30
PARTISAN REVIEW
interest is not made up by compounding individual interests. This
explains why many ·individual capitalists in acting to further their
own interests often act against the interests of their class. It explains
why capitalists in pursuit of immediate profit will support totalitarian
regimes whose expansion would wipe out not only personal freedom
but the possibility of private profit as well. And in the last analysis,
it explains why both Churchill and Roosevelt tossed away the liberties
of European peoples for what looked like an equitable division of the
world into spheres of imperial influence. For all of Churchill's present
eloquence about Tito's iron rule, it was he who was mainly responsible
for raising this puppet of the Kremlin's into power.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that there are some capital–
ists for whom the values of a democratic way of life take precedence
over the amount of profit they can make, and who to save the first
would be reconciled to a diminution of the second. Proportionately
they may be just as numerous as those workers and labor leaders
who are prepared to destroy democratic processes if they can see
some economic advantage to themselves in so doing.
In the light of the foregoing, I wish to consider the perspectives
of action for domestic policy and international action. I shall consider
the latter first.
A union of all democratic elements in the community will throw
its full strength on the international scene behind the slowly evolving
pattern of British socialism, now shedding its rather mangy coat of
imperialism, and against the Russian police state. There is growing
recognition of the fact that the ineptitude of American foreign policy
and the ideological unsophistication of its representatives have made
things easier for the Russians. It is clear now that the Vishynskys,
Manuilskys, and Molotovs are not merely a foreign variety of Amer–
ican politicians. What is not yet clear to those responsible for American
foreign policy is that capitalism in other countries of the world is
either dead or dying, that it cannot be revived, and that the peoples
of the world will not be won for an American imperialist rule more
interested in a favorable balance of trade than in the welfare of the
impoverished masses. One cannot win starving people by "talk"
about democracy, especially when totalitarians "talk" about democ–
racy too.
The only chance of strengthening a world front against totali–
tarianism is by building a
democratic
analogue to Stalin's multina–
tional Bolshevism. Stalin's foreign rule is imposed on other nations
