112
PARTISAN REVIEW
during the first half of the nineteenth century-a period and a nation,
in fact, which he explicitly commends as the triumph of the conservative
counter-revolution. He is eloquent about the dangers of State power
today, hut says nothing about the dangers of concentrated monopoly
capitalism. He writes, "There can he no freedom if a man-made absolute
is set up at> the one and exclusive goal of human
en~vor,''
hut he saya
nothing about a God-made absolute.
DWIGHT
MACDONALD
Letters
GERMAN CAPITALISM
Sirs:
I am surprised that a man of Dwight
Macdonald's kee.-t social insight sliould
take seriously the fallacy that Germany
is not a capitalist state. It is the fashion
among certain intellectuals to identify
capitalism with Laissez Faire. economy,
and since this no longer exists in Ger–
many and Russia, to conclude that capi–
talism itself no longer exists in those
countries.
Capitalism has passed through various
stages of development-mercantile capi–
talism, finance capitalism and state capi–
talism. We are now in the era of state
capitalism, which manifests varying stages
of
growth in the different countries,
barely beginning in America and full–
fledged in Russia. In Germany the state
regulates the processes of production and
distribution, even to the point of con–
trolling prices, wages, profits and labor
supply. But does this do away with the
two poles basic to a capitalist economy:
wage labor and capital?
If
the majority of the people are di–
vorced from the means of production and
must sell their labor power in order to
live, then certainly wage labor prevails.
And the means of production are defi–
nitely capital if they are operated with
the view to yielding a profit.
State control of labor is another factor
which misleads Macdonald into believing
that Germany's economy is distinguished
from capitalism. When Marx held that
a "free" working class is essential to the
capitalist mode of production he simply
meant a working class freed from inde–
pendent means of production and left
with no other way of obtaining a
living
except by the sale of labor power. Since
Hitler's
rue
to power, tens of thousands
of small independent business people
have been "freed" in this sense and
transformed into wa&e workers.
In a socialist. society there will
be
neither wage labor nor capital, but the
instruments of production will be com·
monly owned and democratically man–
aged-not managed by a class of capi–
talist exploiters as in America, nor
by
the state integrated with huge capitalist
monopolies as in Germany, nor again
by
a totalitarian state set-up as in Russia.
DETROIT, MICH.
CoNSTANT READER
-With much of the above, especially
the last paragraph, I agree.
But I can't see
how
the term "capj,.
talism" retains much meaning if it is
stretched to cover the New Deal, Nazism,
and Stalinism. How would "ConstanJ
Reader," for example, distin.guish-on the
basis of his formulations-slavery
and
feudalism from capitalism? The slave
and the serf were also ''freed from inde·
pendent means of producticn," and also
had to "seU their labor power in order
to live." (The "sale" was
at
least as
real as that of the Soviet worker
today.)
And there was also producticn of "profit,"
in the sense of a surplus product which
the ruling class appropriated for itself
over what was needed to keep the workers
alive. In short, these were class, ez.
ploitative societies, just as capitalism,
fascism, and Stalinism are today,
and
what "Constant Reader" thinks are the
distinctive marks of capitalism are
merely the general characteristics of
every exploitative economy. The question
is under what economic forms surplus
produce is extracted from the exploited
and appropriated by the exploiters,
and
it is my contention that the market is
this distinctive form in a capitalist society,
and that whereas monopoly capitalism
merely distorts the market, "state capj,.
talism" destroys
it.-DWICHT MACDONALD
