It might have been expected that the war would have helped to disabuse peoples minds of some of the grossest forms of ignorance concerning the nature of Socialism and its utter incompatibility with forms of dictatorship-capitalism such as those in Germany and Italy. Yet we still see writers who claim to be well-informed perpetrating the old falsehoods.
Miss Margaret Cole, writing in the Tribune (August 30th. 1940), about the modernising of Turkey under the late Kemal Ataturk. credits him with seeing the need "to establish the amount of totalitarianism" or "Socialism"—call it what you will—which is imperative to the twentieth century.
"This necessity," she says, "has been demonstrated in Italy, Germany and Russia; under stress of war it is being demonstrated in this country and in France . . ."
Miss Cole claims to be a Socialist and the Tribune claims to be a Socialist Journal, yet they can tell their readers that “totalitarianism" and "Socialism" are much alike, merely a matter of names!
Then in the Sunday Express (August 18th, 1940), an article on the Nazi Leader. Dr. Ley, says that if Germany won the war "Ley would go down in history as the greatest Socialist of the new and greater Germany."
But let us say once more that Socialism does not mean that wages are paid by the State instead of by the employer. It means a system of society in which there is no wages system at all.
It is people like the Labour Party who have fostered these erroneous notions of Socialism. What they really mean is "State Capitalism”.
(From the Socialist Standard, October 1940.)
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