words, Socialism and Fascism.
Socialism is usually defined as "common ownership of the means of
production". Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns
everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that
people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture,
but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships
and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole
large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways
superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can
solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a
capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there
is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped
back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on
the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because
nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of
it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply
calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them.
Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials.
Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful
thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient
quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the
moment.
However, it has become clear in the last few years that "common ownership
of the means of production" is not in itself a sufficient definition of
Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of
incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and
abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are
simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a
class system. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the
mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some
kind of control over the government. "The State" may come to mean no more
than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can
return, based on power rather than on money.
But what then is Fascism?
Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that
borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for
war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a
Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still
capitalists and workers, and--this is the important point, and the real
reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with
Fascism--generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same
people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the
State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It
controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours,
wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical
purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a
State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere
EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is
obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the
world has ever seen.
But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that
which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state
of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for
granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the
Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of
Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world.
Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent
Nazi professors have "proved" over and over again that only Nordic man is
fully human, have even mooted the idea that non Nordic peoples (such as
ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of
war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards
conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the
Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may
need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open
rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture
weapons for Hitler's forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis
aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main
the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people,
third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to
come the coloured peoples, the "semi-apes" as Hitler calls them, who are
to be reduced quite openly to slavery.
However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because
it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world conquest, and
not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to
stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a
competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main
objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite
directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not
totally opposed to those of the State.
All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense
industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal
to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern
scale you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to
armaments, which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing
plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or
eighty thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread.
Clearly you can't have MANY bombing planes without lowering the national
standard of life. It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But
in Chamberlain's England the transition could not be made. The rich would
not face the necessary taxation, and while the rich are still visibly
rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either. Moreover, so
long as PROFIT was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive to
change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessman's first
duty is to his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it
pays better to manufacture motor cars. To prevent war material from
reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell in the highest market is
a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British dealers were
tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber,
copper and shellac-and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was
going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling
somebody a razor to cut your throat with. But it was "good business".
And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was
rearming. After 1
936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was
coming. After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would
begin. In September 1939 war broke out. EIGHT MONTHS LATER it was
discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely
beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way
desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles
against tanks, with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even
enough revolvers to supply all the officers. After a year of war the
regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even,
previously, been a shortage of uniforms--this in one of the greatest
woollen-goods producing countries in the world!
What had happened was that the whole moneyed class, unwilling to face a
change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the nature of Fascism
and modern war. And false optimism was fed to the general public by the
gutter press, which lives on its advertisements and is therefore
interested in keeping trade conditions normal. Year after year the
Beaverbrook press assured us in huge headlines that THERE WILL BE NO WAR,
and as late as the beginning of 1939 Lord Rothermere was describing
Hitler as "a great gentleman". And while England in the moment of
disaster proved to be short of every war material except ships, it is not
recorded that there was any shortage of motor cars, fur coats,
gramophones, lipstick, chocolates or silk stockings. And dare anyone
pretend that the same tug-of-war between private profit and public
necessity is not still continuing? England fights for her life, but
business must fight for profits. You can hardly open a newspaper without
seeing the two contradictory processes happening side by side. On the
very same page you will find the Government urging you to save and the
seller of some useless luxury urging you to spend. Lend to Defend, but
Guinness is Good for You. Buy a Spitfire, but also buy Haig and Haig,
Pond's Face Cream and Black Magic Chocolates.
survive this war, the defeat in Flanders will turn out to have been one
of the great turning-points in English history. In that spectacular
disaster the working class, the middle class and even a section of the
business community could see the utter rottenness of private capitalism.
Before that the case against capitalism had never been PROVED. Russia,
the only definitely Socialist country, was backward and far away. All
criticism broke itself against the rat-trap faces of bankers and the
brassy laughter of stockbrokers. Socialism? Ha! ha! ha! Where's the money
to come from? Ha! ha! ha! The lords of property were firm in their seats,
and they knew it. But after the French collapse there came something that
could not be laughed away, something that neither chequebooks nor
policemen were any use against-the bombing. Zweee--BOOM! What's that? Oh,
only a bomb on the Stock Exchange. Zweee--BOOM! Another acre of
somebody's valuable slum-property gone west. Hitler will at any rate go
down in history as the man who made the City of London laugh on the wrong
side of its face. For the first time in their lives the comfortable were
uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit that there was
something wrong. It was a great step forward. From that time onwards the
ghastly job of trying to convince artificially stupefied people that a
planned economy might be better than a free-for-all in which the worst
man wins-that job will never be quite so ghastly again.
ii.
The difference between Socialism and capitalism is not primarily a
difference of technique. One cannot simply change from one system to the
other as one might install a new piece of machinery in a factory, and
then carry on as before, with the same people in positions of control.
Obviously there is also needed a complete shift of power. New blood, new
men, new ideas--in the true sense of the word, a revolution.
I have spoken earlier of the soundness and homogeneity of England, the
patriotism that runs like a connecting thread through almost all classes.
After Dunkirk anyone who had eyes in his head could see this. But it is
absurd to pretend that the promise of that moment has been fulfilled.
Almost certainly the mass of the people are now ready for the vast
changes that are necessary; but those changes have not even begun to
happen.
England is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely we
are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of
command by right of birth. Few if any of these people are consciously
treacherous, some of them are not even fools, but as a class they are
quite incapable of leading us to victory. They could not do it, even if
their material interests did not constantly trip them up. As I pointed
out earlier, they have been artificially stupefied. Quite apart from
anything else, the rule of money sees to it that we shall be governed
largely by the old--that is, by people utterly unable to grasp what age
they are living in or what enemy they are fighting. Nothing was more
desolating at the beginning of this war than the way in which the whole
of the older generation conspired to pretend that it was the war of
1914-18 over again. All the old duds were back on the job, twenty years
older, with the skull plainer in their faces. Ian Hay was cheering up the
troops, Belloc was writing articles on strategy, Maurois doing
broadcasts, Bairnsfather drawing cartoons. It was like a tea-party of
ghosts. And that state of affairs has barely altered. The shock of
disaster brought a few able men like Bevin to the front, but in general
we are still commanded by people who managed to live through the years
1931-9 without even discovering that Hitler was dangerous. A generation
of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.
As soon as one considers any problem of this war--and it does not matter
whether it is the widest aspect of strategy or the tiniest detail of home
organisation--one sees that the necessary moves cannot be made while the
social structure of England remains what it is. Inevitably, because of
their position and upbringing, the ruling class are fighting for their
own privileges, which cannot possibly be reconciled with the public
interest. It is a mistake to imagine that war aims, strategy, propaganda
and industrial organisation exist in watertight compartments. All are
interconnected. Every strategic plan, every tactical method, even every
weapon will bear the stamp of the social system that produced it. The
British ruling class are fighting against Hitler, whom they have always
regarded and whom some of them still regard as their protector against
Bolshevism. That does not mean that they will deliberately sell out; but
it does mean that at every decisive moment they are likely to falter,
pull their punches, do the wrong thing.
Until the Churchill Government called some sort of halt to the process,
they have done the wrong thing wi
th an unerring instinct ever since 1931.
They helped Franco to overthrow the Spanish Government, although anyone
not an imbecile could have told them that a Fascist Spain would be
hostile to England. They fed Italy with war materials all through the
winter of 1939-40, although it was obvious to the whole world that the
Italians were going to attack us in the spring. For the sake of a few
hundred thousand dividend drawers they are turning India from an ally into
an enemy. Moreover, so long as the moneyed classes remain in control, we
cannot develop any but a DEFENSIVE strategy. Every victory means a change
in the STATUS QUO. How can we drive the Italians out of Abyssinia without
rousing echoes among the coloured peoples of our own Empire? How can we
even smash Hitler without the risk of bringing the German Socialists and
Communists into power? The left-wingers who wail that "this is a
capitalist war" and that "British Imperialism" is fighting for loot have
got their heads screwed on backwards. The last thing the British moneyed
class wish for is to acquire fresh territory. It would simply be an
embarrassment. Their war aim (both unattainable and unmentionable) is
simply to hang on to what they have got.
Internally, England is still the rich man's Paradise. All talk of
"equality of sacrifice" is nonsense. At the same time as factory workers
are asked to put up with longer hours, advertisements for "Butler. One in
family, eight in staff" are appearing in the press. The bombed-out
populations of the East End go hungry and homeless while wealthier
victims simply step into their cars and flee to comfortable country
houses. The Home Guard swells to a million men in a few weeks, and is
deliberately organised from above in such a way that only people with
private incomes can hold positions of command. Even the rationing system
is so arranged that it hits the poor all the time, while people with over
�2,000 a year are practically unaffected by it. Everywhere privilege is
squandering good will. In such circumstances even propaganda becomes
almost impossible. As attempts to stir up patriotic feeling, the red
posters issued by the Chamberlain Government at the beginning of the war
broke all depth-records. Yet they could not have been much other than
they were, for how could Chamberlain and his followers take the risk of
rousing strong popular feeling AGAINST FASCISM? Anyone who was genuinely
hostile to Fascism must also be opposed to Chamberlain himself and to all
the others who had helped Hitler into power. So also with external
propaganda. In all Lord Halifax's speeches there is not one concrete
proposal for which a single inhabitant of Europe would risk the top joint
of his little finger. For what war-aim can Halifax, or anyone like him,
conceivably have, except to put the clock back to 1933?
It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can
be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it
means a fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without
bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place. Nor does it mean the
dictatorship of a single class. The people in England who grasp what
changes are needed and are capable of carrying them through are not
confined to any one class, though it is true that very few people with
over �2,000 a year are among them. What is wanted is a conscious open
revolt by ordinary people against inefficiency, class privilege and the
rule of the old. It is not primarily a question of change of government.
British governments do, broadly speaking, represent the will of the
people, and if we alter our structure from below we shall get the
government we need. Ambassadors, generals, officials and colonial
administrators who are senile or pro-Fascist are more dangerous than
Cabinet ministers whose follies have to be committed in public. Right
through our national life we have got to fight against privilege, against