Walled Town and Open Door
At first glance, the feudal nature of fascism seems unimportant. In pure logic, maybe, feudal and democratic systems cannot co-exist, but in fact, feudal Japan did exist in 1830 and the United States was enjoying Jacksonian democracy. There must be something more than abstract hostility between the two systems.
There is. Feudalism is a walled town; democracy is a ship at sea and a covered wagon. The capitalist pioneer gaps every wall in his path and his path is everywhere. The defender of the wall must destroy the invader before he comes near. In commercial terms, the fascists must conquer us in order to eliminate us as competitors for world trade. We can understand the method if we compare fascism at peace with democracy at war.
In the first days of the war we abandoned several essential freedoms: speech and press and radio and assembly as far as they might affect the conduct of the war; and then, with more of a struggle, we gave up the right to manufacture motor cars, the right to buy or sell tires; we accepted an allotment of sugar; we abandoned the right to go into the business of manufacturing radio sets; we allowed the government to limit our installment buying; we neither got nor gave credit as freely as before; we gave up, in short, the system of civil liberty and free business enterprise—in order to win the war.
Six hundred years ago, all over Europe the economy of peace was exactly our economy of war. In the Middle Ages, the right to become a watchmaker did not exist; the guild of watchmakers accepted or rejected an applicant. By this limitation, the total number of watches produced was roughly governed; the price was also established (and overcharging was a grave offense in the Middle Ages). Foreign competition was excluded; credit was for financiers, and the installment system had not been invented.
The feudalism of six hundred years ago is the peace-time fascism of six years ago. The fascist version of feudalism is State control of production. In Nazi Germany the liberty to work at a trade, to manufacture a given article, to stop working, to change professions, were all seriously limited. The supply of materials was regulated by the State, the number of radios to be exported was set by the State in connection with the purchase of strategic imports; the State could encourage or prevent the importation of coffee or helium or silk stockings; it could and did force men and women to raise crops, to make fuses, to learn flying, to stop reading. It created a feudal state far more benighted than any in the actual Middle Ages; it was in peace totally coordinated for production—far more so than we are now, at war.
The purpose of our sacrifice of liberty is to make things a thousand times faster than before; to save raw materials we abolish the cuff on our trousers and we use agate pots instead of aluminum; we work longer hours and work harder; we keep machines going twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—all for the single purpose of maximum output.
For the same purpose, the fascist state is organized at peace—to out-produce and under-sell its competitors.
The harried German people gave up their freedom in order to recover prosperity. They became a nation of war-workers in an economic war. A vast amount of their production went into tanks and Stukas; another segment went into export goods to be traded for strategic materials; and only a small amount went for food and the comforts of life. Almost nothing went into luxuries.
Burning Books—and Underselling