how strong Hitler was militarily
in 1936 or 1940.
That is why he
reproaches me for taking into ac–
count important changes in condi–
tions which are not caused by
changes in productive forces al–
though they may have effects upon
them. That is why in effect he–
argued previously that since cap–
italism could not be stabilized,
socialism would ultimately be vic–
torious even
if
all socialist!' were
killed or put into Hitler's concen–
tration camps. At every crucial
point in the discussion Merian
falls back upon the state of pro–
ductive forces, not in their func–
tional but in their legalistic form,
as
if
that
alone
determined mili–
tary, cultural and political history.
The fetishism of productive forces
is the hall-mark of orthodox Marx–
ism, under all its political labels,
even when it theoretically admits,
in the face of criticism, the facts
of reciprocity. In politics Merian
is a victim to this kind of thinking.
He does not approach specific
problems of political action as a
scientific Marxist but as a meta–
physician with a dogma which is
true no matter what, and there–
fore exempt from the test of con–
sequences. The radical movement,
too, has its
religieuse!
3. The most charitable interpre–
tation of most of Merian's other
remarks is that blinded by his
do!!'lTla, he has failed either to read
aright or to report correctly or to
pay me the simple justice of try–
ing to understand my views. After
all what can I say to someone who
charges me with "choosing to
minimize or ignore the economic
needs of the workers." No retort
to these and other outrageous
charges will convince Merian, and
I am confident that most of the
readers of P R do not have to be
convinced. There are some other
479
statements of Merian, however,
less extreme but no less false on
which
r
shall comment briefly.
(a) I have never said that the
present war is a war
for
democ–
racy; or a war
for
the ideals of the
French Revolution and the Ameri–
can dream, although I have said
that Fascism is a movement
against them. Merian's thinking
is astonishingly crude at this
point.
If
I observe that Fascism
leads to the liquidation of the
Jews does it follow that I believe
that the war is being fought
for
the safety of the Jews as so many
anti-Semites claim? The war
is
being fought for many reasons.
Some of them are as unworthy as
are some of the reasons for which
it is being opposed. My problem
was:
should
the labor and social–
ist movement support the war, and
why? More than three years ago,
I said in the
New Leader
what I
substantially repeated in PR. "The
nub of the matter is this. Demo–
cratic capitalism,
if
it is preserved
against the onslaughts of Fascism,
gives at least the possibility of
organized activity in behalf of
socialism; the victory of Fascism,
however, carries with it the prac–
tical certainty of the total liquida–
tion of the labor and socialist
movement throughout the world."
(N.
L.
8/ 31/ 40) That the war is
partly imperialistic does not gain–
say this truth. Nor does the ex–
istence of Japan or India. The
Spanish Republic failed to give
Morocco its independence but this
did not make the defeat of Franco
less mandatory. Things are rare–
ly as simple as in Merian's never–
never land.
(b) From the point of ·view of
Churchill and others, it certainly
is true that complete military vic–
tory over ·Hitlerism does not re–
quire that democratization of the
