Eee —LONDON. *:
HE general problem
of the rehabilitation of
Europe is not a mat-

ter of material reconstruc-

tion only. It is not just a
question of getting industry
and agriculture going again.
Man himself has to be made
over, Twelve million people have
not been done to death like
cattle without leaving a scar on
the conduct and the conscience
of the survivors. Racial supersti-
tions, contempt for law, irre-
sponsibility or indifference to
eruelty, robbery and corruption
have not vanished so easily.

There are large areas in Eur-
epe where no thorough bour-’
geois revolution has ever taken
Place; where an arbitrary feuda-
lism has simply blended into
a system of feudalism bolstered
by subsidy from foreign capi-
alists and justified by fictive
election procedure, and where
democratic controls haye never
been developed on either local
or national scale. Even where
new social and production rela-
tionships are being developed,
habit, deeply * ingrained by the
culture arisen from the old, per-
‘Sists to handicap the new.

To ignore this fact, to as-
Sume that ‘man’ and ‘elections’
are or should be or even could
be identical in Paddington and
Pest, leads straight*to illusion.

Every reactionary camouflages
himself as a progressive nowa-
days, following Hitler’s play
_ with the label of National So-
- cialism,

Most folks realize that the
Liberal Democrats in Italy are
really conservatives, and. that
the Japanese Constitutionalists
are those most zealous in pre-
_ serving the emperor’s absolution
in cold storage. But few appre-
ciate to what degree a label
once maybe no misnomer, may
_ rapidly come to misdescribe the
__ Fascists, their own party out-
lawed, find an alternative means
of expression. Thus the Catholic
Party vote in Belgium totalled
its, own pre-war figure plus the
former figure of the Rexists.
‘The - ‘Smallholders’ Party in
Hungary mustered a majority
even in’ the towns; its voters
cannot all have small holdings.
_ Mikolajck’s Peasant Party in
Poland before the war opposed
_ the dictatorship of the generals
and colonels who now see in
_ his party their sole hope. —

[AT has happened to all
the- fascists in Germany?
Not those elgible for denazifi-
cation—whether in jail, in hid-
ing, or perfunctorily scrubbed
_ and allowed to go their ways in
the Western zones — but the
_Many-millioned masses who
_ swallowed, digested, distended
_ their minds and bellies on Hit-

ler’s ideas. i

Today they hustle glibly to
_ label themselves ‘democrats’ or
_ whatever else they think will
curry favor with the occupying
power, but they still have not
the slightest sense of responsi-
_ bility for Germany's misdeeds,
‘mor even any appreciation that

_ Germany did anything wrong.
They merely feel ill-used and
_ think that the world must come
to their rescue.

Optimists may cherish the il-
_-lusion that because Berlin’s vot-
ers landslide to/a ticket labelled

_ Social Democratic Party they

were voting for something cor-

responding to the election pro-

‘gram of the British Labor Party

as interpreted by Transport
_ House. Those who read, or

heard, their campaign propa-
- ganda with its chauvinistio in-
_ citement (especially against the
Russians, but against all the
_ Allies), its orgy of self-exculpa-
tion and self-pity, have no such
comfortable opinions.

wae : t

a struggle to transform the
_ 4 deformed in Europe has to

_ FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1947

Reconstruction in Euro
reestablishing industry

must be made over. American
ted against the new people’
crease the material hardshi
dren as these, they increas
& future for them in whic
be inflicted again.

The

and agriculture,

fight

for freedom

pe is not simply a question of.
Man _ himself

and British policies direc-
S$ democracies not only in-
bs inflicted upon such chil-
e the difficulties of building
h such hardships will never

Similarly, before throwing out
hats into the air at the fact
that Austria has had an elec” ‘
tion, it is worth asking one
self what is the attitude of thé |
majority party to the guilt show
ed by so many Austrians, and

whether it would not, at the
» veriest' opportunity, have Tt
"course delightedly to a new

Heirwehr to maintain in the g0v-
ernment a predominance it has
already lost in the electorate.
' Conversely, the promise for
Europe and the world implicit
in the new democracies depends
on the policies they are develop
ing and the degree to which a
, their peoples are becoming 25° —
sociated with them, not on the
degree to which their elections —
formally resemble those of Bri —
tain.
Conditions are different and
so electoral procedure must be
different. Not because there is
an ‘Eastern’ and a ‘Western
Cemocracy, but precisely be
Cause in essence there is only
one. But we have no party in
league with bandits in the
woods, no churches where Ppic-
‘tures of ‘ritual murders’ are dis-
Played, no archbishop ready t0
excuse pogroms in public pro-
nouncements, no emigre ex-ty- _
rants plotting sabotage and mur!-
der. Who can say that face
with such conditions, we should
grant in Britain such licehse 28 ©
the miscreants receive in P0-
land? Certainly we diq not at
times in our history when at all
comparable conditions existed.

; 9 Ro de
by : BRITISH and American policy
in Europe is ostensibly —
; founded th rage-
VOR bee of Se haiat : ianicetaeyt
the thwarting of ‘totalitarian
MONTAGU Communism.’ Translated into

practice, this brand of ‘democ-
.Yacy’ means authority for the
bearers of fascist ideology where
they are in a majority, oppor-
tunity for them to sabotage

take place not only in each pop-
ulation, but within the Demo-
cratic blocs, even within the
Communist parties themselves,
of all the- countries.

The true democrat must search
beneath the names for the real
processes and tendencies in op-
eration, define the infections
that must be cured in the pro-
cess of development towards a
democratic way of life—in the
field of public order, corruption,
dishonesty, partiality of the

_ courts, racial discrimination; in

the field of government, irre-

sponsibility, lack of participation

in shaping policy and adminis-
tration; in the field of recon-
struction, the wait-and-see atti-
tude, expectation of salvation
from some outside source; in
the field of foreign relations,
speculation on a new war, and
above all a war against the
Soviet Union.

Thus denazification, the pur-
suit and punishment of fascist
criminals and quislings, is an
essential act in the discrediting
of past ideologies and the
growth of a sense of responsi-
bility and law.

Control of foreign trade, plan-
ning of economy, are measures
necessary to cope with the enor-
mity of the tasks of reconstruc-
tion facing the majority of these
countries. Land reform, meas-
ures for adjusting uneven con-
sumption such as variant sys-
tems of goods distribution with
privileged access (the Coopera-

“tive in Hungary, the Economat

system in Rumania), are essen-
tial not merely for direct eco-

nomic reasons but as_instal-

ments of social justice without
which the sacrifices entailed in
reconstruction could. not be ob-

tained voluntarily.

There is a clear parallel here”
between many of the measures

undertaken in the new democ-
racies under stresses only less
Severe than war, and the con-

trols, rationing, taxation which,
without any abandonment of
capitalist conviction, the admin-
istrations of Britain, the U.S.
and Canada were obliged to in-
troduce for war purposes. _

There is a parallel even in
the political measures made ne-
cessary in Britain (where the
security-survival problem was
much more acute than in dis-
tant America) of coalition gov-
ernment, censorship, govern-
ment propaganda and the like.
The struggle is in actual fact
not one between Bolshevism and
anti-Bolshevism, between ‘Hast’
and “West’ as the cant pnruse
has it, but a struggle for gsur-
vival, growth and the eventual
victory of general humanistic
values and manners,

®

Tee the measures necessary
for general democratic ad-

- vance and to eradicate fascism

do in general advance socialism.
This is the class-root of the
Anglo- American diplomat - mili-
tary hierarchy’s opposition _to
them, of big ‘ business-promoted
policies and violent press cam-
paigns.

I have heard it quite serious-
ly argued by apologists for mili-
tary government in Germany
that the provisions of the Pots-
dam Agreement eliminating fas-
cists from politics, administra-
ion and business, and the pro-
visions for breaking the power
of the great armaments firms
and industrial trusts, were a
deep-laid plot of the Bolshev-
ists, put over on the soft and
unsuspecting Anglo-Saxons to
‘communize’ Germany, since,
strictly applied, these provisions
would remove all the brains of
the German bourgeoisie and the
principal barriers to Bolshev-
ism. The fact that not applying

‘them would preserve, installed

and undiscredited, the influences
that launched aggression on the
world, could scarcely be expect-

, bers and why, in such coun-

and programs Anglo-American

where they are not. Opposition
to ‘totalitarianism’ means at-’
tempts to break up every anti-
fascist bloc and particularly,
whether by advice or, as in the
part of Germany occupied by
the Western Allies, by legal
sanction, to split the working
class and prevent collaboration

ed to count as a menace to the
types who welcomed Munich as
an instrument of peace,

In the overwhelming majority
of cases the reforms and emeas-
ures proposed from the Left are
Similiarly unchallengable on ra- between Socialists and Commun-
tional grounds and commend ists.
themselves widely outside the
ranks of those professing them
(which is why, for example, the
Hungarian Communists enjoy
an authority, an economic lead-
ership, far beyond theiz num-

Today every politician of the
old regime is looking to British
and American military interven-
tion against Russia, anq the
atom bomb, to: restore him to
power.

Simple people in the villages
look askance at neighbors who
join the Communist Party, for,
as it is said Hungary: “When
the British and Americans come
every Communist will be hang-
ed.”

Anti-Semites laugh, for they
See plenty of evidence that their

ideas do not lack sympathy from
Allied higher-ups.

Fascists look and flee west
for protection. Every — black
marketeer in the Balkans is

tries as Italy, Hungary, Ruma-
nia, Czechoslovakia, there are
no current programatic differ-
ences between Communist and
Social Democratic parties. These
measures and programs infall-
ibly commend themselves to
democratic people both within
and outside the countries.

To discredit these measures —

agents district attention from
their content and concentrate it
cn relative irrelevancies. A fav-
orite tactic for this purpose is Teady at sight to clap a British
the exploitiation of elections. uniform on the back and greet

r) } it as a friend and brother in

ILECTIONS) are. part: of tha the name ee free enterprise.

_ apparatus of democracy, and It cannot be denied that Anglo-
not democracy itself. This tru- American policy has had and as
ism woulg hardly be worth re- far as it is continued will have
peating were it not for such lu- a certain success in delaying the
dicrous distortions as the elec- transformation of the deformed.
Hons hala Cin < the = Amerloan-\.' saute sia- hot this way to root
cecupied zone of Germany be- out fascist remnants. But it is
fore one single party had been 4 reflection of the policy con-
allowed a _hewspaper and with flicts at high level of the Big re
the Communist Party, in some Three. The expansion of the

areas, legalized only a few area of agreement between the
hours before the polling. Big Three, the consequence nar-

To estimate the moral and rowing and frustration of the_
Political regeneration of Ger- hopes of the war speculators,

Many, it is necessary to exam- will correspondingly increase —
ine what policies, what person- the role played by political ex-—
alities with what records, what perience in influencing the
ideas are gaining a following, minds of the people of the

not the physical circumstances
in which, under guidance of
military government, crosses
are made on papers.

freed countries. European de-
mocracy will grow, will advance,
but this is the only soil in which
it will grow peacefully.

‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 10 _