At the recent Churchill-Stalin guzzle in Moscow the press has described the atmosphere as "full of fun, a very jocular party with Stalin giving a number of toasts, speaking with humour and thoroughly enjoying his own jokes. There were at least 25 toasts. Twenty-six courses were served and pyramids of vegetables and fruits crowded the tables."

Discreetly enough, no mention is here made of the amount of liquor paraded, but if we know our Churchill, there must have been plenty! The speeches, doubtless, were of the same high level of insincerity as was the case in the Molotov-Ribbentrop banquets of recent date! And for every drop of champagne or wine wasted at this unseemly spectacle, hundreds of gal Ions of Russian and German blood were at that very moment being spilled on the various battlefronts. And because of the criminal failure of these alleged statesmen to assuage the reasonable fears of the German people, thousands of gallons more - not excluding British - will be needlessly shed before the workers cry halt to this bestial madness of war!

(August-September 1942)

(...) In so far as this war is a war of ideology - and it is that to a very considerable extent - it evidently represents a conflict between two social principles, the totalitarian state and economy (represented completely by Russia, and, in a process of evolution, by Germany), whereas the "Allies" - the British Empire, formerly France and America - stand for a regime which approximates in phraseology, and to a certain extent, still, in fact, the classical Liberal capitalism of the 19^th century. Democratic individualism versus totalitarian etatisme ('state-ism)', such, in theory, and with certain modifications in practice, is the ideological content of the present war. (In so far as the war is a war not of ideas but of interests, it is simply an imperial quarrel of the old type. Such wars are but too painfully familiar and, as such, do not call for any special comment. Despite patriotic mythologies, the ideological difference between one empire and another is not great; certainly by no means an adequate cause for a war of planetary dimensions. In any case, evidence is now accumulating to mountainous heights to demonstrate that the age of coercive imperialism belongs irrevocably to a bygone phase in human annals, and that, consequently, such conflicts are purely atavistic in character). (N.B. Russia is, of course an "ally" from necessity, not choice).

 Observing the present war then solely from the standpoint of its conflicting ideologies we are, perforce, driven to this rather melancholy conclusion: whoever wins this war in the technical military sense, in so far as this war is a war of ideas and systems, the democratic powers are already defeated. In the present phase of historic development democratic capitalism cannot conceivably stand, at any rate permanently, against state capitalism of the totalitarian type, and it cannot do so for the simple but sufficient reason that modern war itself is pre-eminently a totalitarian regime, and that, consequently, the democratic powers, when faced with the necessity to wage on their own behalf a war that is necessarily conducted in the manner that is natural to their totalitarian opponents, must become, in fact, totalitarian themselves in order to carry it on at all effectively. Hence, in the ideological sense, the victory of the anti-democratic bloc - whatever the actual fortunes of war - is assured by, and at the very moment of, the declaration of war. The very fact of war itself constitutes the victory of totalitarianism, for modern war, irrespective of its military results, is in itself pre-eminently the totalitarian thing; for the totalitarian state is, after all, the perfect war machine.

 And all this, be it remembered, is at the very beginning of what promises to be a war of great length and unequalled severity, involving everyone and every aspect of life, down to the most minute details. It is not even questionable that long before the end of the struggle state. control will embrace every aspect of life, and that freedom and democracy will find their last refuge in the post-prandial perorations of hortatory politicians. Indeed, if the primary aim of the Nazis is to evangelise the world with the gospel of the Totalitarian State, they have gone about their task in a business-like way; whether they win or lose the war in an immediate technical sense, by the very fact of its existence they have dealt the deathblow to (what they style) "the degenerate democracies".

 From that point of view with which we are here concerned, the world-historical role of the present war, it is scarcely open to question that it inaugurates an era of European, indeed, probably of world totalitarianism, be it short or long in its duration.

 It is manifestly demonstrable that all the vital forces at work in the world today are themselves of a kind that is either directly totalitarian in essence, or is, at least, highly amenable to this kind of society. Not only is this the case with regard to the Fascist States such as Germany, Italy and Spain, which now and for some years past have been making the ideological pace in and for the western world; but even more significant is it that the opponents of Fascism also advocate societies of an all-inclusive nature. Thus, the Third Reich has known but two real internal enemies: the Roman Catholic Church - a totalitarian theocracy by definition - and Stalinism, that secular theocracy which subjugates the individual, in any and every manifestation of his activity, to a yoke more despotic than any known to mankind since the regimes of the Old Man of the Mountains - the Sheikh of the Assassins - and the Inca Sun-kings of mediaeval Peru. For that matter, all the forms of socialism existent today - with the solitary exception of anarchism now bloodily liquidated in its last stronghold, Spain - aim avowedly at an all-powerful bureaucratic state, unchecked by any restraints exercised by private property rights, at a social state, in fact, which, whatever the conscious aims and however loud the disclaimers of its advocates, could, in fact, be nothing other than the most despotic of absolutist authoritarian regimes. (In point of fact, it seems extremely probable that the chief cause of the present slump in socialism is to be found in the entire failure common to all its 20^th century manifestations to free its libertarian and humanistic ends from its bureaucratic and dictatorial means. A generation ago Georges Sorel issued an impressive warning, one unheeded by the socialists alike of his day and of ours, as to what would happen to socialism if it failed to make its revolution before the decadence of capitalist Europe set in - (c.f. "Reflections on Violence").

When viewed in the widest historical perspective the present war can, then, only be construed as the gateway to a totalitarian era. "Modern" civilisation, like ancient civilisation before it, ends in a phase of etatisme, in the removal of all brakes and checks upon the god-state, the omnipotent and omnipresent Leviathan, "over all persons and causes supreme" .

(August-September l942)

We gladly accede to the request of our Indian comrades to publish the following resolutions passed at their meeting on 11/8/42.

Abdul Ghafoor, Secretary.

In view of the shootings, floggings and even machine gunning from the air, we fail to see any reason for our comrades' support of the Allied aim: victory - and retaliation.

We are with them in their fight for liberation from British. Imperialism, but we repudiate the capitulation to the slogan of "victory for the Allied Nations (read Imperialists)". We stand for the victory over Hitlerism and Mikadoism - by the German and Japanese workers, and the simultaneous overthrow of all the Allied Imperialists by the workers in Britain and America. We also wish to see the reinstitution of the Workers' Soviets in Russia and the demolition of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In a word, we fight for the destruction of All Imperialism by the Proletarian World Revolution.'

(October-November l942)

A Luton firm complained to the local National Service officer of "widespread absenteeism" among its women workers. An investigation revealed the fact that children were working for over 60 hours a week!

This firm, the Davis Gas Stove Company, was fined £94, on 38 summonses in connection with the employment of boys and girls under sixteen. Some of the girls involved were only 14 years of age!

Why were these people not jailed, the same as some of the workers were for absenteeism? Is this the equality of sacrifice we hear so much about? 

(October-November 1942)

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