488
PARTISAN REVIEW
popularized among economists by
Joon Robinson and Edward Cham–
berlin. Sometimes it is called im–
perfect competition or oligopoly
(oligopoly is to monopoly what
oligarchy is to monarchy), but
neither of these phrases do as full
justice as the first to the structure
of the American economy. We live
in an economy in which each basic
industry is dominated by a few
giants who regulate competition
through gentlemen's price agree–
ments, a magic mechanism which
simultaneously punches holes in the
theories of the classical economists
and keeps Adam Smith turning in
perpetual motion in his grave. The
automobile industry is dominated
by a Big Three who maintain es–
ta!blished price ranges and scales;
steel is run on a basing point sys–
tem with all companies huddling
under the price umbrella erected by
U. S. Steel; in oil, aluminum,
chemicals and other major sectors
of American industry, the situation
is the same .
And where is American capital–
ism heading? Towards a
democ–
ratic corporativism
or what I have
defined in another connection as
the Monopoly State, a system
whereby industry and labor are
locked together under contractual
compulsion by the State and forced
along a line of ill-defined national
interest. The war economy itself
is a neat example of this democ–
ratic corporativism.
It goes without saying that the
adherents of each group cited will
protest the ridiculousness of this
surrealist dream. After all, the sec–
ular religion is communism; the
totalitarian liberal is only a prog-
ressive; monopolistic competition
is free enterprise and democratic
corporativism is socilal planning.
But as Henry Miller dryly ob–
served:
. . . the reason we go to the movies
or skip the movies, or get drunk,
the reason we read detective stories
or switch now and then to Marcel
Proust and Thomas Mann, the
reason we have International Bus–
iness Machines and the Bible Soci–
ety ... the reason we are at war
though there never was a period in
history when people as a whole
were less interested in war. The
reason is . . . we have reached a
point where black and white are
interchangeable. To the man in
the street it makes no difference
whether you talk elephants or cus–
pidors-they are identical . . . we
can no longer give meaning and
significance to events. The color
has gone out of life and with it the
drama. We are left with the sound
and fury of emptiness ...
The last war brought surrealism
in art and rationalism in politics;
we now have a neo-classicist rev–
ival in art and the emergence of
word surrealism in politics. The
secret is locked in the dialectic and
Marx lies on his head in the grave.
DANIEL BELL
Are You PM-Minded?
O
F THE
newspaper
Pi\1
it can
be said that its "inner life"
consists of liberal-reformist pleas
and reveries, but that its objective
framework is that of acceptance
of the existing social order and
acquiescence in the new American
imperialism. We know that im–
perialism abroad has been paired,
