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From Labor Action, Vol. 8 No. 34, 21 August 1944, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Two methods for saving historically doomed capitalism are today vying with each other in the world arena – fascism and the New Deal. Fascism bases its program on the demolition of labor organizations, on the destruction of social reforms, and on the complete annihilation of democratic rights, in order to forestall a resurrection of the proletariat’s class struggle. The fascist state officially legalizes the degradation of workers and the pauperization of the middle classes, in the name of saving the “nation” and the “race” – presumptuous names under which decaying capitalism figures.
The policy of the New Deal, which tries to save imperialist democracy by way of sops to the labor and farmer aristocracy, is in its broad compass accessible only to the very wealthy nations, and so in that sense it is American policy par excellence. The American government has attempted to shift a part of the costs of that policy to the shoulders of the monopolists, exhorting them to raise wages and shorten the labor day and thus increase the purchasing power of the population and extend production. Leon Blum attempted to translate this sermon into elementary school French. In vain! The French capitalist, like the American, does not produce for the sake of production, but for profit. He is always ready to limit production, even to destroy manufactured products, if thereby his own share of the national income will be increased.
The New Deal program is all the more inconsistent in that, While preaching sermons to the magnates of capital about the advantages of abundance over scarcity, the government dispenses premiums for cutting down on production. Is greater confusion possible? The government confutes its critics with the challenge: can you do better? What all this means is that on the basis of capitalism the situation is hopeless.
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