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PARTISAN REVIEW
technology opened the era of chronic unemployment and tended to
substitute the technician for the worker. So began the division and
decline of the working class. I see in this last fact the principal cause
of the political defeats of European socialism between 1918 and 1940.
Millions of declassed, idle workers joined the Nazi movement. Today,
still, millions of French workers, who are good fellows and not stupid,
vote for the agents of a foreign totalitarianism. In Argentina, "Labor"
supports Peron. Schematic conclusion: in these countries the working
class was not, and is not the advanced class that it was during the
time of Juarez and Bebel. While weakening itself, it has ceased to
attract the talented men of the liberal bourgeoisie and has ceased to
breed its own talents. In Fascism, Nazism, the Popular Fronts, and,
in a somewhat different sense, the Soviet bureaucracy, it is the middle
class, considered not long ago by Marxism as doomed to impotence,
which has had the political initiative.
The decline of the European ruling classes added too to the
general confusion. Annihilated in Russia, misled and panicky in
Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and France, these classes sought
safety in the fascist counter-revolution. Stalinism, Fascism, Nazism, ·
meeting the same needs with the same mentalities, resulted in a social
transformation characterized by the abolition of individual rights, a
planned economy, autocracy, war-hunger.... In this respect, our
experience is, in great measure, altogether definite.
If,
despite these extremely unfavorable conditions, socialism still
mobilizes millions of European workers, resists the enemy during the
harshest of military occupations, works with intelligence and vigor
in Scandinavia and Great Britain, we must see there proof of its
vitality and profound legitimacy. The analysis of its deficiencies does
not minimize ·the fundamental fact that it continues the historical
drive of Christianity and the bourgeois revolutions
toward the realiza–
tion of an equitable and rational social organization.
In man's present
state, it does not seem conceivable that
this
ideal, confused as it may
sometimes be, can
be
abandoned. Otherwise humanity would have to
accept a belief in despair entirely contradictory to its instincts. Doc–
trines wear out, deep-rooted needs live and must refurbish their intel–
lectual weapons. In this sense, socialist thought, not at all rebuffed
by attack and defeat, has great need of a house-cleaning. During the
reconstruction of Europe, the working class seems appointed to re–
cover a good part of its power, in an age in which planning and large
measures of social security will
be
instituted-measures which not
long ago were foremost in the socialist program.
