508
PARTISAN REVIEW
attract dissatisfied members of the status-quo parties: the Nazis ap–
pealed to those of the Right by pretending that "who votes for Hin–
denburg, votes for Thaelmann," and the Communists to those of the
Left by warning the workers that "who votes for Hindenburg, votes
for Hitler."
Behind the curious uniformity of methods employed by the sup–
porters of each candidate lay the tacit assumption that the electorate
would go to the polls because it was frightened-afraid of the Com–
munists (voting for Hitler), afraid of the Fascists (voting for Thad–
mann), or equally afraid of both (voting for Hindenburg). Appar–
ently, many people were frightened by the prospect of the status quo,
just as others were by the prospect of radical change. The party-system
broke down because all parties, though representing all class groups
from the Right to the Left,
f~lt
themselves to be in the same boat.
The party-system is based on the assumption that each party presents
certain interest-groups which through their representatives are bound
to struggle against one another until the famous equilibrium of forces
or the liberal harmony of interests is attained. The only event that may
provide for union-for
union sacree-is
a foreign war, which in this
specific instance was not even a remote possibility. While the alliance
of all parties for the defense of the status quo blurred the class divi–
sions of the national state, the class composition of the new move–
ments on the other side of the political scene was no less heterogenous,
since their rank-and-file membership was as dynamic and fluctuating
as unemployment itself. And while the Left had joined with the Right
on the parliamentary scene, the Nazis and the Communists were busy
organizing together the famous transportation strike on the streets of
Berlin. The old distinctions between Right and Left apparently had
lost all meaning.
The next instance of a complete breakdown of the old party–
system occurred in France during the year between the Munich–
agreement and the outbreak of the war. The obviously all-important
political issue of that year was the so-called war question-the question
of who was for, who against a war with Hitler. On this, the only rele–
vant issue, however, all parties, from right to left, (with the exception
of the Communists and the Fascists) were sharply divided. In each
party, there was a (smaller) war faction and a (broader) peace fac–
tion. None of them remained united when it came to major political
decisions, and none of them stood the test of Fascism without splitting
into anti-Fascists on the one side and Fascist fellow-travellers on the
other. There were almost as many Fascist fellow-travellers from the
old Left as there were from the old German-hating Right. The period
