THE COMING SHOWDOWN AGAINST FASCISM
Barnes, Harry Elmer
What's This World Coming To? Third Of A Series The Coming Showdown Against Fascism By HARRY ELMER BARNES IN THIS THIRD ARTICLE we shall look at some of the more important political changes which...
...Democracy can probably be harmonized with our contemporary technological age, but it will have to be reformed if it is to do so...
...They have developed an almost completely totalitarian mentality...
...In the long run, it is likely that some form of world federation may be founded on the new and larger regions which will emerge some time after the war...
...The more competent the management is during this period in achieving economic efficiency and security, the more rapid will be the progress towards the time when a liberal, cooperative democracy will be practicable and successful...
...But it is a political feat which must be accomplished if mankind is to survive in our complex industrial world-order...
...In the somewhat distant future, when we have solved all our economic problems in a cooperative commonwealth and have eliminated war by means of a world federation, we may realize more completely the traits and ideals of a democratic and libertarian order, but there will be a considerable interval in the meantime which will require expert managerial direction, tempered and restrained by popular control...
...It is manifestly silly to expect that the overthrow of Hitler and Mussolini will end fascism in the world...
...And the party system of government must be radically overhauled, if we are to hope for efficient and liberal government...
...Favorable social and economic conditions, rather than evil men, are what create fascism...
...Since fascism is now making its most ominous inroads and advances in the name of democracy, freedom, and tolerance and is being promoted mainly by organizations that are lavish in the use of these terms in their formal titles, its encroachments are all the more difficult to recognize and combat...
...Indeed, it may be more vitally democratic than what has passed for democracy, mainly in name only, in the past...
...Such a managerial political system, which combines competence with social responsibility, can be truly democratic...
...The labels can be modified to fit the propaganda and ideology of the victors, but the ugly reality can be there, nonetheless...
...A world-state in the form of a league of jealous and sovereign nations is quite impossible, but a world-state founded upon a league of federated regions would, one day, have some reasonable chance of success and survival...
...As most clearheaded observers predicted, the entry of the United States into the second World War has greatly hastened the trend toward fascism and has increased its threat to the United States...
...It tried to build a world-order on foundations which were in almost every way opposed to world-order...
...indeed the fantastic, as of 1919...
...It has substituted an oligarchy of irresponsible party machines for the older feudal oligarchy which it supplanted...
...Yet, as Thomas Jefferson insisted, some system will have to be worked out which will provide for the political leadership of the able minority...
...The greatest political danger to democratic government which confronts us is the threat of planetary fascism after the war...
...Like capitalism, nationalism seems likely to be greatly modified in the course of the fourth world-revolution...
...But we must at the same time insure that his minority shall administer political life for the benefit of all...
...Third Of A Series The Coming Showdown Against Fascism By HARRY ELMER BARNES IN THIS THIRD ARTICLE we shall look at some of the more important political changes which may lie ahead of us...
...The more powerful would-be fascists are subsidizing books that divert public attention to "half-pint" and "two-by-four" fascists or falsely accuse realistic commentators...
...Indeed, the more successfully and completely the labels are faked, the easier it will be to conceal and promote fascist policies and practices...
...No desirable political order suitable for the future can ignore the right of every person, even those defective in natural ability, to make the most of his talents or to enjoy as decent a life as these enable him to live...
...Fascism simply brings forward those men who have special talents for spell-binding dictatorship in a time of crisis...
...To be controlled by honest, efficient, and public-spirited managers of the type of Robert Moses would surely not be less democratic and it would obviously be more efficient...
...Such things as seniority control of committees must be abandoned...
...and a revamping of party government with the aim of eliminating corruption and oligarchy...
...In the political realm, the national state was the great institutional product of the third world-revolution (1500-1800), just as capitalism was in the economic field...
...The majority of constructive students of current world trends agree that regionalism will probably succeed nationalism as the next great step in political evolution...
...As I pointed out in an earlier article, the prospect of practicability and durability in any world-government will be the greater just in proportion as the original efforts at world federation are not over-ambitious and too far-reaching...
...It can hardly be indefinitely harmonized in its old form with a culture based upon contemporary technology and our present agencies for transportation and communication...
...The international anarchy, which reached its apex in the settlement that followed the first World War, must not be revived, no matter what group of powers emerge as victors in the present world conflict...
...The more vocal liberals, who led in the war cry after 1937 and are most savage in their determination to put down fascism abroad, have warmly praised those fascist trends in our own eoiintry that have been adopted to prosecute the war with vigor...
...La Follette has long urged, streamline and modernize Congress and our state legislatures...
...John Roy Carlson's book, Under Cover, which directs attention mainly to the "squirt" fascists and alleged fascists, has been notably "plugged" by the most fascist-minded individuals, publications, and organizations in the country...
...Since the chaotic conditions of the postwar world will be more favorable to the rise of fascism than were conditions in Italy in 1922 or in Germany in 1932, we need not doubt that fascism will thrive in the period after the war...
...This is a political formula that is easy enough to state in the abstract, but it will be more difficult to work it out in practice...
...As Robert Michels pointed out many years ago in his profound book on Political Parties, our present party system is not only corrupt but also oligarchical and anti-demoeratic...
...If it is, we shall be headed directly towards another war...
...Vital Government Reforms If we wish representative government in the United States to assert the vitality and exhibit the efficiency needed in our time, we must, as Sen...
...Those who warned us a few years back about the forerunners of fascism are now fanatically espousing our proto-fascist policies...
...In Europe, a rational regional organization would be provided by a Scandinavian federation, a Latin federation, a Teutonic federation, and a Slavic federation dominated by Soviet Russia...
...increased efficiency on the part of our public servants, brought about by a drastic extension of the civil service system and other reforms...
...Regional And World Federations Just which countries will dominate this new regionalism or the extent of their dominion cannot be foretold until the second World War has come to an end and the terms of peace have been decided upon...
...But this lies in the distant future, much as does the socialist ideal of a cooperative commonwealth...
...Summing up, the more probable political changes introduced by the fourth world-revolution are likely to be regional federations in the place of national states...
...Nevertheless, a world federation, based upon a number of large natural regions, may seem desirable and prove feasible as we grow in political maturity and wisdom...
...The League of Nations failed primarily because it assumed the impossible...
...Usually, these are chiefly usurers, grafters, and scandal-mongers, with a few overt racketeers...
...These new regions presumably will be made up of the most powerful national state in a given area, together with the satellite nationalities which now border upon it...
...The present system stifles democracy and party independence...
...The greatest immediate danger lies in the spread of fascism after the war...
...As Huey Long, once sagely predicted, fascism may well come to our country in the guise of anti-fascism...
...Efficiency Can Be Democratic It seems probable that the forms of democracy will also be modified by future political trends, if not so drastically as the system of national states...
...The first step toward literal regionalism might well start with such loose discussion and good-neighbor associations as the Pan-American Union, extolled by William Hard in the December, 1943, Reader's Digest...
...While, even then, we would not always be able to elect the best men we would always have to elect able and trained men...
...Chief Threat To Democracy The efficiency needed in government may well be achieved without sacrificing any essential democracy, if we are willing to extend drastically the civil service system, and to insist on the same rigorous professional training for government officials as we now demand for doctors, lawyers, and engineers...
...One very important reform needed to free us from party oligarchy is to overhaul our state electoral laws and procedure, so as to allow new parties to arise and get on state tickets...
...Economic considerations, particularly economic self-sufficiency or some reasonable approximation to this, are likely to exert a powerful influence in determining the make-up and extent of the future regional organization of the world...
...We have been frequently, and probably rightly, told that less than 100 persons control us at any time...
...Congress must be able to command expert advice and cogent information, and there must also be better and closer cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of government...
...Jefferson called this "the natural aristocracy among men...
...The specific instrument or machinery of regionalism will probably be some form of federal organization which will provide for a central political administration of regional affairs and for economic unity, while assuring reasonable local self-government and cultural autonomy to the various peoples who are merged in each federal union...
...It has already been amply demonstrated that the only safe way to operate as a fascist in this country is to label one's self an "anti-fascist...
...It has never been fully achieved thus far in any political system in the whole historic range of human experience...
Vol. 8 • June 1944 • No. 24
