It will
retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to
England as “a Christian country”.
retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to
England as “a Christian country”.
Orwell
Being a
Socialist no longer means kicking theoretically against a system which in practice you are
fairly well satisfied with. This time our predicament is real. It is “the Philistines be upon
thee, Samson”. We have got to make our words take physical shape, or perish. We know
very well that with its present social structure England cannot survive, and we have got to
make other people see that fact and act upon it. We cannot win the war without
introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war. At such a time it
is possible, as it was not in the peaceful years, to be both revolutionary and realistic. A
Socialist movement which can swing the mass of the people behind it, drive the pro-
Fascists out of positions of control, wipe out the grosser injustices and let the working
class see that they have something to fight for, win over the middle classes instead of
antagonising them, produce a workable imperial policy instead of a mixture of humbug
and Utopianism, bring patriotism and intelligence into partnership — for the first time, a
movement of such a kind becomes possible.
II
The fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable
policy.
The inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe. Its injustice has
been proved in the East End of London. Patriotism, against which the Socialists fought so
long, has become a tremendous lever in their hands. People who at any other time would
cling like glue to their miserable scraps of privilege, will surrender them fast enough
when their country is in danger. War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up
all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war
brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because
they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle. At this moment it is not so
much a question of surrendering life as of surrendering leisure, comfort, economic
liberty, social prestige. There are very few people in England who really want to see their
country conquered by Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating Hitler means
wiping out class privilege, the great mass of middling people, the £6 a week to £2,000 a
year class, will probably be on our side. These people are quite indispensable, because
they include most of the technical experts. Obviously the snobbishness and political
ignorance of people like ainnen and naval officers will be a very great difficulty. But
without those airmen, destroyer commanders, etc etc we could not survive for a week.
The only approach to them is through their patriotism. An intelligent Socialist movement
will use their patriotism, instead of merely insulting it, as hitherto.
But do I mean that there will be no opposition? Of course not. It would be childish to
expect anything of the kind.
There will be a bitter political struggle, and there will be unconscious and half-conscious
sabotage everywhere. At some point or other it may be necessary to use violence. It is
easy to imagine a pro-Fascist rebellion breaking out in, for instance, India. We shall have
to fight against bribery, ignorance and snobbery. The bankers and the larger businessmen,
the landowners and dividend-drawers, the officials with their prehensile bottoms, will
obstruct for all they are worth. Even the middle classes will writhe when their
accustomed way of life is menaced. But just because the English sense of national unity
has never disintegrated, because patriotism is finally stronger than class-hatred, the
chances are that the will of the majority will prevail. It is no use imagining that one can
make fundamental changes without causing a split in the nation; but the treacherous
minority will be far smaller in time of war than it would be at any other time.
The swing of opinion is visibly happening, but it cannot be counted on to happen fast
enough of its own accord. This war is a race between the consolidation of Hitler’s empire
and the growth of democratic consciousness. Everywhere in England you can see a ding-
dong battle ranging to and fro — in Parliament and in the Government, in the factories and
the anned forces, in the pubs and the air-raid shelters, in the newspapers and on the radio.
Every day there are tiny defeats, tiny victories. Morrison for Home Security — a few yards
forward. Priestley shoved off the air — a few yards back. It is a struggle between the
groping and the unteachable, between the young and the old, between the living and the
dead. But it is very necessary that the discontent which undoubtedly exists should take a
purposeful and not merely obstructive form. It is time for THE PEOPLE to define their
war-aims. What is wanted is a simple, concrete programme of action, which can be given
all possible publicity, and round which public opinion can group itself.
I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first
three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the
world:
1. Nationalisation of land, mines, railways, ha nk s and major industries.
2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest taxfree income in Britain does
not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.
5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be
represented.
6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the
Fascist powers.
The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning
this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. I have
deliberately included in it nothing that the simplest person could not understand and see
the reason for. In the form in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of
the DAILY MIRROR. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of
amplification is needed.
1 . NATIONALISATION. One can “nationalise” industry by the stroke of a pen, but the
actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major
industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that
is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere OWNERS who live not by
virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates.
State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. How sudden
a change in the conduct of industry it implies is less certain. In a country like England we
cannot rip down the whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time
of war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much the same
personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors carrying on with their
jobs as State employees. There is reason to think that many of the smaller capitalists
would actually welcome some such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big
capitalists, the bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with
over £2,000 a year — and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more
than half a million of these people in England. Nationalisation of agricultural land implies
cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the
farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganisation of English agriculture that would not
retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when
he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the
added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being pennanently in debt to the bank.
With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State
will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimising the
smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are
competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are “their
own masters”. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of
land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of
land in town areas.
From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State,
the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is THEMSELVES.
They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war. And
even if the face of England hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries
are formally nationalised the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From
then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from
privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself bring about
less social change than will be forced upon us by the common hardships of war. But it is
the necessary first step without which any REAL reconstruction is impossible.
2. INCOMES. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which
implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods
available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is
no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have
EXACTLY equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind
of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the
money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be
limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions.
But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And
within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man
with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster
and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot.
3. EDUCATION. In wartime, educational refonn must necessarily be promise rather than
performance. At the moment we are not in a position to raise the school-leaving age or
increase the teaching staffs of the elementary schools. But there are certain immediate
steps that we could take towards a democratic educational system. We could start by
abolishing the autonomy of the public schools and the older universities and flooding
them with State-aided pupils chosen simply on grounds of ability. At present, public-
school education is partly a training in class prejudice and partly a sort of tax that the
middle classes pay to the upper class in return for the right to enter certain professions. It
is true that that state of affairs is altering. The middle classes have begun to rebel against
the expensiveness of education, and the war will bankrupt the majority of the public
schools if it continues for another year or two. The evacuation is also producing certain
minor changes. But there is a danger that some of the older schools, which will be able to
weather the financial storm longest, will survive in some fonn or another as festering
centres of snobbery. As for the 10,000 “private” schools that England possesses, the vast
majority of them deserve nothing except suppression. They are simply commercial
undertakings, and in many cases their educational level is actually lower than that of the
elementary schools. They merely exist because of a widespread idea that there is
something disgraceful in being educated by the public authorities. The State could quell
this idea by declaring itself responsible for all edilcation, even if at the start this were no
more than a gesture. We need gestures as well as actions. It is all too obvious that our talk
of “defending democracy” is nonsense while it is a mere accident of birth that decides
whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the education it deserves.
4. INDIA. What we must offer India is not “freedom”, which, as I have said earlier, is
impossible, but alliance, partnership-in a word, equality. But we must also tell the Indians
that they are free to secede, if they want to. Without that there can be no equality of
partnership, and our claim to be defending the coloured peoples against Fascism will
never be believed. But it is a mistake to imagine that if the Indians were free to cut
themselves adrift they would immediately do so. When a British government OFFERS
them unconditional independence, they will refuse it. For as soon as they have the power
to secede the chief reasons for doing so will have disappeared.
A complete severance of the two countries would be a disaster for India no less than for
England. Intelligent Indians know this. As things are at present, India not only cannot
defend itself, it is hardly even capable of feeding itself. The whole administration of the
country depends on a framework of experts (engineers, forest officers, railwaymen,
soldiers, doctors) who are predominantly English and could not be replaced within five or
ten years. Moreover, English is the chief lingua franca and nearly the whole of the Indian
intelligentsia is deeply anglicised. Any transference to foreign rule — for if the British
marched out of India the Japanese and other powers would immediately march in —
would mean an immense dislocation. Neither the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans
nor the Italians would be capable of administering India even at the low level of
efficiency that is attained by the British. They do not possess the necessary supplies of
technical experts or the knowledge of languages and local conditions, and they probably
could not win the confidence of indispensable go-betweens such as the Eurasians. If India
were simply “liberated”, i. e. deprived of British military protection, the first result would
be a fresh foreign conquest, and the second a series of enormous famines which would
kill millions of people within a few years.
What India needs is the power to work out its own constitution without British
interference, but in some kind of partnership that ensures its military protection and
technical advice. This is unthinkable until there is a Socialist government in England. For
at least eighty years England has artificially prevented the development of India, partly
from fear of trade competition if Indian industries were too highly developed, partly
because backward peoples are more easily governed than civilised ones. It is a
commonplace that the average Indian suffers far more from his own countrymen than
from the British. The petty Indian capitalist exploits the town worker with the utmost
ruthlessness, the peasant lives from birth to death in the grip of the money-lender. But all
this is an indirect result of the British rule, which aims half-consciously at keeping India
as backward as possible. The classes most loyal to Britain are the princes, the landowners
and the business community — in general, the reactionary classes who are doing fairly
well out of the STATUS QUO. The moment that England ceased to stand towards India
in the relation of an exploiter, the balance of forces would be altered. No need then for
the British to flatter the ridiculous Indian princes, with their gilded elephants and
cardboard annies, to prevent the growth of the Indian trade unions, to play off Moslem
against Hindu, to protect the worthless life of the money-lender, to receive the salaams of
toadying minor officials, to prefer the half-barbarous Gurkha to the educated Bengali.
Once check that stream of dividends that flows from the bodies of Indian coolies to the
banking accounts of old ladies in Cheltenham, and the whole sahib-native nexus, with its
haughty ignorance on one side and envy and servility on the other, can come to an end.
Englishmen and Indians can work side by side for the development of India, and for the
training of Indians in all the arts which, so far, they have been systematically prevented
from learning. How many of the existing British personnel in India, commercial or
official, would fall in with such an arrangement — which would mean ceasing once and
for all to be “sahibs” — is a different question. But, broadly speaking, more is to be hoped
from the younger men and from those officials (civil engineers, forestry and agricultural
experts, doctors, educationists) who have been scientifically educated. The higher
officials, the provincial governors, commissioners, judges, etc are hopeless; but they are
also the most easily replaceable.
That, roughly, is what would be meant by Dominion status if it were offered to India by a
Socialist government. It is an offer of partnership on equal tenns until such time as the
world has ceased to be ruled by bombing planes. But we must add to it the unconditional
right to secede. It is the only way of proving that we mean what we say. And what applies
to India applies, MUTATIS MUTANDIS, to Burma, Malaya and most of our African
possessions.
5 and 6 explain themselves. They are the necessary preliminary to any claim that we are
lighting this war for the protection of peaceful peoples against Fascist aggression.
Is it impossibly hopeful to think that such a policy as this could get a following in
England? A year ago, even six months ago, it would have been, but not now. Moreover-
and this is the peculiar opportunity of this moment — it could be given the necessary
publicity. There is now a considerable weekly press, with a circulation of millions, which
would be ready to popularise — if not EXACTLY the programme I have sketched above,
at any rate SOME policy along those lines. There are even three or four daily papers
which would be prepared to give it a sympathetic hearing. That is the distance we have
travelled in the last six months.
But is such a policy realisable? That depends entirely on ourselves.
Some of the points I have suggested are of the kind that could be carried out immediately,
others would take years or decades and even then would not be perfectly achieved. No
political programme is ever carried out in its entirety. But what matters is that that or
something like it should be our declared policy. It is always the DIRECTION that counts.
It is of course quite hopeless to expect the present Government to pledge itself to any
policy that implies turning this war into a revolutionary war. It is at best a government of
compromise, with Churchill riding two horses like a circus acrobat. Before such measures
as limitation of incomes become even thinkable, there will have to be a complete shift of
power away from the old ruling class. If during this winter the war settles into another
stagnant period, we ought in my opinion to agitate for a General Election, a thing which
the Tory Party machine will make frantic efforts to prevent. But even without an election
we can get the government we want, provided that we want it urgently enough. A real
shove from below will accomplish it. As to who will be in that government when it
comes, I make no guess. I only know that the right men will be there when the people
really want them, for it is movements that make leaders and not leaders movements.
Within a year, perhaps even within six months, if we are still unconquered, we shall see
the rise of something that has never existed before, a specifically ENGLISH Socialist
movement. Hitherto there has been only the Labour Party, which was the creation of the
working class but did not aim at any fundamental change, and Marxism, which was a
German theory interpreted by Russians and unsuccessfully transplanted to England.
There was nothing that really touched the heart of the English people. Throughout its
entire history the English Socialist movement has never produced a song with a catchy
tune — nothing like LA MARSEILLAISE or LA CUCURACHA, for instance. When a
Socialist movement native to England appears, the Marxists, like all others with a vested
interest in the past, will be its bitter enemies. Inevitably they will denounce it as
“Fascism”. Already it is customary among the more soft-boiled intellectuals of the Left to
declare that if we fight against the Nazis we shall “go Nazi” ourselves. They might
almost equally well say that if we fight against Negroes we shall turn black. To “go Nazi”
we should have to have the history of Germany behind us. Nations do not escape from
their past merely by making a revolution. An English Socialist government will transform
the nation from top to bottom, but it will still bear all over it the unmistakable marks of
our own civilisation, the peculiar civilisation which I discussed earlier in this book.
It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House of Lords, but quite
probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave anachronisms and loose ends
everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous horsehair wig and the lion and the unicorn on the
soldier’s cap-buttons. It will not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself
round the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade unions, but it will
draw into it most of the middle class and many of the younger sons of the bourgeoisie.
Most of its directing brains will come from the new indeterminate class of skilled
workers, technical experts, airmen, scientists, architects and journalists, the people who
feel at home in the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch with the
tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot
traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit
them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little
with the spoken and written word. Political parties with different names will still exist,
revolutionary sects will still be publishing their newspapers and making as little
impression as ever. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecute religion.
It will
retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to
England as “a Christian country”. The Catholic Church will war against it, but the
Nonconformist sects and the bulk of the Anglican Church will be able to come to terms
with it. It will show a power of assimilating the past which will shock foreign observers
and sometimes make them doubt whether any revolution has happened.
But all the same it will have done the essential thing. It will have nationalised industry,
scaled down incomes, set up a classless educational system. Its real nature will be
apparent from the hatred which the surviving rich men of the world will feel for it. It will
aim not at disintegrating the Empire but at turning it into a federation of Socialist states,
freed not so much from the British flag as from the money-lender, the dividend-drawer
and the woodenheaded British official. Its war strategy will be totally different from that
of any property-ruled state, because it will not be afraid of the revolutionary after-effects
when any existing regime is brought down. It will not have the smallest scruple about
attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up native rebellion in enemy colonies. It will fight in
such a way that even if it is beaten its memory will be dangerous to the victor, as the
memory of the French Revolution was dangerous to Metternich’s Europe. The dictators
will fear it as they could not fear the existing British regime, even if its military strength
were ten times what it is.
But at this moment, when the drowsy life of England has barely altered, and the offensive
contrast of wealth and poverty still exists everywhere, even amid the bombs, why do I
dare to say that all these things “will” happen?
Because the time has come when one can predict the future in terms of an “either — or”.
Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war (I do not say that our policy will be
EXACTLY what I have indicated above — merely that it will be along those general lines)
or we lose it, and much more besides. Quite soon it will be possible to say definitely that
our feet are set upon one path or the other. But at any rate it is certain that with our
present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces, physical, moral or intellectual,
cannot be mobilised.
Ill
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of
Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to
be mystically the same. It is the bridge between the future and the past. No real
revolutionary has ever been an internationalist.
During the past twenty years the negative, FAINEANT outlook which has been
fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of the intellectuals at patriotism
and physical courage, the persistent effort to chip away English morale and spread a
hedonistic, what-do-I-get-out-of-it attitude to life, has done nothing but hann. It would
have been harmful even if we had been living in the squashy League of Nations universe
that these people imagined. In an age of Fuehrers and bombing planes it was a disaster.
However little we may like it, toughness is the price of survival. A nation trained to think
hedonistically cannot survive amid peoples who work like slaves and breed like rabbits,
and whose chief national industry is war. English Socialists of nearly all colours have
wanted to make a stand against Fascism, but at the same time they have aimed at making
their own countrymen unwarlike. They have failed, because in England traditional
loyalties are stronger than new ones. But in spite of all the “anti-Fascist” heroics of the
left-wing press, what chance should we have stood when the real struggle with Fascism
came, if the average Englishman had been the kind of creature that the NEW
STATESMAN, the DAILY WORKER or even the NEWS CHRONICLE wished to make
him?
Up to 1935 virtually all English left-wingers were vaguely pacifist. After 1935 the more
vocal of them flung themselves eagerly into the Popular Front movement, which was
simply an evasion of the whole problem posed by Fascism. It set out to be “anti-Fascist”
in a purely negative way — “against” Fascism without being “for” any discoverable
policy-and underneath it lay the flabby idea that when the time came the Russians would
do our fighting for us. It is astonishing how this illusion fails to die. Every week sees its
spate of letters to the press, pointing out that if we had a government with no Tories in it
the Russians could hardly avoid coming round to our side. Or we are to publish high-
sounding war-aims (VIDE books like UNSER KAMPF, A HUNDRED MILLION
ALLIES — IF WE CHOOSE, etc), whereupon the European populations will infallibly
rise on our behalf. It is the same idea all the time-look abroad for your inspiration, get
someone else to do your fighting for you. Underneath it lies the frightful inferiority
complex of the English intellectual, the belief that the English are no longer a martial
race, no longer capable of enduring.
In truth there is no reason to think that anyone will do our fighting for us yet awhile,
except the Chinese, who have been doing it for three years already. * The Russians may
be driven to fight on our side by the fact of a direct attack, but they have made it clear
enough that they will not stand up to the German army if there is any way of avoiding it.
In any case they are not likely to be attracted by the spectacle of a left-wing government
in England. The present Russian regime must almost certainly be hostile to any
revolution in the West. The subject peoples of Europe will rebel when Hitler begins to
totter, but not earlier. Our potential allies are not the Europeans but on the one hand the
Americans, who will need a year to mobilise their resources even if Big Business can be
brought to heel, and on the other hand the coloured peoples, who cannot be even
sentimentally on our side till our own revolution has started. For a long time, a year, two
years, possibly three years, England has got to be the shock-absorber of the world. We
have got to face bombing, hunger, overwork, influenza, boredom and treacherous peace
offers. Manifestly it is a time to stiffen morale, not to weaken it. Instead of taking the
mechanically anti-British attitude which is usual on the Left, it is better to consider what
the world would really be like if the English-speaking culture perished. For it is childish
to suppose that the other English-speaking countries, even the USA, will be unaffected if
Britain is conquered.
* Written before the outbreak of the war in Greece. (Author’s footnote. )
Lord Halifax, and all his tribe, believe that when the war is over things will be exactly as
they were before. Back to the crazy pavement of Versailles, back to “democracy”, i. e.
capitalism, back to dole queues and the Rolls-Royce cars, back to the grey top hats and
the sponge-bag trousers, IN SAECULA SAECULORUM. It is of course obvious that
nothing of the kind is going to happen. A feeble imitation of it might just possibly happen
in the case of a negotiated peace, but only for a short while. LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism
is dead. * The choice lies between the kind of collective society that Hitler will set up and
the kind that can arise if he is defeated.
* It is interesting to notice that Mr Kennedy, USA Ambassador in London, remarked on his
return to New York in October 1940 that as a result of the war “democracy is finished”. By
“democracy”, of course, he meant private capitalism. (Author’s footnote. )
If Hitler wins this war he will consolidate his rule over Europe, Africa and the Middle
East, and if his annies have not been too greatly exhausted beforehand, he will wrench
vast territories from Soviet Russia. He will set up a graded caste-society in which the
German HERRENVOLK (“master race” or “aristocratic race”) will rule over Slavs and
other lesser peoples whose job it will be to produce low-priced agricultural products. He
will reduce the coloured peoples once and for all to outright slavery. The real quarrel of
the Fascist powers with British imperialism is that they know that it is disintegrating.
Another twenty years along the present line of development, and India will be a peasant
republic linked with England only by voluntary alliance. The “semi-apes” of whom Hitler
speaks with such loathing will be flying aeroplanes and manufacturing machine-guns.
The Fascist dream of a slave empire will be at an end. On the other hand, if we are
defeated we simply hand over our own victims to new masters who come fresh to the job
and have not developed any scruples.
But more is involved than the fate of the coloured peoples. Two incompatible visions of
life are fighting one another. “Between democracy and totalitarianism,” says Mussolini,
“there can be no compromise. ” The two creeds cannot even, for any length of time, live
side by side. So long as democracy exists, even in its very imperfect English form,
totalitarianism is in deadly danger. The whole English-speaking world is haunted by the
idea of human equality, and though it would be simply a lie to say that either we or the
Americans have ever acted up to our professions, still, the IDEA is there, and it is capable
of one day becoming a reality. From the English-speaking culture, if it does not perish, a
society of free and equal human beings will ultimately arise. But it is precisely the idea of
human equality — the “Jewish” or “Judaeo-Christian” idea of equality — that Hitler came
into the world to destroy. He has, heaven knows, said so often enough. The thought of a
world in which black men would be as good as white men and Jews treated as human
beings brings him the same horror and despair as the thought of endless slavery brings to
us.
It is important to keep in mind how irreconcilable these two viewpoints are. Some time
within the next year a pro-Hitler reaction within the left-wing intelligentsia is likely
enough. There are premonitory signs of it already. Hitler’s positive achievement appeals
to the emptiness of these people, and, in the case of those with pacifist leanings, to their
masochism. One knows in advance more or less what they will say. They will start by
refusing to admit that British capitalism is evolving into something different, or that the
defeat of Hitler can mean any more than a victory for the British and American
millionaires. And from that they will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is “just
the same as” or “just as bad as” totalitarianism. There is NOT MUCH freedom of speech
in England; therefore there is NO MORE than exists in Germany. To be on the dole is a
horrible experience; therefore it is NO WORSE to be in the torture-chambers of the
Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white, half a loaf is the same as no bread.
But in reality, whatever may be true about democracy and totalitarianism, it is not true
that they are the same. It would not be true, even if British democracy were incapable of
evolving beyond its present stage. The whole conception of the militarised continental
state, with its secret police, its censored literature and its conscript labour, is utterly
different from that of the loose maritime democracy, with its slums and unemployment,
its strikes and party politics. It is the difference between land power and sea power,
between cruelty and inefficiency, between lying and self-deception, between the SS man
and the rent-collector. And in choosing between them one chooses not so much on the
strength of what they now are as of what they are capable of becoming. But in a sense it
is irrelevant whether democracy, at its higher or at its lowest, is “better” than
totalitarianism. To decide that one would have to have access to absolute standards. The
only question that matters is where one’s real sympathies will lie when the pinch comes.
The intellectuals who are so fond of balancing democracy against totalitarianism and
“proving” that one is as bad as the other are simply frivolous people who have never been
shoved up against realities. They show the same shallow misunderstanding of Fascism
now, when they are beginning to flirt with it, as a year or two ago, when they were
squealing against it. The question is not, “Can you make out a debating-society ‘case’ in
favour of Hitler? ” The question is, “Do you genuinely accept that case? Are you willing
to submit to Hitler’s rule? Do you want to see England conquered, or don’t you? ” It
would be better to be sure on that point before frivolously siding with the enemy. For
there is no such thing as neutrality in war; in practice one must help one side or the other.
When the pinch comes, no one bred in the western tradition can accept the Fascist vision
of life. It is important to realise that now, and to grasp what it entails. With all its sloth,
hypocrisy and injustice, the Englishspeaking civilisation is the only large obstacle in
Hitler’s path. It is a living contradiction of all the “infallible” dogmas of Fascism. That is
why all Fascist writers for years past have agreed that England’s power must be
destroyed. England must be “exterminated”, must be “annihilated”, must “cease to exist”.
Strategically it would be possible for this war to end with Hitler in secure possession of
Europe, and with the British Empire intact and British sea-power barely affected. But
ideologically it is not possible; were Hitler to make an offer along those lines, it could
only be treacherously, with a view to conquering England indirectly or renewing the
attack at some more favourable moment. England cannot possibly be allowed to remain
as a sort of funnel through which deadly ideas from beyond the Atlantic flow into the
police states of Europe. And turning it round to our own point of view, we see the
vastness of the issue before us, the all-importance of preserving our democracy more or
less as we have known it. But to PRESERVE is always to EXTEND. The choice before
us is not so much between victory and defeat as between revolution and apathy. If the
thing we are fighting for is altogether destroyed, it will have been destroyed partly by our
own act.
It could happen that England could introduce the beginnings of Socialism, turn this war
into a revolutionary war, and still be defeated. That is at any rate thinkable. But, terrible
as it would be for anyone who is now adult, it would be far less deadly than the
“compromise peace” which a few rich men and their hired liars are hoping for. The final
ruin of England could only be accomplished by an English government acting under
orders from Berlin. But that cannot happen if England has awakened beforehand. For in
that case the defeat would be unmistakable, the struggle would continue, the IDEA would
survive. The difference between going down fighting, and surrendering without a fight, is
by no means a question of “honour” and schoolboy heroics. Hitler said once that to
ACCEPT defeat destroys the soul of a nation. This sounds like a piece of claptrap, but it
is strictly true. The defeat of 1870 did not lessen the world-influence of France. The
Third Republic had more influence, intellectually, than the France of Napoleon III. But
the sort of peace that Petain, Laval and Co have accepted can only be purchased by
deliberately wiping out the national culture. The Vichy Government will enjoy a spurious
independence only on condition that it destroys the distinctive marks of French culture:
republicanism, secularism, respect for the intellect, absence of colour prejudice. We
cannot be UTTERLY defeated if we have made our revolution beforehand. We may see
German troops marching down Whitehall, but another process, ultimately deadly to the
German power-dream, will have been started. The Spanish people were defeated, but the
things they learned during those two and a half memorable years will one day come back
upon the Spanish Fascists like a boomerang.
A piece of Shakespearean bombast was much quoted at the beginning of the war. Even
Mr Chamberlain quoted it once, if my memory does not deceive me:
Come the four comers of the world in arms And we shall shock them: naught shall make
us me If England to herself do rest but true.
It is right enough, if you interpret it rightly. But England has got to be true to herself. She
is not being true to herself while the refugees who have sought our shores are penned up
in concentration camps, and company directors work out subtle schemes to dodge their
Excess Profits Tax. It is goodbye to the TATLER and the BYSTANDER, and farewell to
the lady in the Rolls-Royce car. The heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the
House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed
forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden; and at present they are still kept
under by a generation of ghosts. Compared with the task of bringing the real England to
the surface, even the winning of the war, necessary though it is, is secondary. By
revolution we become more ourselves, not less. There is no question of stopping short,
striking a compromise, salvaging “democracy”, standing still. Nothing ever stands still.
We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go
forward or backward. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.
WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE (1941)
“In March or April, say the wiseacres, there is to be a stupendous knockout blow at
Britain. . . . What Hitler has to do it with, I cannot imagine. His ebbing and dispersed
military resources are now probably not so very much greater than the Italians’ before
they were put to the test in Greece and Africa. ”
“The Gennan air power has been largely spent. It is behind the times and its first-rate
men are mostly dead or disheartened or worn out. ”
“In 1914 the Hohenzollem army was the best in the world. Behind that screaming little
defective in Berlin there is nothing of the sort. . . . Yet our military ‘experts’ discuss the
waiting phantom. In their imaginations it is perfect in its equipment and invincible in
discipline. Sometimes it is to strike a decisive ‘blow’ through Spain and North Africa and
on, or march through the Balkans, march from the Danube to Ankara, to Persia, to India,
or ‘crush Russia’, or ‘pour’ over the Brenner into Italy. The weeks pass and the phantom
does none of these things — for one excellent reason. It does not exist to that extent. Most
of such inadequate guns and munitions as it possessed must have been taken away from it
and fooled away in Hitler’s silly feints to invade Britain. And its raw jerry-built discipline
is wilting under the creeping realisation that the Blitzkrieg is spent, and the war is coming
home to roost. ”
These quotations are not taken from the CAVALRY QUARTERLY but from a series of
newspaper articles by Mr H. G. Wells, written at the beginning of this year and now
reprinted in a book entitled GUIDE TO THE NEW WORLD. Since they were written,
the German army has overrun the Balkans and reconquered Cyrenaica, it can march
through Turkey or Spain at such time as may suit it, and it has undertaken the invasion of
Russia. How that campaign will turn out I do not know, but it is worth noticing that the
German general staff, whose opinion is probably worth something, would not have begun
it if they had not felt fairly certain of finishing it within three months. So much for the
idea that the German army is a bogey, its equipment inadequate, its morale breaking
down, etc etc.
What has Wells to set against the “screaming little defective in Berlin”? The usual
rigmarole about a World State, plus the Sankey Declaration, which is an attempted
definition of fundamental human rights, of anti-totalitarian tendency. Except that he is
now especially concerned with federal world control of air power, it is the same gospel as
he has been preaching almost without interruption for the past forty years, always with an
air of angry surprise at the human beings who can fail to grasp anything so obvious.
What is the use of saying that we need federal world control of the air? The whole
question is how we are to get it. What is the use of pointing out that a World State is
desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of
submitting to such a thing. All sensible men for decades past have been substantially in
agreement with what Mr Wells says; but the sensible men have no power and, in too
many cases, no disposition to sacrifice themselves. Hitler is a criminal lunatic, and Hitler
has an anny of millions of men, aeroplanes in thousands, tanks in tens of thousands. For
his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years and then to fight
for two years more, whereas for the commonsense, essentially hedonistic world-view
which Mr Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood.
Before you can even talk of world reconstruction, or even of peace, you have got to
eliminate Hitler, which means bringing into being a dynamic not necessarily the same as
that of the Nazis, but probably quite as unacceptable to “enlightened” and hedonistic
people. What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some
vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the
ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners. For
the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break
this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the SS men
patrolling the London streets at this moment. Similarly, why are the Russians fighting
like tigers against the German invasion? In part, perhaps, for some half-remembered ideal
of Utopian Socialism, but chiefly in defence of Holy Russia (the “sacred soil of the
Fatherland”, etc etc), which Stalin has revived in an only slightly altered form. The
energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-
worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off
as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as
to have lost all power of action.
The people who say that Hitler is Antichrist, or alternatively, the Holy Ghost, are nearer
an understanding of the truth than the intellectuals who for ten dreadful years have kept it
up that he is merely a figure out of comic opera, not worth taking seriously. All that this
idea really reflects is the sheltered conditions of English life. The Left Book Club was at
bottom a product of Scotland Yard, just as the Peace Pledge Union is a product of the
navy. One development of the last ten years has been the appearance of the “political
book”, a sort of enlarged pamphlet combining history with political criticism, as an
important literary form. But the best writers in this line — Trotsky, Rauschning,
Rosenberg, Silone, Borkenau, Koestler and others — have none of them been Englishmen,
and nearly all of them have been renegades from one or other extremist party, who have
seen totalitarianism at close quarters and known the meaning of exile and persecution.
Only in the English-speaking countries was it fashionable to believe, right up to the
outbreak of war, that Hitler was an unimportant lunatic and the German tanks made of
cardboard. Mr Wells, it will be seen from the quotations I have given above, believes
something of the kind still. I do not suppose that either the bombs or the German
campaign in Greece have altered his opinion. A lifelong habit of thought stands between
him and an understanding of Hitler’s power.
Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class.
Socialist no longer means kicking theoretically against a system which in practice you are
fairly well satisfied with. This time our predicament is real. It is “the Philistines be upon
thee, Samson”. We have got to make our words take physical shape, or perish. We know
very well that with its present social structure England cannot survive, and we have got to
make other people see that fact and act upon it. We cannot win the war without
introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war. At such a time it
is possible, as it was not in the peaceful years, to be both revolutionary and realistic. A
Socialist movement which can swing the mass of the people behind it, drive the pro-
Fascists out of positions of control, wipe out the grosser injustices and let the working
class see that they have something to fight for, win over the middle classes instead of
antagonising them, produce a workable imperial policy instead of a mixture of humbug
and Utopianism, bring patriotism and intelligence into partnership — for the first time, a
movement of such a kind becomes possible.
II
The fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable
policy.
The inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe. Its injustice has
been proved in the East End of London. Patriotism, against which the Socialists fought so
long, has become a tremendous lever in their hands. People who at any other time would
cling like glue to their miserable scraps of privilege, will surrender them fast enough
when their country is in danger. War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up
all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war
brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because
they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle. At this moment it is not so
much a question of surrendering life as of surrendering leisure, comfort, economic
liberty, social prestige. There are very few people in England who really want to see their
country conquered by Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating Hitler means
wiping out class privilege, the great mass of middling people, the £6 a week to £2,000 a
year class, will probably be on our side. These people are quite indispensable, because
they include most of the technical experts. Obviously the snobbishness and political
ignorance of people like ainnen and naval officers will be a very great difficulty. But
without those airmen, destroyer commanders, etc etc we could not survive for a week.
The only approach to them is through their patriotism. An intelligent Socialist movement
will use their patriotism, instead of merely insulting it, as hitherto.
But do I mean that there will be no opposition? Of course not. It would be childish to
expect anything of the kind.
There will be a bitter political struggle, and there will be unconscious and half-conscious
sabotage everywhere. At some point or other it may be necessary to use violence. It is
easy to imagine a pro-Fascist rebellion breaking out in, for instance, India. We shall have
to fight against bribery, ignorance and snobbery. The bankers and the larger businessmen,
the landowners and dividend-drawers, the officials with their prehensile bottoms, will
obstruct for all they are worth. Even the middle classes will writhe when their
accustomed way of life is menaced. But just because the English sense of national unity
has never disintegrated, because patriotism is finally stronger than class-hatred, the
chances are that the will of the majority will prevail. It is no use imagining that one can
make fundamental changes without causing a split in the nation; but the treacherous
minority will be far smaller in time of war than it would be at any other time.
The swing of opinion is visibly happening, but it cannot be counted on to happen fast
enough of its own accord. This war is a race between the consolidation of Hitler’s empire
and the growth of democratic consciousness. Everywhere in England you can see a ding-
dong battle ranging to and fro — in Parliament and in the Government, in the factories and
the anned forces, in the pubs and the air-raid shelters, in the newspapers and on the radio.
Every day there are tiny defeats, tiny victories. Morrison for Home Security — a few yards
forward. Priestley shoved off the air — a few yards back. It is a struggle between the
groping and the unteachable, between the young and the old, between the living and the
dead. But it is very necessary that the discontent which undoubtedly exists should take a
purposeful and not merely obstructive form. It is time for THE PEOPLE to define their
war-aims. What is wanted is a simple, concrete programme of action, which can be given
all possible publicity, and round which public opinion can group itself.
I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first
three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the
world:
1. Nationalisation of land, mines, railways, ha nk s and major industries.
2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest taxfree income in Britain does
not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.
5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be
represented.
6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the
Fascist powers.
The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning
this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. I have
deliberately included in it nothing that the simplest person could not understand and see
the reason for. In the form in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of
the DAILY MIRROR. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of
amplification is needed.
1 . NATIONALISATION. One can “nationalise” industry by the stroke of a pen, but the
actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major
industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that
is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere OWNERS who live not by
virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates.
State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. How sudden
a change in the conduct of industry it implies is less certain. In a country like England we
cannot rip down the whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time
of war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much the same
personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors carrying on with their
jobs as State employees. There is reason to think that many of the smaller capitalists
would actually welcome some such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big
capitalists, the bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with
over £2,000 a year — and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more
than half a million of these people in England. Nationalisation of agricultural land implies
cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the
farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganisation of English agriculture that would not
retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when
he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the
added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being pennanently in debt to the bank.
With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State
will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimising the
smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are
competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are “their
own masters”. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of
land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of
land in town areas.
From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State,
the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is THEMSELVES.
They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war. And
even if the face of England hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries
are formally nationalised the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From
then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from
privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself bring about
less social change than will be forced upon us by the common hardships of war. But it is
the necessary first step without which any REAL reconstruction is impossible.
2. INCOMES. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which
implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods
available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is
no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have
EXACTLY equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind
of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the
money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be
limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions.
But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And
within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man
with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster
and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot.
3. EDUCATION. In wartime, educational refonn must necessarily be promise rather than
performance. At the moment we are not in a position to raise the school-leaving age or
increase the teaching staffs of the elementary schools. But there are certain immediate
steps that we could take towards a democratic educational system. We could start by
abolishing the autonomy of the public schools and the older universities and flooding
them with State-aided pupils chosen simply on grounds of ability. At present, public-
school education is partly a training in class prejudice and partly a sort of tax that the
middle classes pay to the upper class in return for the right to enter certain professions. It
is true that that state of affairs is altering. The middle classes have begun to rebel against
the expensiveness of education, and the war will bankrupt the majority of the public
schools if it continues for another year or two. The evacuation is also producing certain
minor changes. But there is a danger that some of the older schools, which will be able to
weather the financial storm longest, will survive in some fonn or another as festering
centres of snobbery. As for the 10,000 “private” schools that England possesses, the vast
majority of them deserve nothing except suppression. They are simply commercial
undertakings, and in many cases their educational level is actually lower than that of the
elementary schools. They merely exist because of a widespread idea that there is
something disgraceful in being educated by the public authorities. The State could quell
this idea by declaring itself responsible for all edilcation, even if at the start this were no
more than a gesture. We need gestures as well as actions. It is all too obvious that our talk
of “defending democracy” is nonsense while it is a mere accident of birth that decides
whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the education it deserves.
4. INDIA. What we must offer India is not “freedom”, which, as I have said earlier, is
impossible, but alliance, partnership-in a word, equality. But we must also tell the Indians
that they are free to secede, if they want to. Without that there can be no equality of
partnership, and our claim to be defending the coloured peoples against Fascism will
never be believed. But it is a mistake to imagine that if the Indians were free to cut
themselves adrift they would immediately do so. When a British government OFFERS
them unconditional independence, they will refuse it. For as soon as they have the power
to secede the chief reasons for doing so will have disappeared.
A complete severance of the two countries would be a disaster for India no less than for
England. Intelligent Indians know this. As things are at present, India not only cannot
defend itself, it is hardly even capable of feeding itself. The whole administration of the
country depends on a framework of experts (engineers, forest officers, railwaymen,
soldiers, doctors) who are predominantly English and could not be replaced within five or
ten years. Moreover, English is the chief lingua franca and nearly the whole of the Indian
intelligentsia is deeply anglicised. Any transference to foreign rule — for if the British
marched out of India the Japanese and other powers would immediately march in —
would mean an immense dislocation. Neither the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans
nor the Italians would be capable of administering India even at the low level of
efficiency that is attained by the British. They do not possess the necessary supplies of
technical experts or the knowledge of languages and local conditions, and they probably
could not win the confidence of indispensable go-betweens such as the Eurasians. If India
were simply “liberated”, i. e. deprived of British military protection, the first result would
be a fresh foreign conquest, and the second a series of enormous famines which would
kill millions of people within a few years.
What India needs is the power to work out its own constitution without British
interference, but in some kind of partnership that ensures its military protection and
technical advice. This is unthinkable until there is a Socialist government in England. For
at least eighty years England has artificially prevented the development of India, partly
from fear of trade competition if Indian industries were too highly developed, partly
because backward peoples are more easily governed than civilised ones. It is a
commonplace that the average Indian suffers far more from his own countrymen than
from the British. The petty Indian capitalist exploits the town worker with the utmost
ruthlessness, the peasant lives from birth to death in the grip of the money-lender. But all
this is an indirect result of the British rule, which aims half-consciously at keeping India
as backward as possible. The classes most loyal to Britain are the princes, the landowners
and the business community — in general, the reactionary classes who are doing fairly
well out of the STATUS QUO. The moment that England ceased to stand towards India
in the relation of an exploiter, the balance of forces would be altered. No need then for
the British to flatter the ridiculous Indian princes, with their gilded elephants and
cardboard annies, to prevent the growth of the Indian trade unions, to play off Moslem
against Hindu, to protect the worthless life of the money-lender, to receive the salaams of
toadying minor officials, to prefer the half-barbarous Gurkha to the educated Bengali.
Once check that stream of dividends that flows from the bodies of Indian coolies to the
banking accounts of old ladies in Cheltenham, and the whole sahib-native nexus, with its
haughty ignorance on one side and envy and servility on the other, can come to an end.
Englishmen and Indians can work side by side for the development of India, and for the
training of Indians in all the arts which, so far, they have been systematically prevented
from learning. How many of the existing British personnel in India, commercial or
official, would fall in with such an arrangement — which would mean ceasing once and
for all to be “sahibs” — is a different question. But, broadly speaking, more is to be hoped
from the younger men and from those officials (civil engineers, forestry and agricultural
experts, doctors, educationists) who have been scientifically educated. The higher
officials, the provincial governors, commissioners, judges, etc are hopeless; but they are
also the most easily replaceable.
That, roughly, is what would be meant by Dominion status if it were offered to India by a
Socialist government. It is an offer of partnership on equal tenns until such time as the
world has ceased to be ruled by bombing planes. But we must add to it the unconditional
right to secede. It is the only way of proving that we mean what we say. And what applies
to India applies, MUTATIS MUTANDIS, to Burma, Malaya and most of our African
possessions.
5 and 6 explain themselves. They are the necessary preliminary to any claim that we are
lighting this war for the protection of peaceful peoples against Fascist aggression.
Is it impossibly hopeful to think that such a policy as this could get a following in
England? A year ago, even six months ago, it would have been, but not now. Moreover-
and this is the peculiar opportunity of this moment — it could be given the necessary
publicity. There is now a considerable weekly press, with a circulation of millions, which
would be ready to popularise — if not EXACTLY the programme I have sketched above,
at any rate SOME policy along those lines. There are even three or four daily papers
which would be prepared to give it a sympathetic hearing. That is the distance we have
travelled in the last six months.
But is such a policy realisable? That depends entirely on ourselves.
Some of the points I have suggested are of the kind that could be carried out immediately,
others would take years or decades and even then would not be perfectly achieved. No
political programme is ever carried out in its entirety. But what matters is that that or
something like it should be our declared policy. It is always the DIRECTION that counts.
It is of course quite hopeless to expect the present Government to pledge itself to any
policy that implies turning this war into a revolutionary war. It is at best a government of
compromise, with Churchill riding two horses like a circus acrobat. Before such measures
as limitation of incomes become even thinkable, there will have to be a complete shift of
power away from the old ruling class. If during this winter the war settles into another
stagnant period, we ought in my opinion to agitate for a General Election, a thing which
the Tory Party machine will make frantic efforts to prevent. But even without an election
we can get the government we want, provided that we want it urgently enough. A real
shove from below will accomplish it. As to who will be in that government when it
comes, I make no guess. I only know that the right men will be there when the people
really want them, for it is movements that make leaders and not leaders movements.
Within a year, perhaps even within six months, if we are still unconquered, we shall see
the rise of something that has never existed before, a specifically ENGLISH Socialist
movement. Hitherto there has been only the Labour Party, which was the creation of the
working class but did not aim at any fundamental change, and Marxism, which was a
German theory interpreted by Russians and unsuccessfully transplanted to England.
There was nothing that really touched the heart of the English people. Throughout its
entire history the English Socialist movement has never produced a song with a catchy
tune — nothing like LA MARSEILLAISE or LA CUCURACHA, for instance. When a
Socialist movement native to England appears, the Marxists, like all others with a vested
interest in the past, will be its bitter enemies. Inevitably they will denounce it as
“Fascism”. Already it is customary among the more soft-boiled intellectuals of the Left to
declare that if we fight against the Nazis we shall “go Nazi” ourselves. They might
almost equally well say that if we fight against Negroes we shall turn black. To “go Nazi”
we should have to have the history of Germany behind us. Nations do not escape from
their past merely by making a revolution. An English Socialist government will transform
the nation from top to bottom, but it will still bear all over it the unmistakable marks of
our own civilisation, the peculiar civilisation which I discussed earlier in this book.
It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House of Lords, but quite
probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave anachronisms and loose ends
everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous horsehair wig and the lion and the unicorn on the
soldier’s cap-buttons. It will not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself
round the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade unions, but it will
draw into it most of the middle class and many of the younger sons of the bourgeoisie.
Most of its directing brains will come from the new indeterminate class of skilled
workers, technical experts, airmen, scientists, architects and journalists, the people who
feel at home in the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch with the
tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot
traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit
them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little
with the spoken and written word. Political parties with different names will still exist,
revolutionary sects will still be publishing their newspapers and making as little
impression as ever. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecute religion.
It will
retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to
England as “a Christian country”. The Catholic Church will war against it, but the
Nonconformist sects and the bulk of the Anglican Church will be able to come to terms
with it. It will show a power of assimilating the past which will shock foreign observers
and sometimes make them doubt whether any revolution has happened.
But all the same it will have done the essential thing. It will have nationalised industry,
scaled down incomes, set up a classless educational system. Its real nature will be
apparent from the hatred which the surviving rich men of the world will feel for it. It will
aim not at disintegrating the Empire but at turning it into a federation of Socialist states,
freed not so much from the British flag as from the money-lender, the dividend-drawer
and the woodenheaded British official. Its war strategy will be totally different from that
of any property-ruled state, because it will not be afraid of the revolutionary after-effects
when any existing regime is brought down. It will not have the smallest scruple about
attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up native rebellion in enemy colonies. It will fight in
such a way that even if it is beaten its memory will be dangerous to the victor, as the
memory of the French Revolution was dangerous to Metternich’s Europe. The dictators
will fear it as they could not fear the existing British regime, even if its military strength
were ten times what it is.
But at this moment, when the drowsy life of England has barely altered, and the offensive
contrast of wealth and poverty still exists everywhere, even amid the bombs, why do I
dare to say that all these things “will” happen?
Because the time has come when one can predict the future in terms of an “either — or”.
Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war (I do not say that our policy will be
EXACTLY what I have indicated above — merely that it will be along those general lines)
or we lose it, and much more besides. Quite soon it will be possible to say definitely that
our feet are set upon one path or the other. But at any rate it is certain that with our
present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces, physical, moral or intellectual,
cannot be mobilised.
Ill
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of
Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to
be mystically the same. It is the bridge between the future and the past. No real
revolutionary has ever been an internationalist.
During the past twenty years the negative, FAINEANT outlook which has been
fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of the intellectuals at patriotism
and physical courage, the persistent effort to chip away English morale and spread a
hedonistic, what-do-I-get-out-of-it attitude to life, has done nothing but hann. It would
have been harmful even if we had been living in the squashy League of Nations universe
that these people imagined. In an age of Fuehrers and bombing planes it was a disaster.
However little we may like it, toughness is the price of survival. A nation trained to think
hedonistically cannot survive amid peoples who work like slaves and breed like rabbits,
and whose chief national industry is war. English Socialists of nearly all colours have
wanted to make a stand against Fascism, but at the same time they have aimed at making
their own countrymen unwarlike. They have failed, because in England traditional
loyalties are stronger than new ones. But in spite of all the “anti-Fascist” heroics of the
left-wing press, what chance should we have stood when the real struggle with Fascism
came, if the average Englishman had been the kind of creature that the NEW
STATESMAN, the DAILY WORKER or even the NEWS CHRONICLE wished to make
him?
Up to 1935 virtually all English left-wingers were vaguely pacifist. After 1935 the more
vocal of them flung themselves eagerly into the Popular Front movement, which was
simply an evasion of the whole problem posed by Fascism. It set out to be “anti-Fascist”
in a purely negative way — “against” Fascism without being “for” any discoverable
policy-and underneath it lay the flabby idea that when the time came the Russians would
do our fighting for us. It is astonishing how this illusion fails to die. Every week sees its
spate of letters to the press, pointing out that if we had a government with no Tories in it
the Russians could hardly avoid coming round to our side. Or we are to publish high-
sounding war-aims (VIDE books like UNSER KAMPF, A HUNDRED MILLION
ALLIES — IF WE CHOOSE, etc), whereupon the European populations will infallibly
rise on our behalf. It is the same idea all the time-look abroad for your inspiration, get
someone else to do your fighting for you. Underneath it lies the frightful inferiority
complex of the English intellectual, the belief that the English are no longer a martial
race, no longer capable of enduring.
In truth there is no reason to think that anyone will do our fighting for us yet awhile,
except the Chinese, who have been doing it for three years already. * The Russians may
be driven to fight on our side by the fact of a direct attack, but they have made it clear
enough that they will not stand up to the German army if there is any way of avoiding it.
In any case they are not likely to be attracted by the spectacle of a left-wing government
in England. The present Russian regime must almost certainly be hostile to any
revolution in the West. The subject peoples of Europe will rebel when Hitler begins to
totter, but not earlier. Our potential allies are not the Europeans but on the one hand the
Americans, who will need a year to mobilise their resources even if Big Business can be
brought to heel, and on the other hand the coloured peoples, who cannot be even
sentimentally on our side till our own revolution has started. For a long time, a year, two
years, possibly three years, England has got to be the shock-absorber of the world. We
have got to face bombing, hunger, overwork, influenza, boredom and treacherous peace
offers. Manifestly it is a time to stiffen morale, not to weaken it. Instead of taking the
mechanically anti-British attitude which is usual on the Left, it is better to consider what
the world would really be like if the English-speaking culture perished. For it is childish
to suppose that the other English-speaking countries, even the USA, will be unaffected if
Britain is conquered.
* Written before the outbreak of the war in Greece. (Author’s footnote. )
Lord Halifax, and all his tribe, believe that when the war is over things will be exactly as
they were before. Back to the crazy pavement of Versailles, back to “democracy”, i. e.
capitalism, back to dole queues and the Rolls-Royce cars, back to the grey top hats and
the sponge-bag trousers, IN SAECULA SAECULORUM. It is of course obvious that
nothing of the kind is going to happen. A feeble imitation of it might just possibly happen
in the case of a negotiated peace, but only for a short while. LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism
is dead. * The choice lies between the kind of collective society that Hitler will set up and
the kind that can arise if he is defeated.
* It is interesting to notice that Mr Kennedy, USA Ambassador in London, remarked on his
return to New York in October 1940 that as a result of the war “democracy is finished”. By
“democracy”, of course, he meant private capitalism. (Author’s footnote. )
If Hitler wins this war he will consolidate his rule over Europe, Africa and the Middle
East, and if his annies have not been too greatly exhausted beforehand, he will wrench
vast territories from Soviet Russia. He will set up a graded caste-society in which the
German HERRENVOLK (“master race” or “aristocratic race”) will rule over Slavs and
other lesser peoples whose job it will be to produce low-priced agricultural products. He
will reduce the coloured peoples once and for all to outright slavery. The real quarrel of
the Fascist powers with British imperialism is that they know that it is disintegrating.
Another twenty years along the present line of development, and India will be a peasant
republic linked with England only by voluntary alliance. The “semi-apes” of whom Hitler
speaks with such loathing will be flying aeroplanes and manufacturing machine-guns.
The Fascist dream of a slave empire will be at an end. On the other hand, if we are
defeated we simply hand over our own victims to new masters who come fresh to the job
and have not developed any scruples.
But more is involved than the fate of the coloured peoples. Two incompatible visions of
life are fighting one another. “Between democracy and totalitarianism,” says Mussolini,
“there can be no compromise. ” The two creeds cannot even, for any length of time, live
side by side. So long as democracy exists, even in its very imperfect English form,
totalitarianism is in deadly danger. The whole English-speaking world is haunted by the
idea of human equality, and though it would be simply a lie to say that either we or the
Americans have ever acted up to our professions, still, the IDEA is there, and it is capable
of one day becoming a reality. From the English-speaking culture, if it does not perish, a
society of free and equal human beings will ultimately arise. But it is precisely the idea of
human equality — the “Jewish” or “Judaeo-Christian” idea of equality — that Hitler came
into the world to destroy. He has, heaven knows, said so often enough. The thought of a
world in which black men would be as good as white men and Jews treated as human
beings brings him the same horror and despair as the thought of endless slavery brings to
us.
It is important to keep in mind how irreconcilable these two viewpoints are. Some time
within the next year a pro-Hitler reaction within the left-wing intelligentsia is likely
enough. There are premonitory signs of it already. Hitler’s positive achievement appeals
to the emptiness of these people, and, in the case of those with pacifist leanings, to their
masochism. One knows in advance more or less what they will say. They will start by
refusing to admit that British capitalism is evolving into something different, or that the
defeat of Hitler can mean any more than a victory for the British and American
millionaires. And from that they will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is “just
the same as” or “just as bad as” totalitarianism. There is NOT MUCH freedom of speech
in England; therefore there is NO MORE than exists in Germany. To be on the dole is a
horrible experience; therefore it is NO WORSE to be in the torture-chambers of the
Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white, half a loaf is the same as no bread.
But in reality, whatever may be true about democracy and totalitarianism, it is not true
that they are the same. It would not be true, even if British democracy were incapable of
evolving beyond its present stage. The whole conception of the militarised continental
state, with its secret police, its censored literature and its conscript labour, is utterly
different from that of the loose maritime democracy, with its slums and unemployment,
its strikes and party politics. It is the difference between land power and sea power,
between cruelty and inefficiency, between lying and self-deception, between the SS man
and the rent-collector. And in choosing between them one chooses not so much on the
strength of what they now are as of what they are capable of becoming. But in a sense it
is irrelevant whether democracy, at its higher or at its lowest, is “better” than
totalitarianism. To decide that one would have to have access to absolute standards. The
only question that matters is where one’s real sympathies will lie when the pinch comes.
The intellectuals who are so fond of balancing democracy against totalitarianism and
“proving” that one is as bad as the other are simply frivolous people who have never been
shoved up against realities. They show the same shallow misunderstanding of Fascism
now, when they are beginning to flirt with it, as a year or two ago, when they were
squealing against it. The question is not, “Can you make out a debating-society ‘case’ in
favour of Hitler? ” The question is, “Do you genuinely accept that case? Are you willing
to submit to Hitler’s rule? Do you want to see England conquered, or don’t you? ” It
would be better to be sure on that point before frivolously siding with the enemy. For
there is no such thing as neutrality in war; in practice one must help one side or the other.
When the pinch comes, no one bred in the western tradition can accept the Fascist vision
of life. It is important to realise that now, and to grasp what it entails. With all its sloth,
hypocrisy and injustice, the Englishspeaking civilisation is the only large obstacle in
Hitler’s path. It is a living contradiction of all the “infallible” dogmas of Fascism. That is
why all Fascist writers for years past have agreed that England’s power must be
destroyed. England must be “exterminated”, must be “annihilated”, must “cease to exist”.
Strategically it would be possible for this war to end with Hitler in secure possession of
Europe, and with the British Empire intact and British sea-power barely affected. But
ideologically it is not possible; were Hitler to make an offer along those lines, it could
only be treacherously, with a view to conquering England indirectly or renewing the
attack at some more favourable moment. England cannot possibly be allowed to remain
as a sort of funnel through which deadly ideas from beyond the Atlantic flow into the
police states of Europe. And turning it round to our own point of view, we see the
vastness of the issue before us, the all-importance of preserving our democracy more or
less as we have known it. But to PRESERVE is always to EXTEND. The choice before
us is not so much between victory and defeat as between revolution and apathy. If the
thing we are fighting for is altogether destroyed, it will have been destroyed partly by our
own act.
It could happen that England could introduce the beginnings of Socialism, turn this war
into a revolutionary war, and still be defeated. That is at any rate thinkable. But, terrible
as it would be for anyone who is now adult, it would be far less deadly than the
“compromise peace” which a few rich men and their hired liars are hoping for. The final
ruin of England could only be accomplished by an English government acting under
orders from Berlin. But that cannot happen if England has awakened beforehand. For in
that case the defeat would be unmistakable, the struggle would continue, the IDEA would
survive. The difference between going down fighting, and surrendering without a fight, is
by no means a question of “honour” and schoolboy heroics. Hitler said once that to
ACCEPT defeat destroys the soul of a nation. This sounds like a piece of claptrap, but it
is strictly true. The defeat of 1870 did not lessen the world-influence of France. The
Third Republic had more influence, intellectually, than the France of Napoleon III. But
the sort of peace that Petain, Laval and Co have accepted can only be purchased by
deliberately wiping out the national culture. The Vichy Government will enjoy a spurious
independence only on condition that it destroys the distinctive marks of French culture:
republicanism, secularism, respect for the intellect, absence of colour prejudice. We
cannot be UTTERLY defeated if we have made our revolution beforehand. We may see
German troops marching down Whitehall, but another process, ultimately deadly to the
German power-dream, will have been started. The Spanish people were defeated, but the
things they learned during those two and a half memorable years will one day come back
upon the Spanish Fascists like a boomerang.
A piece of Shakespearean bombast was much quoted at the beginning of the war. Even
Mr Chamberlain quoted it once, if my memory does not deceive me:
Come the four comers of the world in arms And we shall shock them: naught shall make
us me If England to herself do rest but true.
It is right enough, if you interpret it rightly. But England has got to be true to herself. She
is not being true to herself while the refugees who have sought our shores are penned up
in concentration camps, and company directors work out subtle schemes to dodge their
Excess Profits Tax. It is goodbye to the TATLER and the BYSTANDER, and farewell to
the lady in the Rolls-Royce car. The heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the
House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed
forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden; and at present they are still kept
under by a generation of ghosts. Compared with the task of bringing the real England to
the surface, even the winning of the war, necessary though it is, is secondary. By
revolution we become more ourselves, not less. There is no question of stopping short,
striking a compromise, salvaging “democracy”, standing still. Nothing ever stands still.
We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go
forward or backward. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.
WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE (1941)
“In March or April, say the wiseacres, there is to be a stupendous knockout blow at
Britain. . . . What Hitler has to do it with, I cannot imagine. His ebbing and dispersed
military resources are now probably not so very much greater than the Italians’ before
they were put to the test in Greece and Africa. ”
“The Gennan air power has been largely spent. It is behind the times and its first-rate
men are mostly dead or disheartened or worn out. ”
“In 1914 the Hohenzollem army was the best in the world. Behind that screaming little
defective in Berlin there is nothing of the sort. . . . Yet our military ‘experts’ discuss the
waiting phantom. In their imaginations it is perfect in its equipment and invincible in
discipline. Sometimes it is to strike a decisive ‘blow’ through Spain and North Africa and
on, or march through the Balkans, march from the Danube to Ankara, to Persia, to India,
or ‘crush Russia’, or ‘pour’ over the Brenner into Italy. The weeks pass and the phantom
does none of these things — for one excellent reason. It does not exist to that extent. Most
of such inadequate guns and munitions as it possessed must have been taken away from it
and fooled away in Hitler’s silly feints to invade Britain. And its raw jerry-built discipline
is wilting under the creeping realisation that the Blitzkrieg is spent, and the war is coming
home to roost. ”
These quotations are not taken from the CAVALRY QUARTERLY but from a series of
newspaper articles by Mr H. G. Wells, written at the beginning of this year and now
reprinted in a book entitled GUIDE TO THE NEW WORLD. Since they were written,
the German army has overrun the Balkans and reconquered Cyrenaica, it can march
through Turkey or Spain at such time as may suit it, and it has undertaken the invasion of
Russia. How that campaign will turn out I do not know, but it is worth noticing that the
German general staff, whose opinion is probably worth something, would not have begun
it if they had not felt fairly certain of finishing it within three months. So much for the
idea that the German army is a bogey, its equipment inadequate, its morale breaking
down, etc etc.
What has Wells to set against the “screaming little defective in Berlin”? The usual
rigmarole about a World State, plus the Sankey Declaration, which is an attempted
definition of fundamental human rights, of anti-totalitarian tendency. Except that he is
now especially concerned with federal world control of air power, it is the same gospel as
he has been preaching almost without interruption for the past forty years, always with an
air of angry surprise at the human beings who can fail to grasp anything so obvious.
What is the use of saying that we need federal world control of the air? The whole
question is how we are to get it. What is the use of pointing out that a World State is
desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of
submitting to such a thing. All sensible men for decades past have been substantially in
agreement with what Mr Wells says; but the sensible men have no power and, in too
many cases, no disposition to sacrifice themselves. Hitler is a criminal lunatic, and Hitler
has an anny of millions of men, aeroplanes in thousands, tanks in tens of thousands. For
his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years and then to fight
for two years more, whereas for the commonsense, essentially hedonistic world-view
which Mr Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood.
Before you can even talk of world reconstruction, or even of peace, you have got to
eliminate Hitler, which means bringing into being a dynamic not necessarily the same as
that of the Nazis, but probably quite as unacceptable to “enlightened” and hedonistic
people. What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some
vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the
ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners. For
the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break
this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the SS men
patrolling the London streets at this moment. Similarly, why are the Russians fighting
like tigers against the German invasion? In part, perhaps, for some half-remembered ideal
of Utopian Socialism, but chiefly in defence of Holy Russia (the “sacred soil of the
Fatherland”, etc etc), which Stalin has revived in an only slightly altered form. The
energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-
worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off
as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as
to have lost all power of action.
The people who say that Hitler is Antichrist, or alternatively, the Holy Ghost, are nearer
an understanding of the truth than the intellectuals who for ten dreadful years have kept it
up that he is merely a figure out of comic opera, not worth taking seriously. All that this
idea really reflects is the sheltered conditions of English life. The Left Book Club was at
bottom a product of Scotland Yard, just as the Peace Pledge Union is a product of the
navy. One development of the last ten years has been the appearance of the “political
book”, a sort of enlarged pamphlet combining history with political criticism, as an
important literary form. But the best writers in this line — Trotsky, Rauschning,
Rosenberg, Silone, Borkenau, Koestler and others — have none of them been Englishmen,
and nearly all of them have been renegades from one or other extremist party, who have
seen totalitarianism at close quarters and known the meaning of exile and persecution.
Only in the English-speaking countries was it fashionable to believe, right up to the
outbreak of war, that Hitler was an unimportant lunatic and the German tanks made of
cardboard. Mr Wells, it will be seen from the quotations I have given above, believes
something of the kind still. I do not suppose that either the bombs or the German
campaign in Greece have altered his opinion. A lifelong habit of thought stands between
him and an understanding of Hitler’s power.
Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class.
