The Balance Sheet of the War
The Balance Sheet of the War The Record on the Political Front By Daniel Bell HISTORY has the disconcerting- habit of playing strange pranks with the plans of the men who sit in the control...
...Yet the outcome is rarely predictable...
...Our actual policy is to make the Bonomi Government and the Italian people pay for the crimes of Mussolini...
...It rested basically on a colonialism which permitted industrial nations to exploit backward areas as a source of raw materials and a market tor manufactured goods...
...His views follow the lead of the White House...
...Tap Oecline of World fcosomy REE enterprise today is more than a slogan of impatient businessmen chafing at restrictions from Washington...
...This may explain the United Press dispatch which waa buried in the hack pages of the HeraldTribune of September 27: "A half-do sew Allied t roe pa stood of a m«h i.f aeveral thousand Italian peasants armed with ¦rytbes, spade* and a few old shotgaas three days ago whoa Italians invaded the vast estate of Prince fan* Odeaeatchta pear Lake Eraeeiaao, demanding that the land he tamed over to unemployed far...
...World trade had been open, which meant that the big powers could invade the home markets of the weak...
...The first U.S.-British objective after a German defeat," reports the conservative U.S...
...Cotton textiles, once the great export commodity of Britain, slipped the scale and the cotton cities became ghost towns...
...Some twenty yeara ago, R. H. Tawney wrote in The Acquintue Society-: "The choice...
...Jimmy Byrnes is a conservative, the President a liberal...
...The actual aim of powerful American forces in this war is to restore nineteenth century capitalism...
...We create in Italy what we art fighting for—a political vacuum...
...Foreign Policy Failure ItALY could have been the great political laboratory for social progress following a war situation...
...This done, these neu.tral countries would admit More "illegal" refugees who would not be a burden on their economy...
...After this war, every country except the U.S.A...
...JStlU brought a similsr story...
...Free trade is the weapon of the strongest," Bismarck once said...
...we carry over harsh armistice terms (still officially unpublished more than one year later) on a government which had no responsibility and a people who had no enthusiasm for the Axil...
...They fight wars and revolutions in hopeful vein and end by fleeing from the grotesque mutations that have been produced...
...The complex forces in play here can combine into multiple permutations— and usually do...
...But it's a ghostly whistle in the wind-tunnels of history...
...The Germans were preparing to burn the city and deport the male population, when Warsaw rose...
...Both foreign and domestic policy ia subordinated to this aim...
...American business hopes to fill the role of London as the center of a system of world trade...
...This may be so...
...The Italian people want a revolution, but the Allied leaders fear that a revolution would not stop at fascism but purge capitalism too...
...The Balance Sheet of the War The Record on the Political Front By Daniel Bell HISTORY has the disconcerting- habit of playing strange pranks with the plans of the men who sit in the control rooms of power...
...Veu-s of July 21, "will be to prevent violent revolution, to prevent loss of political power by business-financial groups...
...It is the necessary ideological banner of American business in its drive to supplant Great Britain as the directing force of a world economy...
...But both bills would actually jettison productive facilities...
...But all the king's 'horses and all the king's men can never put humpty dumpty together again...
...The Russians are active at the moment in the drive for a "hard peace," because Moscow desires German machinery and manpower...
...But at no time was there any indication that Byrnes, the White House spokesman, was carrying out any other policy than that of the Administration...
...on that simple level trade was conducted...
...So now the issue is settled...
...Liberals lined up behind the Kilgore bill, conservatives behind the George bill...
...Besides Mr...
...Alter all, we fight a " war for survival," a fight for the tutut quo ante helium...
...Powerful interests are seeking to decide the issue in advance...
...The one lesson we've learned in the past ten years, whether it has been from New Deal deficit spending or Schachtian monetary juggling or Keynesian doctrines of "effective demand," is that a modern state can control the economy and through fiscal measures provide jobs...
...K rug's pronouncement, we have the George Demobilisation Bill and the .Surplus Property Disposal Bill, both recently signed by the President...
...In 194t the Jewish masses rose in a magnificent last-ditch battle in the ghetto...
...As theae areas began to industrialize, the pattern was shattered...
...But we know the economic techniques to create jobs...
...free enterprise" is the big stick-to open world markets and permit the entry of American goods...
...The most pitiful figures, therefore, among the men who throw the switches of war, are those with their eyes fixed on the past...
...Th* sole, final beneficiary of this policy will be Russia...
...But neither measure faced the real issue, both endorsed "free enterprise...
...The Home Front The day that war is declared officially at an end in Europe, some 350-odd WPB restrictions will be thrown into the wastebasket...
...In turn the British launch an invasion «** Greece...
...There is no "free enterprise" in a society dominated by big business behemoths...
...But in the decade before this war, the,autarchic pattern manifested itself and barter became the chief vehicle of trade: "I will buy from you only if you buy from me...
...The irresponsible*—and not Mr...
...will be a debtor country and so organize1 its trade on a barter basis...
...And while the Italian people clamor for a democracy, Winston Churchill maneuvers to keep the monarchy and Myron Taylor works to maintain the influence of the Vatican...
...But these one thoussnd refugees were rounded up from the streets of Rome and the camps of North Africa, where they were already tafe, and brought her* as exhibit A of our country's prodigality...
...If there are no such forces, stricter measures of control must be taken...
...Both bills went through Congress guided largely by Assistant President Jimmy Byrnes and Majority leaders Barkley and McCormick...
...All that is being shelved...
...The men who hoped that Napoleon's downfall would restore feudalism found themselves caught up in the rush of national unification and bourgeois expansion...
...This follows the statement by J. A. Krug, head of the WPB that "business is to have a free hand in reconversion...
...They wers free to walk the streets of* Rome, but here they are kept behind barbed-wire...
...The rise of competing industrial nations, particularly Germany, cut the ground from under Britain and shaped autarchy and cartels as a means of economic growth...
...is not between competition and monopoly, hut between a monopoly which is irresponsible and private and a monopoly which is responsible and public...
...That prewar system of world economy is dying...
...The Russians, ten miles away after a rapid two-months advance that carried them over hundreds of miles, suddenly halted...
...Britain follows a policy of paying lip-service to private capitalism while calmly accepting the notion of a statedirected capitalist system, in order to preserve the empire...
...while the one thing which we promised ourselves, the destruction of German militarism, we failed to achieve...
...If democratic forces arise which ran offer hop* for a peaceful Germany, a "hard peace" would be criminal and help only the reactionaries who seek to prepare another war...
...This is an easy pigeonholing for the liberal mind...
...We had a chance to utilize our new plant capacity for an expanding economy, but nobody carried the ball on that issue...
...Whether those controls csn guarantee a rising standard of living within a profit economy is another question...
...We are not going back to "free enterprise...
...The patent lesaon is there in the painful shifts in the British economy...
...Krug, of course,.is not actually a policy-maker in the Government...
...It can only be solved, finally, by the German people themselves...
...Warsaw—In Memoriae* AnD the last word must be on Warsaw...
...The original idea of the "free ports" was to take stateless refugees from neutral countries and place them here for the duration of the war...
...Yet after a two'months offensive the Russian forces swing oa their hinges and new offensives are launched in .th* Baltics and the Balkans, offensives obviously political in purpose...
...Before the first world war London was the capital market of a world trade which moved freely in terms of money, goods and investments...
...The pea*eats returned to th* village of Braeelaao after the factories in Rome and other cities where they had been working closed down...
...Warsaw had gone through two previotfs sieges, la 1039, rallied by the Socialist leader Niedelszowski, Warsaw held out after the "colonels" had fled...
...The Poles were left to battle alone for 63 days-with the Russians blocking delivery of arms...
...In this war, military affairs are often subordinated to politics—and Warsaw can only be understood i* political terms...
...Our attitude towards Germany will land us in the same morass...
...Warsaw is the key „to the road to Berlin...
...The Reconversion fight was a sham...
...But the issue is false...
...Neither works for the democratic revolution...
...It was no part of our original intention to break up the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, to create Czechoslovakia or resurrect Poland, to mpke a Russian revolution, to treble the size of Servia and double that of Rumania, to create Iraq and Estonia and Lithuania and a Jewish National Home, or to give the keys of the Brenner and the Adriatic to Italy...
...The Oswego project began with a flourish of publicity...
...A thousand persons were lodged there and the press was filled with wonderful human interest stories and pictures...
...Cited by E. h. Carr in Condition of I'cace...
...Taw Conscience of tke World The attitude towards refugees is the test of the democratic intentions of the Allied leaders...
...But the one concrete act we do know about is a fraud—the Oswego 'freeport' experiment...
...MacLeiah's Irresponsible*—have carried the day...
...In Turkey, in the near East, Americans still seek vainly to charter boats to bring out the walking dead from Europe...
...The Kilgore bill in turning the economy back to private direction, or lack of diection, carried a provision for unemployment insurance for the men thrown out of work in demobilization...
...If Italy is an example of the political floundering and shortsightedness of Allied conservatism, Warsaw is the tragic example of Russian ruthlessness...
...Each view is conditioned by the dictates of big-power politics...
...the George bill carried no such provision, indicating the deeply entrenched reactionary feelings of American business...
...The London IHurt ia against the partition of Germany because the British hope for a future bulwark against Russia...
...But it only affords a tragically practical example of what is meant by Mr...
...We never made up our minds whether we were fighting Italy or Fascism...
...They fight with a negative purpose, to patch up a shattered wor4d...
...The Morgenthau plan to reduce Germany to an agricultural economy is as dangerous as the advices of Sumner Welles, who warns of "anti-capitalist revolutions" in Germany...
...Great things are hinted at which cannot be revealed now...
...So we don't know what to do with an anti-Fascist government...
...Wars are fought on several levels, involving coalitions of diverse interests each following a particular bent...
...Our editorial pages debate endlessly "hard peace" versus "soft peace...
...Revolutions are fought with a fixed end in view...
...The n. Y. Timet, conservative organ of understatement, states calmly in it* October 11 issue: "One of the questions which Prime Minister Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden went to Moscow to settle was th* demarcation of the respective spheres of Rnssi* and Britain in the Balkans...
...The refugee issue has been largely hush-hush...
...It is amazing the number of persons who know the truth, but shrug their shoulders sadly and say: "Well, what can we do about it...
...Britain may nod officially in the direction of world trade, but most of her imports and exports will be on a bilateral or quid pro quo basis...
...The men who are running this war, carry the i"1**"'" of the past, and history has the disconcerting habit ef playing pranks on men whose backs are turned...
...Ira Hirschmann is reputed to have done an excellent job in Turkey...
...Churchill's remark that this is becoming "less of an idedlogicsl war...
...Our one agreed aim in World War I was to break up German militarism, writes h. n. Fieldhouse...
...And now, August 1944...
...Yet, in the outcome all these things—and much else—sprang from the war...
...Russia waits shrewdly for the American mistakes to manifest themselves in order to extend Soviet Influence in Europe...
...And Warsaw stands alone, deserted and smoking...
Vol. 27 • October 1944 • No. 43
