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From The New International, Vol. VIII No. 7, August 1942, pp. 198–202.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The First World War ended in a victory of Anglo-American and French imperialism, the defeat of German and the emergence of the Bolshevik Revolution as the one beacon light of the masses.
Between the first and second world imperialist conflicts, German imperialism revived and under the leadership of Hitler is striving for world domination. The origins and cause of the Second World War demonstrate that the problems and difficulties of the capitalist nations were not resolved in the first war – indeed were accentuated to an extreme. The death battle now being fought is to establish, if possible, the unquestioned domination of the world by American or German imperialism, British imperialism having already become definitely subordinated to the United States. Whether or not a third imperialist holocaust will be visited upon society is contingent upon the consciousness or actions of the proletariat and all the oppressed peoples during the course of the war itself and after – toward the achievement of world socialism.
This article concerns itself with the hopes and plans of the American bourgeoisie in the event of an American victory in the war, indicating almost exclusively the domestic aspects of their policy.
The length of the war, it goes without saying, will color the character of the world and the form of any peace, primarily in the sense that it will determine the degree of desperation to which both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will be driven. The duration of the war has been estimated by bourgeois spokesmen anywhere from five to fifteen years (Baruch) to forty (!) years (Ambassador Joseph P. Davies and Donald M. Nelson). Little wonder, then, that the ideas or proposals for peace (e.g., the Atlantic Charter) have been nebulous and platitudinous – since the bourgeoisie is sure only of its main objective – to maintain the capitalist set-up, and will decide its tactics, methods and slogans according to the concrete situation (militancy of the proletariat in the defeated countries, existence of revolutionary proletariat at home, existence of workers’ states abroad, stage of colonial revolutions, etc.). Howsoever clouded in sonorous phrases of freedom and liberty, all proposals are definitely imperialist in their economic aspects and include a good big police dub as an essential adjunct – since “justice” as the password is not sufficient to disguise exploitation as the practice.
Pope Pius XIII [sic!], in his broadcast from Vatican City, June 13, 1942, showed his clear understanding that any imperialist peace proposals are the equivalent of scraps of paper. Said he:
We well know how, in the present state of affairs, the formulation of specific proposals for a just and equitable peace would not have any well-founded probability of success. Indeed, every time that one speaks a word of peace, one runs the risk of offending one or the other side ... In fact, while one side bases its security on the results obtained, the other rests its hopes on future battles.
This statement is as true of political-economic conflict as it is of military battles. For the key imperialist nations, America and Germany, have an identical problem of imperialist expansion to resolve, with war today as the means toward that end.
The sharp, swift growth of the power of American monopoly capitalism prior to the war has exhibited itself clearly during the war itself. The centralization of capital (its international centralization in fact, e.g., the international cartels) has proceeded rapidly, with little business being forced to and through the wall. Big business (bankers, et al.), viewing the economic order through world eyes and not just national eyes, understands that an attempt at the greatest economic expansion in American history is in order, and is imperative if it is to exist and maintain its system. In other words, whatever propaganda and lip-service to bread, butter, milk and security, political freedom, etc., may indicate to the contrary, the American bourgeoisie must proceed in the post-war period to super-exploit the world’s toilers in other lands, while continuing to exploit the American workers. For American imperialism, running true to form, it is as much a case of expand or bust as it is with German imperialism.
American imperialism aims to dominate the entire world – and not simply the colonies or undeveloped areas – in the economic-political-military sense. More specifically, it intends to police and ration the world in order to maintain the capitalist world. “Feed the world,” yes, that will be the task of American imperialism after the war, if proletarian revolution does not conquer; feed the world just enough to keep the people strong enough to work, but too weak to break through capitalism’s weakened chains and reorganize the world on socialist foundations.
To police the world, to feed the world “in return for its labor” (New York Times, June 24), to develop the super-exploitation of the masses in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc., American imperialism will introduce, more and more state-capitalist controls into the economic processes in relation to foreign trade and investment. International banks and cartels, dominated as they will be by American capital, will be closely linked with government boards of economic warfare (or welfare, as they may be called in the post-war period).
Such rigid supervision may produce a temporary “stabilization” for a period. But the process of such “stabilization” is two-fold. Either a revived or insurgent imperialism, attempts to arise out of the defeated or subordinate powers to pit itself against American imperialism – or a revolutionary proletariat arises, equally seeking an outlet from American imperialism but not on the same terms, since it must carry out its struggle against all imperialisms. Through more intense use and development of the means of production, through further rationalization, through industrial revival of economically destroyed countries and through the industrialization of undeveloped areas, the weight and numbers of the industrial proletariat will be greatly increased (relative to a native bourgeoisie which may be completely helpless). The organization of the proletariat for its own ends takes place over all obstacles. The proletariat, despite all defeats, rises again and again, like Phoenix from the ashes, but wiser; and moves again on its historic road toward social emancipation. There is no peace, no cessation of struggle in this world – without the achievement of world socialism. The choices are as before: either rival imperialisms plunging the world into the Third Imperialist World War or the international socialist revolution.
The imperialist world of tomorrow is an utterly black one. The America of tomorrow, if it remains capitalist, is also an utterly black one [1] – bureaucratic, militaristic, totalitarian. Those who dismiss the bureaucratic-militaristic-totalitarian trends of the war period as episodic and remediable in a post-war period are talking of a period which will never come under capitalism. The capitalist “tomorrow” about and for which liberals desperately speculate and plan is either only an interval between wars or an indefinitely protracted war.
Accompanying state capitalist trends in regard to international affairs will be comparable developments in the domestic economy. The authoritative National Resources Planning Board, speaking through its director, C.W. Eliot, asserts that it will be necessary to maintain many of the economic controls made necessary by the war (New York Times, June 15). He is right. The war is only hastening the process of governmental interventions and controls over the economy of imperialism. While, possibly, some of the more obviously superfluous governmental agencies may be lopped off as the result of experience, the demands of any remaining arch-individualists of capitalism will fall on deaf ears. Capitalist anarchy, even and especially under a monopolistic capitalism, requires regulation through its political instrument, the state or government, in order to prevent utter chaos. To use the phrase of Herbert Hoover, “the economic measures necessary to win total war” which “are just plain fascist economics,” will prove equally necessary in the post-war economy of American imperialism, whatever democratic political forms may exist to delude the masses as to the realities of life (because the masses will yet be strong enough to require delusion).
One Professor Cumberland may continue to demand that American capitalism “get rid of planners, government controls, high taxes, etc.,” but the professor thinks of a world of laissez-faire capitalism that was on its way out years ago, and is now definitely through, with only lingering, passing manifestations of “rugged individualism” in American economy. Those frontiers have been crossed, never to return. Big business, big, big business, rules the roost and will continue to do so as long as capitalist society remains.
The war has only accelerated the process of centralization and concentration of industry and finance into the dominant hands of finance capital. The post-war period will not change but continue this development under more aggravated conditions: namely, social crisis; vast unemployment or its state capitalist equivalent, relief-unemployment or forced labor; demobilization of millions from the armed forces (though probably not all), etc. Even if the desire may be there to placate a distraught and ever-weakening middle class, no one has yet devised a way to turn back the clock of economic development for long. The reality today is that “twenty-four thousand small manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers might be forced out of business by priorities orders and war needs by October 1” (Philip D. Reed, chief of the war industries branch of the War Production Board before the House of Representatives Small Business Committee, July 9). These small businesses will not return after the war. The National Association of Manufacturers’ nine-point program for business and labor (New York Times, June 27) bluntly advises the government to “refuse to subsidize distressed industries.” These smaller industries, struggling hopelessly in competition with the large, powerful concerns, are vanishing – and will continue to in accordance with the relentless course of a pyramiding and whirling economic structure that throws off its excess debris, once a part of the whole. This structure, this top, appears like a healthy organism while it spins; only when it topples does one observe that it is top-heavy (monopoly capitalism) and that it has tossed all else aside.
Business and political leaders are aware that government intervention into business is unavoidable. Note the trends and tremendous increases in government subsidization and aid to capital. At least one-third of the nation lives in 4,500,000 tenement, rural shacks, hovels, etc. Nathan Straus, former administrator of the U.S. Housing Authority, proposes that the government subsidize a vast post-war housing program. Bonds would be sold to banks, private investors, etc. The “only cost” would be the annual subsidies, which would last for sixty years. Similarly, Germany guarantees the six per cent profits to its businessmen. This indeed is not “competition” with private business. The government does the job and hands over the interest-profit to business in view of the latter’s “investment” and “risks” in government-guaranteed housing bonds. The Strauss housing proposal demonstrates the utter uselessness of private property instruments in the creation of social values and needs of the people. They are only vultures who gorge on six per cent interest-bearing bonds.
The manufacturers, like all true-blue business men, want their profits continued, in fact, guaranteed, in the post-war period. First, they insist upon refund of a substantial percentage of the excess profits taxes. Second, they generously permit themselves allowances for “reserves and contingency funds” though the cost of their machinery and fixed capital is already entered as part of their cost and therefore fully provided for. The crowning point, however, is the stipulation that post-war conditions are not to be allowed to endanger unfulfilled war contracts existing at the end of the war. These, according to the second point on the manufacturers program, shall be carried out by the government in any case. Heads I win, tails you lose.
While taking such elaborate precautions for their own self-protection after the war, the manufacturers stipulate that wages are only to be “as high as post-war conditions warrant.” Evidently the manufacturers’ eyes are on labor’s demands. They don’t like minimum wage requirements, preferring the keen competition of unemployed millions for jobs. As they so euphemistically put it in Point 5 of their nine-point program: “Labor and capital can prosper only when prices of goods and labor” result in an adequate encouragement of expansion of production. In other words, they won’t assume the initiative in stimulating and expanding production unless they are “encouraged” (bribed) to do so by adequate profits obtained by chiseling down the wages of labor.
The manufacturers’ aim is to relax the vigilance of labor now and thus to create, if possible, a condition of extreme organizational weakness in labor in the post-war period. In this objective they have the assistance of the Westbrook Pegler of the Administration – Thurman Arnold – who delineates a postwar capitalist society flowing with milk and honey, in which there will be presumably plenty for labor. Arnold, therefore, accompanies his hosannas to a rosy capitalist future with persistent attacks on labor’s efforts to protect itself by preserving its organizational strength.
The policy of the present Administration in respect to labor is increasingly to draw the labor organizations into dependence upon it. But the continued penetration of one or another governmental agency (e.g., WLB, OPA) into the processes or struggles of labor versus the employers contributes to devitalizing and corroding healthy, living unionism. The labor unions need to shake themselves loose from the grip of governmental domination and influence, or they will wittingly or unwittingly become the instruments of the imperialists. That is, unionism, if it is to live and develop, must proceed along independent class lines, including a politically independent rôle. Unionism which cannot move or make decisions without governmental approval, or constant government intervention of various agencies or description, can in the end result in a modified form of “corporate unionism.”
The government is not a neutral agency. It represents capitalist interests and objectives. It presents a front of benevolent government toward some of its creations, such as the National Youth Administration, Works Progress Administration, CCC camps etc., where it is the employer of labor at wage standards far below normal rates. Yet, although not expressly forbidden in the case of NYA and WPA, the government makes it most clear that any attempts at strikes for the redress of grievances or the economic improvement of their lot meet with the strong disapproval of the government and will result in the removal of the workers from their jobs. Thus the government, presumably standing above the classes, functions in such bodies as an intimidatory or outright strike-breaking agency. The extension of this outlook and practice can be looked for in the next period as one or another of the departments of government become an employer-government instrument. Through such means are developed further the bureaucratic-authoritarian characteristics of the bourgeois ruling class and its state instrument, making it even more imperative for labor to endeavor to establish its independent identity and means of struggle for the future.
Moreover, when labor already – for reasons of “national defense” or “national unity” or any other cause – lets rest or gives up its most powerful weapon – the right to strike; when it leans or depends on Administration or government agencies for support of its needs – it first of all obviously weakens its fighting strength and powers of resistance to the employers’ offensive. But equally significant and decisive in the long run, it (even if unwittingly or unwillingly) makes it easier for the dominant imperialists to force upon labor a rôle of subservience to American internationalist-imperialist objectives – the achievement of super-exploitation of, and super-profits from, the masses in other countries – in return for a few crumbs to American labor.
American imperialism may be able to and probably can yet afford an “appeasement” policy toward American labor, deciding definitely to “recognize” labor unionism provided the latter limits its rôle and demands to more modest proportions. That is, American imperialism may decide to play American labor against the workers of the rest of the world, by giving American labor certain preferments, for the privilege of relative class peace, or the achievement, within limits, of class collaboration on an American scale, so long as American labor permits it to proceed unhindered to the super-exploitation of labor and the masses elsewhere. That is the manner in which “labor aristocracies” developed in the past decades. While there will not be again the comparatively affluent “labor aristocracy” of the past – based on a growing and forward-moving capitalism requiring this labor – it is conceivable, in fact probable, that an American imperialism, internationally dominant, may seek such a peace or understanding with the officialdom of American labor, and succeed in lulling sections of American labor to quiescence. To counterbalance this latter tendency or development, American labor must begin to think in international terms of solidarity with all the oppressed and working peoples of the world.
Another section of the capitalist class thinks along the line of head-long collision with the American working class now and in the post-war period. F.C. Crawford, president of Thompson Products, Inc., speaking at the round table conference board of the War Labor Board (May 21), headlighted by the addresses of Herbert Hoover and Paul V. McNutt, lamented the “restrictions” imposed by labor unions on capital. Management, he declared, must find a way to put a greater number of independent, i.e., company unions, into the field to function on a national basis, “Wagner Act or not.” Professor Leo Wolman, erstwhile aide and adviser to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America, addressing this same conference, was concerned with whether labor unions will permit management to function properly in the post-war period in the operation and administration of industry.
However, the trend in economy and in politics is toward more governmental controls for essential capitalist aims and needs; and it is unlikely that the dissatisfied section of capital in relation to labor policy will succeed in replacing the present trends with one of open, head-on collision to smash labor unionism.
Roosevelt, the outstanding exponent of liberal bourgeois democracy from the days of the NRA till now, has understood the historical necessity for governmental, authoritarian controls or interventions into the affairs of labor and capital in order to preserve the capitalist order at all. Roosevelt realizes that a major historic function of the capitalist state is to control labor and regulate relations between the contending capitalist groups; in the process, the most powerful bourgeoisie, of course, emerges as the gainer and victor.
Imperialism inevitably breeds war, today’s – and tomorrow’s, with intervals of peace or “preparedness.” The regimentation and militarization of both men and resources to a degree never before conceived is in character with the struggle of the imperialists to resolve their rivalries by military means. The Army and Navy authorities press for control of the productive forces of economy itself. They are not satisfied just to receive into their hands the tanks, guns, planes, etc., produced by labor in the factories. When it is observed that the Navy is the largest employer of labor in the United States today (New York Times, August 9), it is simple to comprehend why militarism and the militaristic concepts of life rapaciously reach out for influence and domination in all walks of endeavor. Opposition within labor’s ranks has until now been a major factor in preventing the extension of military influences more directly into civil affairs and the operations of industry (New York Times, June 27). But the House Defense Migration Committee charges and criticizes Donald M. Nelson, head of the War Production Board, for alleged “transfer of authority over procurement and production to the armed forces,” contrary to Roosevelt’s Executive Order of January 16 for civilian control and operations thereof. (New York Times, August 11). This charge or development signifies that the pressure, demands and needs of the Army and Navy military heads is proving more powerful than Executive Orders intended to stem the trends for military direction and control of industrial production.
At the same time, also, it must be noted how military concepts and controls already adversely and pertinently affect democratic and labor rights. Since certain plants are under military control the military authorities have used this pretext to deny to workers their constitutional rights to distribute leaflets and papers to aircraft and other workers. The extension of the powers of the military regime into industrial production will only result in military declarations against heretofore matter of course labor union activities, press and leaflet distributions by unions, political organizations, etc. Or, in another direction, witness the great difficulty or outright failure of members in the armed forces to receive their union publications from home. “You can’t strike against the government” – a cry some labor knaves also have at times invoked to prevent strike action by dissatisfied workers – is a procedure and policy which militarists accept as divine right. The government’s or state’s main purpose is to serve as the executive committee of the ruling class as a whole – to keep labor in its place. The growing power of the military arm of the state in a period of imperialist war of indefinite duration, can only signify that the rôle of the government as strikebreaker (e.g., North American Aircraft) will be accentuated in the next period, particularly the utilization of the military regime for this purpose.
American imperialism is proceeding rapidly toward a militarized economy. For instance, the House voted an appropriation of forty-three billion dollars to the military, the greatest in American history, thus placing greatly increased power into the arms of the military regime. A mass army of ten to fifteen millions, perhaps more, is now in preparation for the the present war. Conscription is scheduled to remain a permanent institution after the war. Legislation, for submission to Congress around January 1, is in preparation by Senator Wadsworth, (co-author of the present Selective Service (Conscription) Act). According to these plans, one million youth between the ages of 18 and 21 are to be trained yearly, with provision made for five years of reserve service for the conscripts. How extensive the permanent standing army and the military training program will be in the post-war period are still undecided. But the trend is obvious. Government bureaucracy on a tremendous scale, plus steady intertwining of military concepts and controls into the bureaucracy, are hastening the development of a bureaucratic-militarized economy of imperialism.
This development stands out more patently as one observes the budding plans for the conscription of the masses for industrial production. Paul V. McNutt, director of the War Manpower Division, has made this objective of the government amply clear, apparently only as a measure for this war. Babes in arms, the enfeebled and the aged alone will find themselves exempt from either a conscripted military, industrial or agricultural force in this war, according to plans. The regime of tomorrow, as required by the imperialist bourgeoisie, is a great governmental bureaucratic-military apparatus and régime. It would be foolish to state that all this is coming about at one fell swoop, or that every imperialist element consciously sees or desires such a development. But the steady penetration of the apparatus of government instruments, including the military, into civil and industrial spheres, must lead one to conclude that this trend is not accidental, but the course of an imperialism seeking measures to maintain an anarchic social-economic order from swifter inner corrosion and from blows from a militant working class. A totalitarian trend, far yet from being crassly fascist in form, and with the democratic trappings losing their original strength as time passes, best describes the direction of American imperialism for the post-war period.
Regimentation is making its way into the lives of the people, into their very homes. While this process has by no means reached the European stage, the parallel is nevertheless there. To prevent a sharply rising discontent and dissatisfaction with living costs and standards of the masses of people, while the bourgeois class reaps enormous profits and lives luxuriously, the government has introduced rationing cards on some consumer articles to insure minimums for the masses. Ceiling prices for many goods are also invoked toward this purpose. But since they cannot actually satisfy the needs and demands of the masses with the adequate means of life or with living standards even closely commensurate with the efforts and contributions of labor, the bourgeoisie are forced to resort to direct and oblique measures of force to carry through their war objectives now, and to reinforce their economic structure. Thus come about and are observed the deprivation of civil and democratic rights of the people – directed first against easier victims – minority groups; then labor militants; and finally, generally.
Civil or democratic rights of the people, of the workers, are relative. The degree of economic prosperity of the country, even in peacetime; the intensity of the class struggle; the growing desperation of the classes trying to protect their interests – all affect the practices and life of civil rights. War, the extreme, most devastating, brutal and bloody expression of the conflicts between the rival bourgeoisie and also of the class struggle, cuts heavily into democratic rights, first as measures of “war expediency” and then as corollaries of the character and development of the imperialist post-war economy and government. No one will say that there have been wholesale deprivations of civil rights in this war so far. But not all actions may be regarded only as wartime measures. Examination of the 10,000 aliens who ‘have been arrested so far would show that the arrests as a whole are baseless and intimidatory in purpose in respect to militant labor activities generally, and particularly by foreign-born or foreign-descent workers. Some may find it possible to regard the conviction of the members of the SWP and Teamsters Local 544 in Minneapolis as isolated and episodic. But this action, even before American entered the war, can be more correctly viewed as symptomatic of the aim of employers, government and class collaborationist-reactionary union officials to destroy the militant Minneapolis labor movement – objectively and partially subjectively pitted against the boss system.
While some may pass over the more than 1,200 persons thus far convicted or charged with “subversive” activities, draft violations, etc., one cannot ignore another more dangerous and symptomatic action in respect to labor’s rights, free speech and a free press. This concerns the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that local authorities have the power to impose prohibitive taxation upon members of religious sects distributing literature and soliciting contributions. The group in question is Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is obvious how easy can be the extension and utilization of this decision against the labor and revolutionary press. As long as such a ruling prevails, labor publications are in constant danger of being wiped out through the medium of a financial subterfuge, thus nullifying the so-called constitutional guarantees for free speech and press. That a New Deal Supreme Court legalizes such a policy adds evidence to the inroads of totalitarian and authoritarian concepts in the life of the country.
The regimentation of society develops sharply under circumstances of war and social crisis, and under conditions of monopoly capitalism with its socialization of production for capitalist ends. Discipline, the draft, regulations, food “passports” (ration cards), etc., are invoked by the bourgeoisie to conduct their war and maintain “law and order.” Such discipline and regulation are handed down from above to the masses, who resent such orders and demands, and defy or evade them if the penalties or dangers are not too great. Quite different is the self-discipline and order maintained by the masses themselves when they realize that regulatory measures, no matter how extreme, are in their interests; and, in fact, are initiated and fostered by themselves. For example, in times of strikes and, on an historic landscape, social revolution, the workers are the first to proceed to establish discipline and order among themselves; set up their own “law and order” committees; arm themselves for defense and offense. They carry out no predatory acts, and where individual workers violate regulations, the workers efficiently discipline the violators. One does not observe systematic looting or crimes when workers have taken over and concern themselves with the group or social, and not individual, interests or objectives.
Contrariwise, under capitalist conditions in times of depression, mass unemployment and social crisis, there is observed a vast increase in restlessness and so-called crimes against property. The demoralization of human beings, rooted in economic insecurity, is taken for granted by the bourgeoisie in such periods. More police and court actions, perhaps an extra dole provision; and the capitalist class has “taken care” of the “crime wave.” But war, witnessing employment at its peak, brings an attitude of lawlessness toward the social order in a different manner, As District Attorney F.S. Hogan of New York notes (New York Times, July 10): “Crimes” against property have decreased, due to relative prosperity. But in addition to the swift growth of the Black Market in rationed goods for consumers (and “Big-Time” Steel), there is a sharp increase in crimes of violence due to “tremendous” social and economic changes, causing “restlessness,” etc.
Where such disillusionment and “restlessness” do not result in a social consciousness, such elements develop reactionary conceptions – each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost – and gangs or groups with such a philosophy. They become the material for fascist demagogues, even as a similar process of disillusionment and “lawless” outlook among demobilized soldiers makes the latter prey to reactionary or fascist movements. Reactionaries and fascists will make use of such elements from the civil and armed sections to build a base for a broader fascist movement in the future. Such elements (individualistic, undisciplined and programless), it is to be noted, easily adapt themselves (Italy, Germany) to the program and organization of fascists. They carry out ruthlessly ‘the demands of the fascist leaders and organizations against the workers or people, provided the fascist leadership at the same time permits them privileges – economic, social – and, apart from their duties, individual leeway. They are the material, also, from which anti-union “goon squads” are often formed. The present trends explain and contribute to the growth of such elements, and demonstrate that the mass base of fascism does not require importation from abroad, but can and does grow on native soil.
To attempt to regulate capitalist production and capital-labor relations, to maintain capitalism itself, the American bourgeoisie must rely in the coming period as never before on its increasingly powerful political superstructure, in peace as in wartime – despite the awesome costs of state rule today and its destructive and limiting effects on individual bourgeoisies.
Monopoly capitalism endeavors to uproot the world for investment and expansion, convulsing the world with blood in its need to expand in order to live; and breeding state capitalism, which is at one and the same time the fullest and final expression of capitalism’s economic-political development and its death agony. But state capitalism offers to the workers only a continuation, in even “worse form and content, of exploitation, misery and destruction. Dread of the masses – the fear and knowledge that the latter are seeking a permanent and better solution to the dilemma, are uppermost in the minds of the bourgeoisie. Walter D. Fuller, chairman of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, states explicitly (New York Times, May 21):
Unless democracy, liberty and tree enterprise provide security and happiness for the people of this country, those principles might be abandoned after the war ... They are determined to have this better world of greater security one way or another, and if they don’t get it through present principles they will look elsewhere.
“Present principles” for Fuller, of course, means bourgeois democracy. But the imperialist order cannot change its essential content and direction to include those who nostalgically seek a return to “the good old days” when capitalism could afford bourgeois democracy. Today the vanguard of the bourgeoisie “looks elsewhere” – to state capitalism to preserve the capitalist order – while the vanguard of the proletariat looks to socialism.
Only socialism, which rests its base on the highest techniques of production that capitalism has produced; and is unhindered by the profit motive, would permit of the free development of the means of production and distribution with the object of use.
Only socialism on a world scale can abolish imperialist war. Only socialism can bring self-discipline and self-development -instead of bureaucratic regimentation. Only socialism can make administration the servants of men and the master of things – rather than the bureaucratic master of men and the servant of capitalist monopoly production. Only the socialist reorganization of society can be the answer and road open to the masses.
1. The black picture to be indicated, while amply demonstrable for economic trends, is far from consummated so far as trends in all other aspects are concerned. The intensity of the class struggle on the morrow, the degree of economic, social and political desperation in relation to the aspirations of labor, will determine the rapidity with which American capitalism will turn to extended, broad totalitarian methods and instruments to attempt to preserve itself as a class. It is, however, entirely legitimate and necessary for the revolutionary movement to take note of these unquestionable totalitarian trends of American capitalism and to prepare the proletariat for defense and offense. Further, it must be said that any plans of the imperialists to achieve an organization of their anarchic system of production and distribution will fail, as they failed following; the First World War. This inevitable failure is rooted objectively in the contradictions of capitalist production and subjectively in the inevitable collisions of the proletariat with capitalist rule.
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