NATIONAL SOCIALISM
 At first sight it would seem as if the workers take an antagonistic position to the urge toward the unveiled dictatorship of big capital. Yet such is not the case. Inversely, it is very probable that large portions of the workers in Western Europe and America are powerfully supporting this development. The thought of the masses is still, on the whole, quite bourgeois, simply because the social relations of human beings among each other are present in bourgeois-capitalist form. It will not [be] until this social order breaks up in the inevitable future conflicts, when the bourgeois-capitalistic order reveals itself as absolutely incapable of regulating the social relations of human beings, that the thought of the masses too will change. So long, however, as the owning class, under the leadership of big capital, still keeps up the competitive struggle, so long is that class in its element and drags the masses along with it. The deeper, economic meaning of National Socialism is after all merely this, that it sharpens the order, the organization with which monopoly capital continues the competitive struggle on a higher level. The unity of the nation, the "peoples partnership", thus becomes the "lofty goal" to which all special group and class interests have to be subordinated. It becomes the instrument with which monopoly capital conducts its economic and finally also its military campaigns. From each individual is demanded that he work at the building up of the economic life in order to "provide bread and work for everyone". The owners likewise must subordinate their interests to the "people as a whole", and not have their special interests in mind (behind this phrase is concealed the struggle of big capital against the smaller capitals). That the workers too must let their special and group interests slide for the benefit of the "people as a whole" is a matter of course, for : "When it goes well with the whole economy, it can not go badly with the worker". And then, finally, in order to assure the building up of such a "people's partnership", any propaganda directed against that end must be suppressed (abolition of democracy). This phraseology is obviously in line with the thinking of broad masses. The workers under the influence of the trade unions had ever the "people's partnership" as their ideological basis. The Social Democracy on the other hand, had indeed a language borrowed from Marxism -- the science of the class struggle -- but their whole theory and practice has finally the "people's partnership" as its central point. All the socialization plans which up to that time had become known -- including the "de Man plan" of the Belgian labor party -- have the "people's partnership" for their basis. It is certainly not too much to say that such conceptions regarding the people's partnership dominate the thinking of great masses in Western Europe and America. It is only in so far as the bourgeoisie in introducing the new social order abolishes democracy that it meets with resistance, but practice shows that this resistance will not be very great. The younger generation has not yet seen much good of democracy, and will no doubt scarcely raise a hand in its defense. It demands the solution of the day-to day problems : if that is possible with democracy, or if things go better without it, in either case it is content. |