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PARTISAN REVIEW
talism crept back into bed and pulled the covers over its face. It
responded to the challenge of Nazism by founding the America First
Committee. It responded to the opportunities opened up by the
Second World War by rushing to dismantle the instrumentalities of
American military and economic influence in the name of balancing
the budget.
The foreign policy of the business community is characteristically
one of cowardice rationalized in terms of high morality. The great
refusal to take on the Russians today is perfectly typical. That
doyen
of American capitalists, Joseph P. Kennedy, recently argued that the
US should not seek to resist the spread of communism. Indeed, it
should "permit communism to have its trial outside the Soviet Union
if that shall be the fate or will of certain peoples. In most of these
countries a few years wi.ll demonstrate the inability of communism to
achieve its promises, while through this period the disillusioned experi–
menters will be observing the benefits of the American way of life,
and most of them will seek to emulate it." On thic; ground Kennedy
has opposed all foreign loans from the British loan on.
We are confronted today with the picture of New Dealers trying
to launch a positive foreign policy over the vigorous protests of the
business groups which that policy will protect. Fearing change, fear–
ing swift action because it might portend change, lacking confidence
and resolution, subject to spasms of panic and hysteria, the American
business community is too irresponsible to work steadily for the na–
tional interest, or even for its narrow class interests. At leac;t the Eng–
lish business community has been persuaded by experience that it
should accede to the political leadership of the aristocracy or, more
recently, of the Socialists-of any group which will govern. But the
American business community continues to resist the radical democ–
racy, like a drowning man threshing out at his rescuer.
In so doing, it may destroy the possibility of a peaceful transition
to socialism. In its panic it may yield to the most ruthless blackmailer
-externally to the Soviet Union, internally to any political gangster
promising security-and thereby dissipate the nation's capacity to
control its process of change. "Experience shows that the middle
classes allow themselves to be plundered quite easily," Sorel wrote,
"provided a little pressure is brought to bear, and that they are
intimidated by the fear of revolution." This growing capitalist irre–
sponsibility is the symptom of the death-wish: it is Samson in the
temple.
