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PARTISAN REVIEW
ing bulwarks of democratic capitalism, England and this country?
Here, too, the same
trend
towards bureaucratic collectivism is
observable--in the wartime measures instituted by the Churchill–
Labor government and in the general policy of the New Deal. As I
indicated in the section on war economy, this is a trend only, and
by no means as yet carried so far as to constitute a non-capitalist
economy as in Germany. But as the war
progresses~modern
war
furnishing, as I have also indicated,
the
great stimulus to the fur–
ther development of these non-capitalist tendencies-we may ex–
pect lhe bases of capitalist economy to be increasingly eroded away
in all advanced nations by the requirements of
Wehrwirtschaft.
It
is a question in my mind whether this process can be carried to a
non-capitalist conclusion, as in Germany, unless a fascist political
moverr.ent can be created and can take power with a 'radical' ideol–
ogy and a mass base. The possibility cannot, of course, be excluded
of a "white' or 'cold' fascism, administratively imposed from above
by the present ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and hence controlled
by them. But this seems unlikely to me, since I doubt if such a
regime could secure the necessary popular support required to
impose totalitarian rule on the existing social classes. More likely,
in the event that England and America do not produce native fascist
movements that can take power, is a continuance of the present kind
of war economies in those countries, that is, a relatively ineffective
and probably ultimately disastrous conduct of the war against Ger–
many. The only workable alternative to a fascist war economy, in
both England and America, is a democratic socialist regime, which
would effectively organize the fight against fascism both within and
without. The historical period we are now entering on is a period
when war becomes the norm of society, peace the exception; it is a
period of such crisis that politics assumes a temporary supremacy
over economic factors; it is a period when Marxist revolutionary
thought and leadership must break with the sterile abstractions of
its post-war tradition and remold its concepts to fit the unexpected
and unprecedented developments of the last two decades. As a
model, I suggest the admirably concrete, realistic, flexible, and
scientifically empirical method of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.
