Isaacs Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 5, 1 February 1941, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Last week’s explosion in Rumania mirrors the state of affairs into which capitalist society is so swiftly descending-. Total war has led in Rumania to almost total anarchy. In that country we get a glimpse of what lies not very far below the surface in the other warring nations where the external controls are still held by the governments in power.
Insofar as the internal conflict in Rumania can be said to have a comprehensible pattern, it would appear to be a conflict between rival claimants to Hitler’s favor.
In essence, however, the war stirred the uneasy brew of Rumanian social and political relations and has brought to the surface the foul and scummy matter now forming a scabby crust on the body politic. The peasants, the workers, the Jews of Rumania, are at the mercy of predatory animals in power or in search of it.
It is not a new phenomenon. We saw it before in Italy, in Germany, and in Spain, where the Fascist gangs took over the power on behalf of a diseased and failing capitalist class no longer able to wield the power for itself. Nor were these the first instances. Modern capitalist society had a glimpse of its future evolution as far back as the days of Louis Napoleon in France ninety years ago, when the criminal dregs of the country – organized into the “Society of December the Tenth” – were elevated to the seats of power.
Capitalist “order” is based in all cases ultimately upon the rule of naked force. When this force can no longer be wielded in an “orderly” manner (army, courts, police) it is transmitted to the “disorderly” tools of the regime (Fascist gangs, vigilantes, the Iron Guard). The elements in particular countries or situations can vary. All the links cannot always be clearly followed – as is certainly the case in Rumania now – but the identical essence is there. Declining capitalist society is extruding the vile sores of its fatal disease.
It is interesting, therefore, to add the footnote that this was the regime fostered and nourished and held up for twenty years by French “democracy.” Rumania was the keystone in the French imperialist system of alliances and ententes in Central Europe. The Rumanian army was armed and equipped by the French. The Rumanian regime was fed and supported by French money. In those dim days that ended only a little more than a year ago, Rumania was the firm friend and ally of “democratic” France, its obedient minion at Geneva, its faithful retainer at all the conference tables of that forgotten era.
What we see in Rumania today is the spawn of twentieth century “democratic” capitalism. In the Rumanian mirror we see what awaits the whole world unless the workers lead the peoples out of these dark depths into the new horizon of a new kind of order, a socialist order.
Isaacs Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 3 October 2015