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odds with itself. For if, as he believes, the underlying economy of
a country is decisive for the quality of its culture, and if Russia is a
worker's state and the United States, Great Britain and Germany are
capitalist states, then Laski should conclude that the democracies have
much more in common with Fascist Germany than with Russia. This
would make Laski's war position c001pletely untenable, except in terms
of the strategy of imperialistic alliances, and cause floods of good
rhetoric to go to waste. Indeed, one is often puzzled as to where
Laski's rhetoric leaves off and his thought begins. After making so
much ado about values being rooted in the proportion between the
forces and relations of production, he writes: "The purpose of any
scheme of values in a society is to prom'ote the habits among its citizens
which permit of expanding welfare." (p. 416) And this aftet we
have just been told that the values of capitalist societies do not permit
of expanding welfare. From which it follows that the United States
and Great Britain have no values although they share them with
Russia against Germany.
Laski's analysis of Fascism suffers from the same schematism and
inconsistency. Fascism is characterized as rule by terror. It is "a
waste of effort" to look for an idea or philosophy behind it. Hitler is
an international AI Capone and Mussolini a Cesare Borgia. But in
discussing the war, we are told that we shall not understand it unless
we realize that: "We are fighting the counter-revolution. What do we
mean by this term? That we are fighting the exponents of an idea."
(p. 285) And the idea? The idea behind FMcism is "to breathe new
life into the capitalist idea at a moment when the peaceful evolution of
its relations would exhibit the fatality of the contradictions in which
it
i-;
involved." Previously
in
answer to the question: "What is the
essence of Fascism?" he answered: "It is the outcome of capitalism in
decay." (p·. 100) Capitalism in decay is "bound to be anti-democratic
because it comes upon the historical scene when the relations of
production it is defending are in decisive contradiction with the
forces of production." (p. 286) Although he formally dissociates
himself from the Communist interpretation of the nature of Fascism,
in the main he accepts
it.
We pass over the verbal inconsistencies
in
the above account, to
note the basic contradiction in Laski's political line. Roosevelt and
the New Deal are pictured not only as attempting to breathe new life
into capitalism but as saviors of a liberal democracy after the war.
Why, then, is Roosevelt not "bound" to become anti-democratic?
"Nothing would
be
more helpful to our future," writes Laski, "than
a viotory won while President Roosevelt
is
in the White House."
(p. 216\ Why? "For it will present America with the momentous
spectacle of a capitalist democracy able, by consent, to create the
conditions in which the resumption of expanding welfare is possible."
