THE NEW ECONOMICS AND POLITICS
A WELL-KNOWN statement of Lenin in 1920 with
reference to the post- war crisis gave warning against
the illusion that there is "absolutely no way out" for
capitalism; on the contrary, "there are no absolutely
hopeless situations."
The meaning of this statement is often misunderstood,
because it is commonly quoted out of its context. Lenin
was in fact giving warning against "two widespread
errors": first, the error of the "bourgeois economists,"
who fail to see the basic character of the crisis and
regard it as a temporary "unsettlement"; and second, the
error of the passive revolutionists, who expect an
automatic collapse of capitalism. Against the latter he
pointed out that the "proof" of the collapse of
capitalism can only be, not any abstract logical
demonstration, but the successful action of the
proletariat in overthrowing it. Until then, capitalism
remains in power, drags on somehow, finds its own "way
out" each time, no matter what disturbances it passes
through. In other words, capitalism does not escape from
the general crisis into which it has fallen since 1914,
and which is inevitable in the present stage of conflict
between the forces of production and the existing
relations of capitalist property ownership; it only
passes from one stage of crisis to another; there is no
question of a temporary "unsettlement." But capitalism
does not finally fall until the proletariat overthrows
ft. This is the dialectic of the general crisis of
capitalism which Lenin was concerned to demonstrate,
The subsequent fourteen years have abundantly
confirmed the truth of this analysis. On the one hand,
so long as the proletariat is not ready and strong
enough, capitalism remains in power; on the other hand,
capitalism does not recover from its mortal sickness. It
passes from one stage of crisis only to fall into a new
stage. At each stage, if the proletariat is not yet
ready to deal the death-blow, there remains a capitalist
"way out" which prevails. But the capitalist "way out"
is no
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 63
harmonious solution, no simple restoration of order
to a temporary " Œ unsettlement." The capitalist " way
out " is at each stage a way of increasing destruction,
of mass-starvation, of violence, of war, of decay. This
is the lesson of the two decades since the outbreak of
the war. And this is the character of the present stage
of the economics and politics of capitalism resulting
from the world economic crisis, and carrying to an
extreme point the whole development of imperialist
decay.
Destruction in place of construction; restricted
production in place of increased production; closed
"national" (i.e., imperialist) economic blocs in place
of the formal objective of international
interdependence; social and political repression in
place of liberalism- these are the characteristic
watchwords of capitalism in the present period.
I. The Destruction of the Productive Forces.
The most direct, elementary and typical expression of
the present stage of capitalist policy is the organised
collective destruction of wealth and of the productive
forces.
The purposeful destruction of commodities for
economic reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism,
but an integral part of its daily working from the
beginning. It was in 1799 that Fourier first became
convinced of the necessity of a new form of social
Organisation when be found himself entrusted with the
task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a
quantity of rice held for higher prices during a
scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use.
Nevertheless, this rice had at any rate been held back
in the hope of sale, and was only destroyed because it
had become unfit for use. This was not yet the modern
principle of the wholesale destruction of good rice,
good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.
In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit
stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise
prices is inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in
commodity economy from the beginning. As Adam Smith
wrote in his Wealth of Nations:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even
for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends
in a conspiracy against the public or in some
contrivance to raise prices.
(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 10,
Part ii.)
64 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the
original voice of classic Œ capitalism, as an offence
against the principles of capitalist production, as "a
conspiracy against the public." It has remained for our
day that all the capitalist governments of the world
should meet together in the World Economic Conference to
proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most
enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the
economists, the supreme aim to restrict production and
to raise prices. This is a measure of the extreme stage
of decay of capitalism.
The distinctive modern stage of capitalist policy for
the destruction of wealth and of the productive forces
is marked by three outstanding characteristics.
The first is the gigantic scale of destruction,
conducted over entire principal world areas of
production, and calculated in relation to world stocks.
The second is the direct government Organisation and
subsiding of such destruction and restriction of
production by all the leading imperialist governments.
The third is the extension of destruction, not only
to the destruction of existing stocks of commodities,
but to the destruction of the productive forces, the
ploughing up of crops and sown areas, the artificial
limitation of production, the dismantling of machinery,
as well as holding unused the labour power of millions
of workers.
The examples of this process throughout the
capitalist world are too familiar to require repetition.
The burning of millions of bags of coff ee or tons of
grain, in the midst of mass starvation and poverty, have
horrified the world. But all this has been no accidental
or exceptional happening through the action of
individuals, but on the contrary directly organised by
all the capitalist governments of the world, and in the
forefront by the most "progressive" governments, by the
Roosevelt Government in the United States, by Social
Democratic governments, etc.
It is a tragic irony that men and women in New York
should be suffering the tortures of hunger while tens of
thousands of pigs in farrow are being slaughtered in
Iowa by the command of the Government, and farmers in
Kansas or Nebraska are burning their grain.
(News-Chronicle, October 17, 1933.)
The expenditures account recently published of the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration under the
Roosevelt regime
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 65
affords a pretty picture of modern capitalism
(Economist, December Œ 30, 1933):
EXPENDITURES UNDER THE A.A.A.
Allocation Approximate Sum Cotton Acreage ploughed up
110 million dollars 1934 Cotton Acreage Reduction I50
million dollars Emergency Pig-Sow Slaughter 33 million
dollars Corn-Hog Production Control 350 million dollars
Wheat Acreage Reduction 102 million dollars Tobacco
Acreage Reduction 21 million dollars
This inspiring combination of Mammon and juggernaut,
let it be remembered, is the worshipped idol of the
Labour Party and of the Trades Union Congress, as
proclaimed at their meetings at Hastings and Brighton in
1933.
From Denmark it was reported in November 1933 that
cattle were being slaughtered in the Government
abattoirs at the rate of 5,000 a week, for the carcasses
to be burnt in the incinerators. The Government
established a special destruction fund; but so great was
the cost of destruction that Parliament had to be
approached for further credits for the construction of
new slaughter houses. This was under a Social Democratic
Government.
In the same way the British Labour Government had
already carried the Coal Mines Act for the limitation of
the output of coal-with such success that in the
beginning of 1934 a London firm actually ordered a
consignment of coal from abroad, on the grounds, as they
stated, that owing to the limitation schemes it was
impossible to secure a delivery from British sources
with sufficient speed.
In Britain in 1930 the company "National Shipbuilders
Security, Limited" was formed, with power to borrow up
to three million pounds, for the purpose (according to
the Memorandum of Association) "to assist the
shipbuilding industry by the purchase of redundant
and/or obsolete shipyards, the dismantling and disposal
of their contents, and the re-sale of their sites under
restrictions against further use for shipbuilding."
Within a few months its successful activities were
reported in the Press:
National Shipbuilders Security, Limited, has
purchased Dalmuir Shipbuilding Yard, owned by William
Beardmore and Co., and in
66 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
consequence it is to be closed down by the end of the
year. This shipyard was one of the largest on the Clyde,
employing six thousand Œ men during the war.
Negotiations for the purchase and closing down of other
shipyards are in progress.
Up to the end of 1933 this new type of capitalist
company had bought up and closed down one hundred
shipbuilding berths. In the twelve months to June 1933,
the world tonnage of merchant shipping showed a net
decrease of 1,814,000 tons, more than half this decrease
being in tonnage owned by Britain.
Similarly, in the woollen textile industry the
Woolcombers Mutual Association, Limited, was formed
early in 1933 "to assist the woolcombing industry by the
purchase and dismantling of redundant and obsolete
mills, plant and machinery for re-sale under restrictive
covenants against their further use for woolcombing."
The principal copper producers of the world entered
into an agreement at Brussels in December 1931, to limit
production during 1932 to 26 per cent. of the capacity
of their mines.
The National Coffee Council of Brazil, from which
country comes two-thirds of the world's coffee, decided
in December 1931 to destroy twelve million bags of
coffee. During 1932-3 9,600,000 quintals (equivalent to
1,248 million pounds weight) were destroyed, an
emergency tax being imposed on coffee exports to finance
the purchase and destruction of surplus coffee (League
of Nations World Production and Prices 1925-32, P. 28).
Up to the end of 1933 no less than 22,000,000 bags of
coffee had been disposed of by burning or dumping in the
sea.
The Governors of Texas and Oklahoma called out the
National Guard to take possession of the oil-wells and
prevent production.
The United States Department of Agriculture in the
summer Of 1933 announced bounties of seven to twenty
dollars per acre to farmers for the destruction of the
cotton crop. This was successful in securing the
ploughing in or mowing down of I I million acres out of
a total Of 40 millions:
The Government hoped to take ten million acres out of
production by paying growers $7 to $20 per acre
(according to the yield of their land) for ploughing
under or mowing down cotton already growing. . . The
scheme was immediately successful in restricting
acreage,
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 67
over 11 million acres being ploughed in or mown down,
reducing the estimated acreage from 40.8 to 29.7 million
acres. Œ (World Economic Survey 1932-3, PP. 313-4.)*
To the modern bourgeois mind and outlook this process
of wholesale destruction and restricting of production,
in the midst of poverty, appears as a natural and
self-evident necessity. Without sense of contradiction
they proclaim it in the same breath that they proclaim
the necessity of "economy" and "cuts" to the masses; and
correctly they feel no contradiction, since both are
indispensable to the maintenance of capitalism at the
present stage. They preach to-day the policy of
restriction of production with the same sense of obvious
correctness and common sense with which they preached
after the war the policy of "increased production" as
the path to prosperity. Thus in the summer of 1933 we
find the British Chancellor of the Exchequer answering
the "theorists" who imagine restriction of production to
be "a bad thing":
To allow production to go on unchecked and
unregulated in these modern conditions when it could
almost at a moment's notice be increased to an almost
indefinite extent was absolute(Neville Chamberlain in
the House of Commons, June 2,1933:Times, June 3, 1933.)
In the same way the Economist was able to report with
satisfaction:
While there was an enormous over-expansion of
productive capacity before 1929, investment in capital
equipment has been severely curtailed since then, and a
substantial proportion of existing plant and machinery
has become obsolete or has been scrapped. There can be
little doubt that substantial progress has already been
made in the re-adjustment of productive capacity to the
lower level of demand for consumers' goods.- (Economist,
May 13, 1933.
"Productive capacity" must be "re-adjusted" to the
"lower level" of consumption of the impoverished masses.
Such is the
* The practical execution of the scheme, however, was
not without difficulties, as witness the following item
from the American Press on August 9, 1933:
SOUTHERN MULES BALK AT PLOWING UP COTTON.
Paul A. Porter of the Administration, just back from
the South, reported today that many farmers had
complained they found difficulty in getting their mules
to "act right" while plowing up the cotton. It is not
the mule's fault at that, Mr. Porter explained. All
these years be has been lambasted if he walked atop the
cotton row. Now it is the reverse, and he is being asked
to trample down stalks he was carefully trained to
protect. Œ The honours go to the mules rather than to
President Roosevelt.
69 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
bed of Procrustes (who was also a bandit, but a less
skilled and large- scale bandit) to which modern
capitalism in its extreme stage of decay seeks to fit
the tortured body of humanity.
The more obvious and glaring expressions of this
process, the burning of foodstuffs, the dismantling of
machinery that is still in good condition, strike the
imagination of all. But all do not yet see the full
significance of these symptoms: first, the expression
through these symptoms of the extreme stage of decay of
the whole capitalist order; second, the inseparable
connection of this process of decay with the social and
political phenomena of decay which find their complete
expression in Fascism; and third, the necessary
completion and final working out of this process in war.
For war is only the complete and most systematic working
out of the process of destruction. To-day they are
burning wheat and grain, the means of human life.
To-morrow they will be burning living human bodies.
2. The Revolt against the Machine.
But this revolt of modern capitalism against the
productive forces, against the development of technique,
and for the artificial restriction of production, goes
further. It begins to turn, ideologically, and even in
certain concrete propositions and experimental attempts,
into a direct revolt against the machine.
A century ago, in 1831, the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge published a brochure, The Results of
Machinery, addressed to the working men of the United
Kingdom. "The little book gives a glowing picture of the
glories of invention, of the permanent blessings of
machinery, of the triumphant step that man takes in
comfort and civilisation every time that he transfers
one of the meaner drudgeries of the world's work from
human backs to wheels and pistons. The argument is
developed with great animation and vigour, and the
writer, as he skirmishes with the workman's prejudices,
travels over one industry and one country after another"
(J. L. and B. Hammond, The Town Labourer, p. 17).
To-day the tables are turned. It is no longer the
bourgeoisie who are teaching the ignorant workers,
displaced and starving in millions through the advance
of machinery under capitalist conditions, the blessings
and advantages of machinery in the abstract. On the
contrary, the bourgeoisie, now that they no longer see
rising profits through the advance of machinery, but Œ
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 69
instead see their whole position and rule more and
more visibly menaced by its development, change their
tune; they deplore the evils of the too rapid advance of
machinery; their tone becomes increasingly one of
hostility, fear and hatred to the machine. It is the
working class who, despite their still heavy sufferings
through the advance of the machine under capitalism, now
become the conscious champions of the machine,
recognising in it the powerful ally of their fight for a
new order, and seeing with clear understanding its
gigantic future beneficent role once it becomes
liberated for social use under the leadership of the
working class and in communist society.
Even the scientists and technicians, the inventors of
new machinery and technical processes in the service of
capitalism, begin increasingly, with the exception of a
small and courageous minority, to turn against their own
children, and to discuss, in te hni
technical and scientific conferences and journals,
the necessity of arresting the advance of invention, of
artificially restricting the output of new inventions.
Thus the working class is revealed as the sole
consistent progressive force of present society. The
capitalists are the modern Luddites.
This tendency of the capitalist reaction against the
machine is not confined to the social philosophers and
speculators; to a Bertrand Russell, with his
idealisation of the decaying Chinese pre- capitalist
civilisation in the moment of its dissolution before the
advancing mass revolution; to a Spengler, the favourite
and most- quoted philosopher of Fascism, with his
unconcealed hatred of machine-civilisation and worship
of his mythical "primitive man roosting solitary as a
vulture without any communal feeling, in complete
freedom, with no 'we' like a herd of mere generic
specimens strong, solitary men" (see his revealing book
Der Mensch und die Technik-Man and Technique); or, for
the matter of that, to a Gandhi and his spinning-wheel,
the adored of the Western European intelligentsia, and
true prototype, not of a young bourgeoisie, but of a
bourgeoisie born old without ever having known youth,
the consistent expression of one aspect of capitalism in
decay (the passive reactionary), just as Spengler is the
expression of the other aspect (the sophisticatedly
bloody, combatant reactionary). Œ But this same tendency
reveals itself increasingly in the statesmen
70 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
and politicians, in the journalists and publicists,
Times scientists and technicians. We have already seen
how a
editorial in 1:930 could discuss "how perilously the
machine has run ahead of man" and query "the advantages
residing in a system which relies on the mass production
of standardised articles" (March 8, 1930); or how the
Hoover Research Committee in 1932 could speak of the
possible necessity of a "slowing down of mechanical
invention."*
In the same way Sir Alfred Ewing, delivering the
Presidential address in 1932 to the British Association,
the annual gathering of recognised, conventional
bourgeois science, could declare:
In the present-day thinkers' attitude towards what is
called mechanical progress we are conscious of a
critical spirit. Admiration is tempered criticism;
complacency has given way to doubt; doubt is pass into
alarm.
An old ex ent of applied mechanics may be forgiven if
he expresses so ething of the disillusion with which,
now standing outside, be watches the sweeping pageant of
discovery and invention in which he used to take
unbounded delight. it is impossible not to ask, whither
does this tremendous procession tend? What after all is
its goal? What its probable influence upon the future of
the human race?
Man was ethically unprepared for so great a bounty. .
. . More and more does mechanical production take the
place of human effort. So man finds that, while he is
enriched with a multitude of possessions and
possibilities beyond his dreams, he is in great measure
deprived of one inestimable blessing, the necessity of
toil. . . .
He has lost the joy of craftsmanship. . . . In many
cases unemployment is thrust upon him, an unemployment
that is more saddening than any drudgery.
* As an example of the popularisation by
finance-capital of this reactionary propaganda in its
most fantastic form may be noted an article prominently
published in the millionaire-owned Sunday Express under
the title, "Make Way for the Small Man," denouncing the
illusion of "Progress" and the failure of "mass
production," and calling Œ for the return to "the small
owner" as the ideal: "The unit of the State is the
self-supporting farm with first thoughts for subsistence
and only second thoughts for the market-which might be
mainly next door and consist of craftsmen supplying the
needs of neighboring farms. "This simple farm-and-craf t
relationship is essential to the health and wealth of
any civilisation. . . . We should try to recover it."
(Sunday Express, January 15, 1933.)
Naturally the finance-capitalists would be highly
indignant if this infantile propaganda, which they
broadcast by the most highly developed "massproduction"
for the befogging of their readers, were suggested to be
seriously applied to their mammoth undertakings,
including their mammoth Press. The preaching of
monopoly-capital against monopoly is an old story.
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 14
And the world finds itself glutted with competitive
commodities, produced in a quantity too great to be
absorbed. . . .
Where shall we look for a remedy? I cannot tell.
(Sir Alfred Ewing, Presidential Address to the
British Association, 1932: Daily Telegraph report, Sept.
1, 1932.) This is the confession of bankruptcy of
official bourgeois science before the modern world
situation. Not the social conditions which lead to the
abuse of the results of science and invention are seen
as the problem, but instead the gifts of science and
invention appear to this modern monk as gifts of the
devil, for which man was "ethically" unprepared-as if
"ethics" were independent of the social conditions from
which in fact they take their character. For solution,
this leader of modem bourgeois science confesses his
impotence and ends characteristically with a prayer to
"God."
Not only the leaders of bourgeois science, but the
financial and political leaders of capitalism move in
the same direction. An outstanding demonstration of this
was the speech of the most "progressive" and "advanced"
financier-politician of French capitalism, Joseph
Caillaux, on the World Crisis in the spring of 1(32
before the Press Association in Paris, and given also in
less complete form before the Cobden Club in London (the
following citations are from the report of his Paris
speech in the Depeche Economique et Financiere). His
theme was that "the machine is devouring humanity" ("la
machine devore l'homme): "It is necessary to take
control of Œ technique. It is necessary to prevent
inventions suddenly upsetting production." How? He makes
two concrete propositions. First, to set up "in every
State, Departments of Technique, to discipline
inventions, paying compensation for them, and not
allowing them to come into use save in proportion as
existing plant is amortised."
The second alternative is "taxation": "to impose
heavy taxes on all inventions of machinery." "Science
must be hamstrung ("il faut que la science soit
jogulee"). This is not the language of an escaped
lunatic, but of a cool, far-seeing politician and
skilled financier of capitalism.*
* Another example of the current tendency is afforded
by the recent book of the leader of the "Young
Conservative" politicians, Lord Eustace Percy, under the
title, Government in Transition. In this book, whose
programme shows strong Fascist influence, "Lord Eustace
ends his inquiry in a purely utopian vein: he presents
us to a society which has emerged out of the vices of
the machine age and is prepared to resort to the simple
crafts of the pre-machine age." (Times, January
19,1934.) Here Conservatism in decadence looks longingly
backward to the traditions of the pre- capitalist feudal
reaction.
72 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Nor is this tendency confined to theoretical
expression; there are not wanting the first signs of
experiments in practice. At Philadelphia, for example,
the attempt was made to meet unemployment by
substituting manual labour for machines in some
departments of municipal work:
At Philadelphia the city has decided to abandon the
use of a large number of machines in some departments of
municipal work and use manual labour instead. (New York
Correspondent of the London Times, December 12, 1930.)
Thus the final outcome of the most advanced centre of
capitalist machine-development is to return to manual
labour. The lesson of Philadelphia, the third greatest
manufacturing city of the greatest manufacturing country
of the capitalist world, is a sign and portent of where
decaying capitalism would ultimately reach, if only it
had the power to arrest development and stabilise.
In German Fascism this tendency is strongly to the
front, and receives official encouragement by the
Government. Thus the Œ Thuringian Government in July
1933, prohibited the use of machinery for glass-blowing.
The Acht Uhr Abendblatt, commenting on this decision
with approval, declared:
This is the first example in modern times of the
State stopping the metallic arms of the machine. Its
steel limbs, by accomplishing the work which formerly
gave nourishment to hundreds of human hands, have made
the machine the mother of working-class misery.
On July 15, 1933, the Reich Government issued an Act
prohibiting the installation of any further machines for
rolling tobacco leaves and the re-starting of any
established machinery which had ceased working.
The preamble to the Act states that the progressive
mechanisation of the cigar industry was in process of
destroying the livelihood of the population of certain
districts. . . . Machinery has rendered superfluous
about 80,000 workers, or five-sixths of the present
labour force. . . . it is stated that the output of
rolling machines is about 1,000 to 1,200 cigars an hour,
while that of a handworker is only 70. . . . The power
given by the Act to the Ministers concerned
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 73
to limit production in mechanised undertakings is
expected to ensure a gradual return to handwork.
(Manchester Guardian Weekly, September 15, 1933.)
In the beginning of 1934 it was reported from
Germany:
The official policy towards the use of machinery is
confused; special tax exemption was last year granted on
installation of industrial machinery; but the party
ideology rejects machinery; and Government prohibitions
against its use increase. This week the instalment of
automatic machines in the hollow-glass industry was
forbidden; and production was limited. In the cement
branch . . . the opening of new or expansion of old
works has been forbidden. . . Forbidding the use of
machinery, the express aim of which is to keep
production cost high in the interest of craftsmen
producers, hampers export. The restriction policy is
disliked by the more enterprising manufacturer.-
(Economist, February 24, 1934.)
Return to handwork! Return to the Stone Age! Such is
the final logical working out of the most advanced
capitalism and Fascism.
In fact, the drive of capitalist competition prevents
its realisation. Thus even in the German Government law
for the prohibition of new machinery in the cigar-making
industry, an Œ exception was explicitly made in respect
of production for export; and the contradiction
underlying the whole policy is still more sharply
brought out in the last extract cited above.
But wherever capitalism is able to reach towards
fully secured close monopoly, which is the whole
tendency and aim of modern capitalism (though never
fully realised), and the whole essence of the economics
of Fascism, the inevitably inseparable tendency to
retrogression of technique and decay is at once visible
(compare the frequent examples of buying up and
suppression of new inventions by strongly established
trusts). In the abstract theoretical hypothesis of
capitalism being able to consolidate into a single world
monopoly, such general decay would inevitably follow and
indeed be the condition of its existence (virtual
prohibition of extended reproduction of capital). Only
in socialist monopoly does the incentive to improvement
of technique remain., since every improvement of
technique means an increase in general standards, and
diminution of labour.
The revolt of modern capitalist ideology against the
machine can never he realised in practice; on the
contrary, the capitalists are compelled to fight each
other with ever sharper weapons.
74 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
But this ever-growing, though unrealisable,
aspiration of modern monopoly capitalism towards the
cessation of all development of technique, is a symptom
of an economic order in decay. Fascism, with its
propaganda of the return to the primitive and the
small-scale, alongside actual service in practice to all
the requirements of the most highly concentrated
finance-capital, is the complete and faithful expression
of this profoundly reactionary character of modern
monopoly capitalism, and of the deep contradiction at
its root.
3. The Revolt against Science.
The more and more conscious reactionary role of
modern capitalism, and the growing ideological revolt
against the machine and sense of antagonism to the
development of technique, necessarily expresses itself
on a wide front in the entire ideological field. A
transformation in the dominant trends of capitalist
ideology becomes more and more conspicuous. This
transformation expresses itself in the growing revolt
against science, against reason, against cultural
development, against all the traditional philosophical
liberal conceptions which were characteristic of
ascendant capitalism; in favour of religion, idealistic
illusions, denial of the validity of science, mysticism,
spiritualism, multiplying forms of superstition, cults
of the primitive, cults of violence, racial charlatanry
("blood" and "Aryan" Œ nonsense) and all forms of
obscurantism.
This tendency was already visible from the outset of
the imperialist epoch, and especially before the war. It
has enormously increased in the post-war period.
The relationship between science and the bourgeoisie
has never in fact been an easy one. Only in the first
revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie (in
seventeenth-century England or in later eighteenth-
century France) has there been real enthusiasm. In the
nineteenth century, with the bourgeoisie in power,
although the enormous profits to be won from the results
of science led to universal official recognition,
laudations and a somewhat stingy financial support, the
suspicion was always present that the development of the
scientific outlook might undermine the social
foundations. Hence the gigantic battles of the
nineteenth century over each advance of science. The
leaders of nineteenth-century bourgeois science were
still warriors in the midst of a widely hostile social
camp. Education
THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE 75
was still in general jealously guarded on
pre-scientific lines and under clerical control.
But what is conspicuous about the present period is
that the offensive against science is to-day led, no
longer merely by the professional reactionaries and
clericalists, but above all by the majority of the more
prominent, officially recognised and highly placed
leaders of bourgeois science. The main bulk of the
officially distinguished, be-knighted and decorated
scientists of the bourgeoisie have openly joined the
clerical camp. They proclaim with wearisome iteration
the reconciliation of science and religion, the
overthrow for the thousandth time of the errors of
materialism, the limitations of scientific knowledge,
and the supremacy of the "higher" aspects of life which
cannot be approached along scientific lines. In a spate
of lectures, essays, treatises and books, whose popular,
vulgarising and often grossly unscientific character
betrays their propagandist aim, they endeavour to
utilise each new advance of research and discovery, not
in order therefrom to reach a more scientific
understanding of reality, but in order to throw doubt on
the whole basis of science, and on this ground to
proclaim the vindication of the p rticular tribal gods
of their locality.
These utterances, still further vulgarised, are
broadcast a millionfold by all the machinery of
capitalist publicity as the "last word of science." In
this way, at the same time as for technical and for
strategical purposes science has to be more and more
widely employed in practice, a basically reactionary and
even anti-scientific Œ outlook is endeavoured to be
pumped into all the capitalist-controlled forms of
"popular culture."
This transformation in outlook on the part of the
responsible leaders of bourgeois science (with the
honourable exceptions of a small and courageous
minority) was recently illustrated in the treatment of
the fiftieth anniversary of Darwin's death in 1932 .
This anniversary provided the opportunity for the entire
forces of capitalist culture to proclaim, either the
complete obsolescence of the theories of the hated
Darwin, or alternatively, the complete reconciliation of
Darwinism with the religious conceptions which he
fought, and the final refutation of the atheism to which
he secretly (Darwin's letter to Marx) adhered. The
distinguished scientist and leading authority on
Darwinism in England, Sir J. A. Thomson, wrote for
general public consumption in the Daily Telegraph (April
19, 1932) under
76 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the singular title: "Darwin Fifty Years After: We Now
Accept Evolution, Yet Believe in a Creator"*
There are some changes in our ideas since the
hot-headed days that followed the publication of The
Origin of Species in 1859.
Thus many of us are clear that there is no
inconsistency in accepting the evolution idea and yet
believing in a Creator who ordained the original Order
of Nature in some very simple form.
The evolution theory does not try to "explain" things
in the deeper sense. Evolutionists . . . leave to
philosophy and religion all questions of purpose and
meaning. This is a change for the better.
The shamefaced "agnosticism" of the
nineteenth-century scientists has given place in the
twentieth century to proclamation of "a Creator." This
is an excellent example of the "progress backwards" of
capitalism in decay.
A further example of the transformation was afforded
by an inquiry into "The Religion of Scientists"
conducted by the Christian Evidence Society and
published under this title in 1932. A questionnaire was
sent to all Fellows of the Royal Society; replies were
received from 2 00 The results on some of the principal
questions showed the following proportions:
1. Do you credit the existence of a Spiritual Domain?
Favourable, 121; Intermediate, 66; Œ Unfavourable, 13.
2. Is belief in evolution compatible with belief in a
Creator? Favourable, 142; Intermediate, 52;
Unfavourable, 6. 3. Does Science negative the idea of a
personal God as taught by Jesus Christ? Favourable (to
Christianity), 103; Intermediate, 71; Unfavourable, 26.
Thus, omitting the intermediates, a "Spiritual
Domain" (the expression is explained in the book as
having been intended to mean the denial of materialism)
wins by 9 to 1. "God" ( "a Creator") wins by 2 3 to 1.
Christianity wins by 4 to 1. These are the answers of a
representative group of distinguished bourgeois
scientists in 1932.
We are not here concerned with the philosophical or
theoretical significance of this transformation. Wha for
present purposes is the social significance and role of
this development.
The general fact of this avowed transformation of
outlook of the majority of outstanding official
representatives of bourgeois
77 THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE
science, the loudly heralded movement against
"materialism" and "the limitations of science," towards
"idealism" and religion, is familiar ground. How far
this alleged movement of opinion is really true of the
best bourgeois scientists, or of the mass of younger
working rank-and- file scientists, is less important
than the fact that the dominant official influences both
in the bourgeois scientific world, and in general
bourgeois discussion, actively support, foster,
patronise, encourage and in every possible way advertise
and press forward this trend.
What is not equally clear to all is the direct
connection of this ideological trend with the whole
process of capitalism in decay. It is at once its
reflection, and helps to carry it forward. The revolt
against science, which bourgeois society to-day
encourages in the ideological sphere, at the same time
as it utilises science in practice, is not only the
expression of a dying and doomed social class; it is an
essential part of the campaign of reaction. This is the
basis which helps to prepare the ground for all the
quackeries and charlatanries, of chauvinism, racial
theories, anti-semitism, Aryan grandmothers, mystic
swastikas, divine missions, strong-man saviours, and all
the rest of the nonsense through which alone capitalism
to-day can try to maintain its hold a little longer. Œ
All this nonsense may appear on a cool view, when some
particularly wild ebullition of a Hitler or a Goebbels
about blood and the joy of the dagger and the Germanic
man and the primeval forest, is produced, as highly
irrational and even insane. But in fact it is as
completely rational and calculated, for the present
purposes of capitalism, as a machine-gun or a Zinoviev
Letter election. There is method in the madness. For
capitalism can no longer present any rational defence,
any progressive role, any ideal whatever to reach the
masses of the population. Therefore it can only
endeavour to save itself on a wave of obscurantism,
holding out fantastic symbols and painted substitutes
for ideals in order to cover the reality of the
universally bated moneybags. Fascism is the final
reduction of this process to a completely worked out
technique.
In unity with this revolt against science goes the
general cultural reaction, the revolt against culture,
the revolt against education, the cutting down of
education in all capitalist countries, the increasing
reactionary discipline and militarisation in the
universities and schools, and-the final and complete
78 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
symbol of the culminating stage revealed by
Fascism-the burning of the books.*
4. The Revolt against "Democracy" and Parliament.
This economic, social and ideological process finds
also its political reflection. From the outset of the
imperialist era liberalism and parliamentarism has in
fact been on the wane. Parliamentary democracy was
essentially the form through which the rising
bourgeoisie carried through its struggle against
feudalism and against old privileged forms, carrying the
working class in their wake in this strug le. On this
basis was built up liberalism in its heyday in the
nineteenth century. The workers were drawn in the tow of
bourgeois liberal politics. It was the achievement of
Marxism to cut through this bondage. In Britain, where
the capitalist world monopoly gave the bourgeoisie
superior resources and the possibility to create a
privileged section of a minority of the workers, Marxism
made the slowest progress, and liberal-labour politics
survived longest.
As the class struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie began to replace the old struggle against
the pre-bourgeois forms, a political shifting followed.
The old Liberal Parties began to wane before Social
Democracy; the bourgeoisie increasingly coalesced with
the remnants of the older (monarchist, militarist,
landowning) forces. Nevertheless, Œ parliamentary
democracy remained as the most useful basis of the
bourgeoisie for the deception of the masses and holding
in of the class struggle, so long as this means of
restraining the workers was adequate.
To-day, when the intensification of the class
struggle can no longer be held in by these forms, the
bourgeoisie increasingly
* A sidelight from another angle of the
anti-intellectual movement of capitalism in decline is
afforded by the following extract from the technical
journal, The Illustrated Carpenter and Builder:
"Nowadays admission to many factories depends on passing
'intelligence tests.'
These tests are not always designed to select the
most intelligent of applicants; for in a certain
Continental factory the management admit that they use
intelligence tests to eliminate the alert and
intelligent among the applicants, because the work is so
sub- divided and mechanised that its monotony has the
effect of turning intelligent workers into Communists."
It is a striking indication of the social and cultural
decay inherent in the final stages of capitalism, when
elaborate scientific methods begin to be used, no longer
to promote, but to eliminate intelligence from among the
workers, because intelligent workers become Communists.
THE REVOLT AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND PARLIAMENT 79
turns its back on parliamentary democracy in favour
of More direct and open forms of coercion and the
authoritarian state. This is a measure of the weakening
of the bourgeoisie.
The era of imperialism, of centralised monopoly
capitalism, already increasingly made the parliamentary
democratic forms a caricature. While in appearance the
extension of the suffrage was increasing "democracy," in
reality the governing role was being directly removed
from parliament and concentrated in the executive, into
the Cabinet, and from the Cabinet into the Inner
Cabinet, and even into extra- parliamentary forms
(Committee of Imperial Defence, etc.) wholly removed
from "democracy," (so the preparation of the war of
1914: compare the statement of the Conservative, Lord
Hugh Cecil, that the war was decided "not by the House
of Commons or by the electorate, Œ but by the
concurrence of Ministers and ExMinisters," letter to the
Times, April 29, 190.) Corresponding to the realities of
monopoly capitalism, the routine of government was in
fact in the hands of an increasingly strengthened and
centralised bureaucracy; effective power and the
decision of policy Jay with the handful of leaders of
finance- capital; while the puppet-show of parliament,
responsible Ministers, elections and nominally opposing
parties, became increasingly recognised as a decorative
appendage of the Constitution for purposes of
window-dressing. This was equally conspicuous in the
"democracies" of the United States, France and Britain.
Nevertheless, Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in
the earlier or pre-war period of imperialism-but in the
new form of Liberal imperialism with its deceptive
programme of "social reform." The super-profits of
imperialism provided the means in the imperialist
countries to endeavour to buy off the revolt of the
advancing workers with a show of meagre concessions to a
minority. Bismarck had already shown the way to utilise
"social reform" legislation, alongside coercion, in
order to endeavour to stem the advance of Socialism. On
the basis of imperialist exploitation was built up the
short-lived twentiethcentury renaissance of Social
Reform Liberalism of the Lloyd George era, which tried
to stem the rising tide of working-class revolt with a
loudly advertised show of concessions and concern for
the "condition of the people," and with noisy campaigns
of denunciation of the landlords and the aristocracy,
while the real aims of imperialism and war-preparation
were
80 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
pressed forward, and all the forces of the State were
employed against the militant working-class struggle.
The Social Democratic and Labour Parties after the
war tried to carry forward the role of Social Reform
Liberal Imperialism, but under basically changed
conditions-in a far more advanced stage of the class
struggle, and in the midst of the crisis and decline of
capitalism. Therefore they could not attain any
corresponding measure of success; the appeal they could
make to the masses on behalf of parliamentary reformism
no longer evoked enthusiasm; the reforms they could
achieve were limited by the economic crisis, the
weakening national finances, and the weight of the
war-debts they had to carry; the repressive and coercive
measures they had to exercise against the class struggle
were far heavier.
But even the limited measure of social reform
concessions began to break down and dwindle under the
pressure of the economic crisis. With the rising
colonial revolts, the basis of imperialism began to
weaken. The stream of super-profits diminished; the
conflict of the Œ rival monopolist capitalisms became
more intense. Thus a reverse movement set in, no longer
to the extension of social concessions, but on the
contrary to the cutting down and withdrawal of
concessions already granted. This process received its
powerful demonstration in the history and fall of the
Second Labour Government and the crisis of 1931.
From this point the class struggle is forced
increasingly into the open, bursting through the thin
cover of liberal and parliamentary democratic illusions.
Even Social Democracy is forced to speak of the
"collapse of reformism" and the "end of social reform,"
and the consequent inevitability of a "frontal" attack
on capital (so the general propaganda line of the
Leicester Labour Party Conference in 1932), at the same
time as it merges in practice still more completely into
alliance with monopoly capitalism and repression of the
workers (the "Public Corporations" line, etc.). The
confrontation of the working class and capitalism can no
longer be covered by liberal and reformist pretences of
improving conditions under capitalism.
From this point the demand becomes increasingly
strong from the representatives of capitalism for the
throwing aside or modification of the old parliamentary
democratic forms, which no longer serve their purpose,
and the establishment of open
THE REVOLT AGAINST "DEMOCRACY" AND PARLIAMENT 81
and strengthened forms of repression and
dictatorship. The revolt against "democracy" and
"parliament," which was already marked in bourgeois
circles before the war, but was still confined in direct
expression to the narrower reactionary circles, now
become general in all current expression. The demand of
an Owen Young for a "holiday of parliaments" ("If a
holiday of armaments is good, a holiday of parliaments
would be better," speech at the Lotus Club, New York, on
December 6, 1930); or of a Sir William Beveridge for "a
world dictator" (Halley Stewart lecture in February
1932); or the announcement of a Gordon Selfridge to the
American Chamber of Commerce in London on his return
from the United States that "as an American be spoke to
fifty representative men in America, and did not find
one who disagreed with his view that democracy in that
great country could not possibly succeed as a system of
government . . . a country should be managed as a great
business was managed" (Times, June 22, 1932): these and
a thousand similar expressions are typical of the
present outlook of the representatives of
finance-capital, and are paralleled by the sceptical
tone of the parliamentarians themselves, the openly
anti-parliamentary tone of the Press, or of the once
((progressive" literary intelligentsia (Shaw, Wells), no
less than the direct attack of a Churchill, Lloyd or
Tardieu. Œ The Social Democratic and Labour Parties,
moving parallel with capitalism, undergo a similar
transformation of outlook, and begin to speak
increasingly of the "limitations of parliament" and the
necessity of strengthening "discipline" and "authority"
in the State ("Neo-Socialism" in France, the Socialist
League propaganda in England; see also Laski's Democracy
in Crisis, 1933, and Vandervelde's L'Alternative, 1933,
for the weakening of the old abstract-democratic
assumptions).
The practice of modem capitalism moves increasingly
away from parliamentary-democra tic forms to
strengthened and more open coercion and
class-dictatorship. This applies not only to the
directly Fascist states, but also to the diminishing
number of imperialist states which still remain
nominally "democratic." The Roosevelt emergency powers,
and the National Government in Britain, represent stages
and phases of a process of transformation, corresponding
in some respects to the Bruning stage in Germany. Modem
legislation increases the powers of the executive, of
the bureaucracy and of the police, and more
82 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUT1014
and more restricts the limits of the legal
working-class movement, of the right of meeting and
association, and of the right to strike. This process of
the "transformation of democracy" in the Western
imperialist countries, and preparation of the ground for
Fascism, is further examined in a later chapter.
The stream against parliamentary democracy is rising
on all sides, although this does not mean that
capitalism has yet exhausted its uses. But the real
issue is commonly confused by the vulgar propagandist
treatment that the attack on "democracy" is a parallel
attack of Communism and Fascism. On the contrary. The
critique of Communism or Marxism against capitalist
democracy is not that it is "too democratic," but that
it is "not democratic enough," that it is in reality
only a deceitful cover for capitalist dictatorship, and
that real democracy for the workers can only be achieved
when the proletarian dictatorship breaks the power of
the capitalist class. The movement of modern capitalism,
on the other hand, against parliamentary democracy is a
movement to strengthen repression of the working class
and establish the open and violent dictatorship of
monopoly capital. The reality of this issue between
oligarchic dictatorship and working-class freedom breaks
through the old illusory trappings of parliamentary
democracy.
5. "National Self-Sufficiency." Œ A no less strongly
marked expression of the modern tendencies of capitalism
is the movement towards so-called "national self-
sufficiency," "autarchy ... .. national planning,"
"isolationism," etc. This tendency has come most
strongly to the front since the world economic crisis,
and the breakdown of the World Economic Conference
revealed its strength. This development is the logical
working out of imperialist decay.
Of this tendency as the dominant tendency in the
latest phase of world politics the League of Nations
economic expert, Sir Arthur Salter, wrote in his
standard work Recovery in 1931:
World trade may be restricted to small dimensions,
through every country excluding imports of everything
which (at whatever expense) it can make or produce at
home. Along this line of development, America might
withdraw within herself, arresting and almost abandoning
her foreign investments, sacrificing her export trade,
and cultivating an isolated self-sufficiency on the
"NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY" 83
lower level of prosperity which this would
necessitate. As the world closed against her, Great
Britain might be forced to supplement such preferential
trade with the Dominions and India as may be
practicable, with a policy of exploiting and closing in
her non-self-governing Empire from the rest of the
world, against all the traditions and principles of her
history. This line of development would mean loss to
every country, impoverishment to countries like
Switzerland which have no similar resources, and an
organisation of the world into separate units and groups
which would soon be dangerous and ultimately fatal to
world peace. It is along this path that the world is now
proceeding. (Sir Arthur Salter, Recovery, pp. 192-3.)
This description, although faithfully reflecting one
side of the tendency, and to some extent indicating the
possible outcome, is not a fully correct description of
the actual process. For, while the propaganda speaks in
terms of internal selfsufficiency, the reality of the
policy remains the fight of the imperialist powers, on
the basis of this strengthened internal organisation,
for the world market.
In fact, the movement towards the closed monopolist
area is not in itself new, but is inherent in the whole
development of imperialism, whose essential character is
the denial and ending of free trade. What is new is only
the extreme intensity with which this monopolist policy
is now pursued, and the complexity of the weapons which
are now brought into play for its realisation.
Not only the old tariff weapons, which are now
brought to unheard Œ of heights, but a host of new
weapons-surtaxes variable at a moment's notice, quotas,
embargoes, exchange restrictions, currency control,
complex trade alliances, State subsidies, and direct
State economic control-are now brought into play by the
imperialist giants in their ever more desperate conflict
for closed markets, for privileged areas of
exploitation, and for control of the sources of raw
materials.
The intensified conflict of the imperialist Powers
for the shrinking world market makes this development to
new and ever fiercer weapons of economic warfare, and
essentially reactionary choking of the channels of free
world trade, not merely some foolish and mistaken policy
of particular statesmen, but the inevitable development
and working out of the inner laws of imperialism. In
vain the theoretical economic experts of the League of
Nations throw up their bands in distress and deplore
84 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the universal "loss" and "impoverishment" caused by
such politics; in vain the international conferences of
economic experts, as at Geneva in 1927, pass unanimous
resolutions condemning the destructive barbarism of such
intensified economic warfare and calling for its
reversal. The reality moves in the opposite direction to
the resolutions. For there is no world capitalism as a
whole to adopt the "enlightened" policies so patiently
and incessantly held out by the economic theorists and
would-be reformers of capitalism; just here is the
cardinal error of the Salters and all their company.*
There is only the conflict of the rival imperialist
powers; and in the conditions of this conflict the
statesmen and leaders of finance-capital, however much
they may regret the cost and the losses involved, see no
alternative to the policies they find themselves
compelled to pursue if they are not to go under. In the
words of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the
eve of the World Economic Conference, explaining the
necessity of maintaining economic warfare:
Much as all of us regretted the economic warfare
which had arisen between us and other countries, we must
maintain that warfare as long as it was the other
countries which had taken the aggressive. (Neville
Chamberlain in the House of Commons, June 2, 1933.)
"We must maintain that warfare;" the fault lies with
"the other countries." This is the keynote of all the
imperialist powers.
The most important expression of this transformation
of
* It is characteristic of this whole school that,
after recording a hundred previous disappointments, Sir
Arthur Salter concludes his Preface to the Seventh
Edition of Recovery on January 1, 1933, with the hopeful
statement: "The World Economic Conference afford, the
next occasion for a great constructive effort." The
history of 1933 provided the comment. Indeed, even the
professional optimists of capitalism begin to lose
heart. Salter writes further in the same Preface: "The
whole system under which our rich heritage of Western
civilisation has grown up is at stake. Its fate depends,
not only upon deliberate and concerted governmental
action, but also upon constructive reform by those who
organise and direct policy through every main sphere of
economic activity. The sands are running out; but it is
still not-quite-too late." This was at the beginning of
1933 before the further aggravation of the issues during
1933. In fact, it was always "too late" from the outset
for the imagined "Constructive reform by those who
organise and direct policy through every main sphere of
economic activity," because in the conditions of
post-war imperialism such "constructive reform" never
was, and never could be, other than a Liberal civil
servant's myth.
" NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY" 85
policy in the present period was the passing of
British Imperialism in 193 2 from the old f ree-trade
basis to a general tariff and the policy of the closed
Empire. The long survival of free trade in Britain
reflected the remnants of the old commercial and
financial world domination. The Chamberlain propaganda
in the beginning of the imperialist era, and the
strongly reinforced Empire Economic Unity propaganda
after the war showed the pressing forward of the new
forces. As late as 1926 the Bankers' Manifesto issued in
that year still called for a general movement towards
lower tariffs and free trade. The Bankers' Manifesto of
1930, signed by all the most important financial
leaders, marked the decisive turn, and the end of the
last remains of the old era, with its declaration:
The immediate step for securing and extending the
market for British goods lies in reciprocal trade
agreements between the nations constituting the British
Empire.
As a condition of securing these agreements, Great
Britain must retain her open market for all Empire
products, while being prepared Œ to impose duties on all
imports from all other countries.
The Ottawa Conference of 1932 showed the attempt to
carry out this policy. Although in relation to the
Dominions heavy concessions from Britain have only won
small and doubtful gains, in relation to India and the
Crown Colonies the policy is being pressed forward at
full strength. The subsequent elaborate trading
negotiations for exclusive agreements, the agricultural
quota arrangements, and the use of the currency weapon
to endeavour to organise a "sterling bloc," all mark the
development of the new system.
Attempts are frequently made to present the new phase
of intensified monopolist conflict in idealist form
under cover of the slogans of "national planning,"
"national self-sufficiency," etc., or to compare it with
the entirely opposite process of socialist construction
of the Soviet Five-Year Plan. The manifest economic
breakdown of the capitalist anarchy, contrasted with the
simultaneous gigantic advance of the Soviet Five-Year
Plan, led to an outburst of talk of "planning" in the
capitalist world. A World Planning Congress was held at
Amsterdam in 193 1. A myriad abortive schemes for
Five-Year Plans, TenYear Plans and Twenty-Year Plans
were put forward in 0 the capitalist countries. The
Trades Union Congress in 1931, true
86 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
to its line of alliance with capitalism and worship
of "organised capitalism," adopted a resolution which
declared:
This Congress welcomes the present tendency towards a
planned and regulated economy in our national life.
(Belfast Trades Union Congress resolution, 1931.)
Needless to say, this description of the real process
which is taking place is a complete deception. The
conditions of private ownership of the means of
production, and of production for profit, negate the
elementary conditions for any real scientific economic
planning, which requires a single ownership of the means
of production and the Organisation of production for
use. The reality which is described under the euphemism
of "a planned and regulated economy in our national
life" is intensified monopolist Organisation in a given
imperialist area (not national area) for the purposes of
sharpened world imperialist conflict and increased
exploitation of the workers.
The complete passing over of the previous progressive
elements in capitalism to the new reactionary policies
is illustrated by the conversion of the former leading
Liberal economic theorist, Keynes, in his articles on
"National Self -Sufficiency" (New Statesman and Œ
Nation, July 8 and 15, 1933). Keynes writes:
I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect
Free Trade not only as an economic doctrine which a
rational and instructed person could not doubt but
almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded departures
from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an
outrage. I thought England's unshakable Free Trade
convictions, maintained for nearly a hundred years, to
be both the explanation before man and the justification
before heaven of her economic supremacy. As lately as
1923 I was writing that Free Trade was based on
fundamental truths "which, stated with their due
qualifications, no one can dispute who is capable of
understanding the meaning of words."
Looking again to-day at the statements of these
fundamental truths which I then gave, I do not find
myself disputing them. Yet the orientation of my mind is
changed; and I share this change of mind with many
others.
He then sets out the drawbacks of which he has become
aware in the working out of the system of international
capitalism, and reaches the conclusion:
I sympathise therefore with those who would minimise,
rather
87 "NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY"
than those who would maximise economic entanglements
between nations. . . . I am inclined to the belief that,
after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure
of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation
between countries than existed in 1914 may tend to serve
the cause of peace rather than otherwise.
More fully, he declares: We wish to be as free as we
can make ourselves from the interferences from the
outside world. . . . Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality,
travel-these are the things which should of their nature
be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it
is reasonably and conveniently possible, and above all
let finance be primarily national.
It will be seen that the outlook of Keynes has begun
to approximate to that of Hitler. This is a valuable
measure of capitalism in decay. The reality behind the
phraseology of a Keynes or other capitalist "national
planners" must not be misunderstood. The belated
discovery by Keynes of the naive, subjective and
uncritical assumptions on which the old traditional
"economic science" of the bourgeoisie, especially in its
centre in England, was always based, does not here
concern us. Marx long agoin the middle nineteenth
century-before, not after the Œ eventlaid bare the
local, temporary and insular character of the free trade
economic theory as only the reflection of the
historically caused British capitalist supremacy; and
showed also how this phase would necessarily pass, how
British capitalist supremacy would disappear, and with
it the accompanying free trade theory, and liberal free
trade capitalism would pass into monopolist capitalism
and the period of decay. However, the empiricist can
only learn from the behind-side of history; only the
impact of the event compels the bourgeois professors of
economics to begin to grope for the source of their
errors. Keynes, the faithful believer in the divine
ordainment of free trade and British economic supremacy
until 1923, in 1933 announces his disillusionment with
the pride of a pioneer.
What is important, however, is that this
disillusionment or "change of mind" which he "shares
with many others" is only the reflection of the change
of capitalism, which he translates into universal
conclusions in exactly the same subjective and
uncritical way as the old free trade theory which he now
condemns. For in fact, the issue is no longer between
international
88 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
free trade capitalism and monopolist capitalism in
its modem forms. That issue has long been settled in
practice. At the present time history has placed on the
order of the day a different issue, of which he is
unaware. The daring "advance" which he believes himself
to have made in his thought, with his conversion from
old liberal fetishes to "national self-sufficiency,"
leaves him in reality still well in the rear of events
as the faithful servitor of the ruling class; he has
simply passed from being the servitor of one phase of
capitalism to becoming the servitor of the next.
In reality, "national self-sufficiency" is only the
ideal cover for the modern forms of monopolist
capitalism, extreme intensification of antagonisms, and
advance to Fascism and war. Just as the imperialist
blocs cover their predatory wars for the spoils of the
world under cover of the slogan of "national defence,"
so they seek increasingly to-day to cover their
monopolist economic Organisation and warfare under cover
of the slogan of "national self- sufficiency." It is
this advance to war which is the essential significance
concealed behind the slogan of "national
self-sufficiency."
6. War as the Final "Solution."
The culmination and final working out of all the new
policies of capitalism under the stress of the world
crisis is the advance to the second world war.
The effects of the world economic crisis enormously
intensified all existing international antagonisms. The
"pacific" "internationalist" language of the
stabilisation period (Locarno, Briand-Stresemann, Œ
Kellogg Pact) gives place to increasingly open
national-chauvinist language and policies. International
conference after international conference breaks down.
Even such limited success as attends the measures of
internal reorganisation, of strengthening and tightening
up of monopolist economy and aggressive power, within
each imperialism, only leads to the intensification of
world antagonisms. There is a renewed and ever more
feverish pressing forward of armaments on all sides, and
of industries connected with armaments. The World
Disarmament Conference breaks down. Japan and Germany
withdraw from the League of Nations. The issue of
"disarmament" passes into the issue of "re-armament."
Alliances and counter
89 WAR AS THE FINAL "SOLUTION"
alliances are actively built up on every side. The
Naval Limitation Treaty passes into the melting-pot.
Alongside the limited "revival" of world production
in 1933 and 1934-and, indeed, as an important element in
this "revival"-the armaments industries leapt forward;
their shares and profits rapidly rose. According to the
calculations of the German Institute of Economic
Research (Institut fur Konjunkturforschung), the
proportions of world armaments expenditure and of world
production, on the basis of 1928 as zoo, showed the
following significant picture:
Armaments expenditure World production 1913 64 54
1929 104 104 1930 106 87 1932 1107 56
The war budgets of the principal countries for 1934
showed a sharp net increase: of Germany by; L17
millions, of the United States by ;E16 millions, of
France by L10 millions (together with a special internal
loan for armaments of L40 millions), of Japan by 19
millions, of Britain by L5 millions (together with a
supplementary air programme of L20 millions over five
years).
The gathering expectation of the close approach of
war finds increasingly frequent expression in the
speeches of the statesmen of all countries. Typical was
Mussolini's "War ToDay" declaration in his speech to the
officers at the Italian army manoeuvres in August, 1934:
War is in the air and might break out at any moment.
We must prepare, not for a war for to-morrow, but for a
war of to-day.
In July, 1934, Marshal Petain declared in his speech
to the Reserve Œ Officers' Conference at St. Malo that
the next war would break out like a "lightning flash."
Baldwin, in advocating the new British air programme in
the House of Commons in July, 1934, reported a greater
sense of uneasiness, of malaise, in Europe than we have
hitherto experienced. Churchill in the same debate
declared:
The situation was serious and grave. Europe was
moving ever more rapidly into a tightly drawn net.
Almost all nations were arming, and every one felt that
the danger they dreaded most of all was drawing nearer."
90 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
The propaganda of war spreads. War begins to be
presented as the heroic alternative, the last hope, the
"way out" from the unending nightmare of economic
crisis, misery and unemployment. Fascism, the most
complete expression of modern capitalism, glorifies war.
The filthy sophism "War means Work" begins to be
circulated by the poison agencies of imperialism, and
filters down to the masses. As Carlyle, in whom many
antecedents of Fascism can be traced, wrote in his
Sartor Resartus: "The lower people everywhere desire
war. Not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower
people-to be shot." It is a measure of the stage reached
by capitalist civ- ilisation that to-day, before the
leading capitalist countries- other than Japan-are yet
directly involved in war, while there are still
nominally conditions of peace, it is possible for such
an argument to be seriously presented and widely
repeated and actually discussed, that murder is the only
way to provide men and women with work and livelihood.
All to-day see the ever more visible approach of war.
Rising alarm is expressed in many quarters of bourgeois
opinion who see the ruin and destruction of the entire
existing society involved in the menace of renewed world
war. But these sections of anti-war opinion see only the
question of war in isolation, and concentrate their
efforts on capitalist "machinery" to avoid war, without
realising that such machinery of imperialism can only
function as machinery to organise the future war in the
name of "ideal" symbols. Bourgeois pacifism, attached to
the official League of Nations, and preaching passivity
and non-resistance to the masses, becomes an
indispensable part of the war-preparations of
imperialism, and as such officially recognised and
encouraged by all the warmaking statesmen of
imperialism. All the statesmen of imperialism, Roosevelt
and MacDonald, Henderson and PaulBoncour, Mussolini and
Hitler, are to-day "pacifists" in their public
utterances-and in their governmental roles actively
press forward the building of armaments and the
preparation of imperialist Œ war.
War is only the continuation and working out of the
crisis of capitalism and of the present policies of
capitalism. It is inseparable from these, and cannot be
treated in isolation. All the policies of capitalist
reorganisation, all the policies of Fascism, can only
hasten the advance to war. This is equally
WAR AS THE FINAL " SOLUTION' " 91
true of the line of a Roosevelt, a MacDonald or a
Hitler. War is no sudden eruption of a new factor from
outside, a vaguely future menace to be exorcised by
special machinery, but is already in essence implicit in
the existing factors, in the existing driving forces and
policies of capitalism. All the existing policies of
capitalism are policies of eversharpening war: of ever
more formidably organised imperialist blocs; of
tariff-war, of gold-war, of currency-war; of war with
every possible economic, diplomatic and political
weapon. It is no far step from these to the final stage
of armed war. All the existing policies of capitalism
are more and more dominantly policies of destruction.
The capitalists are to-day the destructive force in
human society. All their most typical modern policy,
from super-tariffs and debt-enslavement of whole states
to burning foodstuffs and devastating cotton
plantations, from dismantling plant and machinery to
throwing millions of skilled and able workers on the
scrap-heap of starvation, is a policy of destruction of
human effort and labour, strangling of production,
destruction of life. War is only a continuation of this
policy. It is no far step from spending millions of
pounds to buy up machinery in order to destroy it, to
spending millions to produce guns and warships and
munitions to be blown up into the air. It is no far step
from condemning millions of human beings to the
death-in-life of unemployment as "superfluous," to the
final solution of disposing of their lives and bodies by
bomb and gas and chemical, for the greater profit of
whatever group of capitalists can gain most in the
redivision of the world by the holocaust. But this does
not mean that war, any more than Fascism, presents the
final "solution" of the crisis of capitalism. On the
contrary. War, like Fascism, is to-day the outcame of
the intensified contradictions of capitalist society in
decay; but neither solve those contradictions. On the
contrary, both bring out those contradictions to the
most extreme point, organise upon their basis, and lay
bare the deep disintegration of existing society, both
internally and internationally, to the point of
destruction. The crisis extends and develops through
these forms to yet greater intensity, and thereby only
reveals the more sharply that the sole final solution
lies in the social revolution. Œ