claim that we are fighting this war for the protection of peaceful
peoples against Fascist aggression.
Is it impossibly hopeful to think that such a policy as this could get a
following in England? A year ago, even six months ago, it would have
been, but not now. Moreover-and this is the peculiar opportunity of this
moment--it could be given the necessary publicity. There is now a
considerable weekly press, with a circulation of millions, which would be
ready to popularise--if not EXACTLY the programme I have sketched above,
at any rate SOME policy along those lines. There are even three or four
daily papers which would be prepared to give it a sympathetic hearing.
That is the distance we have travelled in the last six months.
But is such a policy realisable? That depends entirely on ourselves.
Some of the points I have suggested are of the kind that could be carried
out immediately, others would take years or decades and even then would
not be perfectly achieved. No political programme is ever carried out in
its entirety. But what matters is that that or something like it should
be our declared policy. It is always the DIRECTION that counts. It is of
course quite hopeless to expect the present Government to pledge itself
to any policy that implies turning this war into a revolutionary war. It
is at best a government of compromise, with Churchill riding two horses
like a circus acrobat. Before such measures as limitation of incomes
become even thinkable, there will have to be a complete shift of power
away from the old ruling class. If during this winter the war settles
into another stagnant period, we ought in my opinion to agitate for a
General Election, a thing which the Tory Party machine will make frantic
efforts to prevent. But even without an election we can get the
government we want, provided that we want it urgently enough. A real
shove from below will accomplish it. As to who will be in that government
when it comes, I make no guess. I only know that the right men will be
there when the people really want them, for it is movements that make
leaders and not leaders movements.
Within a year, perhaps even within six months, if we are still
unconquered, we shall see the rise of something that has never existed
before, a specifically ENGLISH Socialist movement. Hitherto there has
been only the Labour Party, which was the creation of the working class
but did not aim at any fundamental change, and Marxism, which was a
German theory interpreted by Russians and unsuccessfully transplanted to
England. There was nothing that really touched the heart of the English
people. Throughout its entire history the English Socialist movement has
never produced a song with a catchy tune--nothing like LA MARSEILLAISE or
LA CUCURACHA, for instance. When a Socialist movement native to England
appears, the Marxists, like all others with a vested interest in the
past, will be its bitter enemies. Inevitably they will denounce it as
"Fascism". Already it is customary among the more soft-boiled
intellectuals of the Left to declare that if we fight against the Nazis
we shall "go Nazi" ourselves. They might almost equally well say that if
we fight against Negroes we shall turn black. To "go Nazi" we should have
to have the history of Germany behind us. Nations do not escape from
their past merely by making a revolution. An English Socialist government
will transform the nation from top to bottom, but it will still bear all
over it the unmistakable marks of our own civilisation, the peculiar
civilisation which I discussed earlier in this book.
It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House
of Lords, but quite probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave
anachronisms and loose ends everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous
horsehair wig and the lion and the unicorn on the soldier's cap-buttons.
It will not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself
round the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade
unions, but it will draw into it most of the middle class and many of the
younger sons of the bourgeoisie. Most of its directing brains will come
from the new indeterminate class of skilled workers, technical experts,
airmen, scientists, architects and journalists, the people who feel at
home in the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch
with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above
the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial
beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open
revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the
still exist, revolutionary sects will still be publishing their
newspapers and making as little impression as ever. It will disestablish
the Church, but will not persecute religion. It will retain a vague
reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer
to England as "a Christian country". The Catholic Church will war against
it, but the Nonconformist sects and the bulk of the Anglican Church will
be able to come to terms with it. It will show a power of assimilating
the past which will shock foreign observers and sometimes make them doubt
whether any revolution has happened.
But all the same it will have done the essential thing. It will have
nationalised industry, scaled down incomes, set up a classless
educational system. Its real nature will be apparent from the hatred
which the surviving rich men of the world will feel for it. It will aim
not at disintegrating the Empire but at turning it into a federation of
Socialist states, freed not so much from the British flag as from the
money-lender, the dividend-drawer and the woodenheaded British official.
Its war strategy will be totally different from that of any
property-ruled state, because it will not be afraid of the revolutionary
after-effects when any existing r�gime is brought down. It will not have
the smallest scruple about attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up
native rebellion in enemy colonies. It will fight in such a way that even
if it is beaten its memory will be dangerous to the victor, as the memory
of the French Revolution was dangerous to Metternich's Europe. The
dictators will fear it as they could not fear the existing British
r�gime, even if its military strength were ten times what it is.
But at this moment, when the drowsy life of England has barely altered,
and the offensive contrast of wealth and poverty still exists everywhere,
even amid the bombs, why do I dare to say that all these things "will"
happen?
Because the time has come when one can predict the future in terms of an
"either--or". Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war (I do not
say that our policy will be EXACTLY what I have indicated above--merely
that it will be along those general lines) or we lose it, and much more
besides. Quite soon it will be possible to say definitely that our feet
are set upon one path
or the other. But at any rate it is certain that
with our present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces,
physical, moral or intellectual, cannot be mobilised.
iii.
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the
opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is
always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is the
bridge between the future and the past. No real revolutionary has ever
been an internationalist.
During the past twenty years the negative, FAIN�ANT outlook which has
been fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of the
intellectuals at patriotism and physical courage, the persistent
effort to chip away English morale and spread a hedonistic,
what-do-I-get-out-of-it attitude to life, has done nothing but harm. It
would have been harmful even if we had been living in the squashy League
of Nations universe that these people imagined. In an age of Fuehrers and
bombing planes it was a disaster. However little we may like it,
toughness is the price of survival. A nation trained to think
hedonistically cannot survive amid peoples who work like slaves and breed
like rabbits, and whose chief national industry is war. English
Socialists of nearly all colours have wanted to make a stand against
Fascism, but at the same time they have aimed at making their own
countrymen unwarlike. They have failed, because in England traditional
loyalties are stronger than new ones. But in spite of all the
"anti-Fascist" heroics of the left-wing press, what chance should we have
stood when the real struggle with Fascism came, if the average Englishman
had been the kind of creature that the NEW STATESMAN, the DAILY WORKER or
even the NEWS CHRONICLE wished to make him?
Up to 1935 virtually all English left-wingers were vaguely pacifist.
After 1935 the more vocal of them flung themselves eagerly into the
Popular Front movement, which was simply an evasion of the whole problem
way--"against" Fascism without being "for" any discoverable policy-and
underneath it lay the flabby idea that when the time came the Russians
would do our fighting for us. It is astonishing how this illusion fails
to die. Every week sees its spate of letters to the press, pointing out
that if we had a government with no Tories in it the Russians could
hardly avoid coming round to our side. Or we are to publish high-sounding
war-aims (VIDE books like UNSER KAMPF, A HUNDRED MILLION ALLIES--IF WE
CHOOSE, etc), whereupon the European populations will infallibly rise on
our behalf. It is the same idea all the time-look abroad for your
inspiration, get someone else to do your fighting for you. Underneath it
lies the frightful inferiority complex of the English intellectual, the
belief that the English are no longer a martial race, no longer capable
of enduring.
In truth there is no reason to think that anyone will do our fighting for
us yet awhile, except the Chinese, who have been doing it for three years
already. [Note: Written before the outbreak of the war in Greece.
(Author's footnote.)] The Russians may be driven to fight on our side by
the fact of a direct attack, but they have made it clear enough that they
will not stand up to the German army if there is any way of avoiding it.
In any case they are not likely to be attracted by the spectacle of a
left-wing government in England. The present Russian r�gime must almost
certainly be hostile to any revolution in the West. The subject peoples
of Europe will rebel when Hitler begins to totter, but not earlier. Our
potential allies are not the Europeans but on the one hand the Americans,
who will need a year to mobilise their resources even if Big Business can
be brought to heel, and on the other hand the coloured peoples, who
cannot be even sentimentally on our side till our own revolution has
started. For a long time, a year, two years, possibly three years,
England has got to be the shock-absorber of the world. We have got to
face bombing, hunger, overwork, influenza, boredom and treacherous peace
offers. Manifestly it is a time to stiffen morale, not to weaken it.
Instead of taking the mechanically anti-British attitude which is usual
on the Left, it is better to consider what the world would really be like
if the English-speaking culture perished. For it is childish to suppose
that the other English-speaking countries, even the USA, will be
unaffected if Britain is conquered.
Lord Halifax, and all his tribe, believe that when the war is over things
will be exactly as they were before. Back to the crazy pavement of
Versailles, back to "democracy", i.e. capitalism, back to dole queues and
the Rolls-Royce cars, back to the grey top hats and the sponge-bag
trousers, IN SAECULA SAECULORUM. It is of course obvious that nothing of
the kind is going to happen. A feeble imitation of it might just possibly
happen in the case of a negotiated peace, but only for a short while.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism is dead. [Note, below] The choice lies between
the kind of collective society that Hitler will set up and the kind that
can arise if he is defeated.
[Note: It is interesting to notice that Mr Kennedy, USA Ambassador in
London, remarked on his return to New York in October 1940 that as a
result of the war "democracy is finished". By "democracy", of course, he
meant private capitalism. (Author's footnote.)]
If Hitler wins this war he will consolidate his rule over Europe, Africa
and the Middle East, and if his armies have not been too greatly
exhausted beforehand, he will wrench vast territories from Soviet Russia.
He will set up a graded caste-society in which the German HERRENVOLK
("master race" or "aristocratic race") will rule over Slavs and other
lesser peoples whose job it will be to produce low-priced agricultural
products. He will reduce the coloured peoples once and for all to
outright slavery. The real quarrel of the Fascist powers with British
imperialism is that they know that it is disintegrating. Another twenty
years along the present line of development, and India will be a peasant
republic linked with England only by voluntary alliance. The "semi-apes"
of whom Hitler speaks with such loathing will be flying aeroplanes and
manufacturing machine-guns. The Fascist dream of a slave empire will be
at an end. On the other hand, if we are defeated we simply hand over our
own victims to new masters who come fresh to the job and have not
developed any scruples.
But more is involved than the fate of the coloured peoples. Two
incompatible visions of life are fighting one another. "Between democracy
and totalitarianism," says Mussolini, "there can be no compromise." The
two creeds cannot even, for any length of time, live side by side. So
long as democracy exists, even in its very imperfect English form,
totalitarianism is in deadly danger. The whole English-speaking world is
haunted by the idea of human equality, and though it would be simply a
lie to say that either we or the Americans have ever acted up to our
professions, still, the IDEA is there, and it is capable of one day
becoming a reality. From the English-speaking culture, if it does not
perish, a society of free and equal human beings will ultimately arise.
But it is precisely the idea of human equality--the "Jewish" or
"Judaeo-Christian" idea of equality--that Hitler came into the world to
destroy. He has, heaven knows, said so often enough. The thought of a
world in which black men would be as good as white men and Jews treated
as human beings brings him the same horror and despair as the thought of
endless slavery brings to us.
It is important to keep in mind how irreconcilable these two viewpoints
are. Some time within the next year a pro-Hitler reaction within the
left-wing intelligentsia is likely enough. There are premonitory signs of
it already. Hitler's positive achievement appeals to the emptiness of
these people, and, in the case of those with pacifist leanings, to their
masochism. One knows in advance more or less what they will say. They
will start by refusing to admit that British capitalism is evolving into
something different, or that the defeat of Hitler can mean any more than
a victory for the British and American millionaires. And from that they
will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is "just the same as" or
"just as bad as" totalitarianism. There is NOT MUCH freedom of speech in
England; therefore there is NO MORE than exists in Germany. To be on the
dole is a horrible experience; therefore it is NO WORSE to be in the
torture-chambers of the Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white,
half a loaf is the same as no bread.
But in reality, whatever may be true about democracy and totalitarianism,
it is not true that they are the same. It would not be true, even if
British democracy were incapable of evolving beyond its present stage.
The whole conception of the militarised continental state, with its
secret police, its censored literature and its conscript labour, is
utterly different from that of the loose maritime democracy, with its
slums and unemployment, its strikes and party politics. It is the
difference between land power and sea power, between cruelty and
inefficiency, between lying and self-deception, between the SS man and
the rent-collector. And in choosing between them one chooses not so much
on the strength of what they now are as of what they are capable of
becoming. But in a sense it is irrelevant whether democracy, at its
higher or at its lowest, is "better" than totalitarianism. To decide that
one would have to have access to absolute standards. The only question
that matters is where one's real sympathies will lie when the pinch
comes. The intellectuals who are so fond of balancing democracy against
totalitarianism and "proving" that one is as bad as the other are simply
frivolous people who have never been shoved up against realities. They
show the same shallow misunderstanding of Fascism now, when they are
beginning to flirt with it, as a year or two ago, when they were
squealing against it. The question is not, "Can you make out a
debating-society 'case' in favour of Hitler?" The question is, "Do you
genuinely accept that case? Are you willing to submit to Hitler's rule?
Do you want to see England conquered, or don't you?" It would be better
to be sure on that point before frivolously siding with the enemy. For
there is no such thing as neutrality in war; in practice one must help
one side or the other.
When the pinch comes, no one bred in the western tradition can accept the
Fascist vision of life. It is important to realise that now, and to grasp
what it entails. With all its sloth, hypocrisy and injustice, the
English speaking civilisation is the only large obstacle in Hitler's path.
It is a living contradiction of all the "infallible" dogmas of Fascism.