets
and credits. The new regime has become proprietor of a mighty force:
the labor power of the workers, organized into a gigantic 'trust' of arms,
of brains, of skills of all kinds, none of which from now on will remain
unemployed.
It
is true that the organization of labor power, as of the
capitalist trusts, can achieve great efficiency. Many examples can be cited:
guilds, cooperatives, municipal enterprises. But it is wrong to assume
that these advantages enable the collective unit in question to cut itself
off from the rest of the world. It continues to be subject to the laws of
capitalism. The history of the sad failures of cooperative banks in ·France
and Belgium shows that world capitalism imposes its laws on these fragile
organisms of limited 'collectivism.'
It is precisely this historic necessity that imposes itself on fascism.
Granted that it has, in its integral organization, gone far beyond the
