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PARTISAN REVIEW
talist'? This is another question, but to it I would also say, No. Stalinist
·degeneration is a product of that persistence of a capitalist milieu which
imposes its own laws.
1941: 24%
increase in military expenditures.
Those are not consumers' goods! Add police expenses and you have 37%
of the Soviet budget absorbed by this kind of expenses. Is not the mark
of capitalist economy, completely oriented towards war, everywhere
evident?
So too on an even greater scale with fascism. Its perspective is the
maintainance of an unheard-of social tension, the defense of its cpnquests
against the slaves who will revolt. And the limitless conquest of new
territory. It cannot stop, for the limits of its self-sufficient economic unit
are those of the globe. Raw materials are rather capriciously distributed.
There is thirty times as much oil in America as in the countries controlled
by the Axis. But Germany has coal and iron? What about tungsten,
nickel, vanadium, molybdenum, without which the specialized steels of
modern industry cannot be made? The very idea of the domination of the
world by an alleged 'superior race' is a product of capitalist civilization,
and is the supreme proof that Hitler has not escaped from this system, and
canl)ot escape.
The concept of a world economy run by brutal masters ruling over
millions of slaves not only clashes with the deepest human instinct f6r
liberty as well as for security. But these economic tendencies also lay the
groundwork for a world-wide socialist economy, the only possible solution
to the _envenomed antagonisms of our .time. Free competition yields to
monopoly, the free labor market to the collective exploitation of labor
power by the fascist bureaucracy. The whole strength of fascism lies in
its monopoly of labor power. It is just this monopoly control that the
workingclass must shatter, if it is to free itself and to pursue its own ends.
Then, and only then, will capitalism be left behind!
(Translated and edited by Dwight Macdonald)
3.
Add:
rrEnd of German Capitalism"
-by
Dwight Macdonald
Author's Note: Below is printed what was to have been the conclud–
~ng
section of my article in the May-June issue, "The End of German
Capitalism." Lack of space has forced its postponement until now. It
stands as originally set up in type last spring.
In the above article I was concerned with demonstrating that
German fascism is an economic phenomenon of a radically dif–
ferent order from anything that can be termed, either economically
or historically, 'capitalism.' Of necessity, this has caused me to
overstress-considering my own views-both its 'revolutionary'
