446
PARTISAN REVIEW
free war for victory steadily expounded
in the weekly Message from Hargrave.
GoRHAM MuNsoN
NEW YORK CITY
-1 am sorry if I gave the impression that
Social Creditors, as such, are pro-Fascist.
Certainly Hargrave and the group now
running the
New English Weekly
aren't.
I am very glad to hear that they have
dropped the Duke of Bedford, and apol–
ogise for not having known this, which I
ought to have done.-GEORCE
ORWELL.
REGRETS
Sirs:
Please accept my sincere regrets for
the way my book on James Joyce was
.1dvertised in your July-August issue. I
also feel, though the responsibility is not
mine, that I should tender my apologies
•.o your reviewer. An advertisement is
hardly .the place, and- if I may say so–
his review was hardly the occasion, for a
critical controversy.
HARRY LEVIN
CAMBRIDGE, MAss.
FASCISM-'REAL' OR 'ERSATZ'?
Dear Dwight Macdonald :
May I offer a comment on two asser–
tions in your instructive article,
The Peo·
ple's Century?
1)
Among other and more important
motives of Hitler's success with which I
entirely agree you mention, on p.
296,
that
fascism offers an ersatz solution. It pro–
vides (as allegedly shown by Fromm) a
neurotic relief to a "deep" craving for
security which democratic-capitalist so–
ciety arouses without satisfying it. Yet
you will certainly agree with me that after
an experience of ten to twenty years we
should stop talking of fascism as a mere
substitute of something else that is sup–
posed to be the real thing. The real thing
whether we describe it as
~ocialism
or as
a new set of life conditions which either
does not arouse or is able to satisfy man's
craving for security is much less
re~l
than
its fascist counterfeit. It was the dream
of something which was not realized and
which, in the sense in which it was origi–
nally conceived, has no chance of being
realized in the future.
2) What is the point in your empha–
sizing, on p.
294,
the distinction between
fascism and "the present regimes in the
Axis powers"? The phrase reminds me
of the old Trotskyite distinction between
'the Russian workers' state and its in–
veterate spoilers, the henchmen of Stalin.
Or of those even more venerable examples
of the same fallacy by which the Lassal–
lean socialists and the Kautskyan Marx–
ists cheerfully accepted the progressive
nature of the modern industrial (capital–
ist) state and restricted their opposition
to its reactionary governments.
In conclusion I want to shield myself
against a possible misunderstanding. My
criticism applies to the distinction be–
tween an abstract fascist system and its
actual form which involves the existence
of the present Axis regimes.
It
does not
apply to the distinction· between the Hit·
ler regime and the German people. I
am.
afraid that Emil Ludwig, and other over–
eager immigrants, are doing a bad service
to humahity (though possibly a good turn
to themselves) by advising the Americans
that there should be no difference in the
treatment meted out, after victory, to the
government of Hitler and to the various
sections of the German people. Inciden–
tally, the whole argument is based on that
most barbarian "theory" of Hitler's
by
which the "leader" is supposed to repre–
sent his tribe.
KARL KonscH
BosToN, MAss.
-By calling Fascism an 'ersatz solution'
to the impasse of capitalist society, I did
not mean to ·say that it is not real, or even
that it is not more real than socialism is
today. (Though I certainly don't agree
with Mr. Korsch that socialism is a mere
dream, with
no
chance of being realized.)
I simply meant that, like a neurosis,
il
gives relief to the specific complaints, but
not by remedying them so much as
by
creating a new situation which is in some
ways more painful and unstable than tlu
original one. It is in relation to the social
crisis it 'solves,' not to socialism, that
fascism seems to me ersatz and unreal.
Mr. Korsch's second objection seems
to
be based on a simple misunderstandin1:
in distinguishing fascism from the pres–
ent Nazi regime, I meant simply that
fascism is an
international
phenomenon,
manifesting itself in this country as
well
as in Germany, and not just the peculiar
