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THE COMING
AMERICAN
FASCISM
THE COMING
AMERICAN
FASCISM
By
LAWRENCE DENNIS
Author of “Is Capitalism Doomed!’'
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
New York and London
1 93 6
.7
, X>3G
IOQ-3
THE COMING AMERICAN FASCISM
Copyright, 1936, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission.
For information address
Harper & Brothers
FIRST EDITION
L-K
CONTENTS
I. The Crisis of a System: It Won’t Work
II. Can We Return to the Pre-war Bases?
*4
III. Can We Resume Consumption Financ¬
ing on Credit?
2-7
IV. Can the System Carry Perpetual De¬
pression? 40
V. Can We Reorganize under the Present
System?
54
VI. Reduce Debt to Allow New Financing 68
VII. A Debtless Economy the Ideal Formula
79
VIII. Can We Restore Flexibility without
Planning? 89
IX. Planning: A Problem in Value Choices 104
X. Planning: The Force Factor 116
XI. State Absolutism 130
XII. The Dictatorship of Economic Necessity
*39
XIII. The National Plan: An Expression of
the Popular Will x49
XIV. Why Fascism Instead of Communism? 1:63
XV. Enlarging the Market: A Financial
Problem 182.
XVI. Control: The Problem of Political Or¬
ganization *97
Y
7
CONTENTS
VI
XVII.
Control: Making Good Citizens 2.1 i
XVIII.
The Inevitability of the Leadership of
the Elite 2.2.9
XIX. 244
The Elite Assume Responsibility
XX. 2.58
Fascism and Woman
XXI.
The Fascist Idea of National Interest
in Foreign Relations irjo
XXII. Objectives in Foreign Relations l8i
XXIII. 197
The Party; Organization for Action
Index 309
INTRODUCTION
This book is addressed to the thoughtful who are not fright¬
ened by new and unpopular terms and concepts. If liberal
capitalism is doomed, a fight for a lost cause will impose on
mankind the most futile sort of suffering. The British Mer¬
cantilist System of the 18th Century and the Soudiern Planter-
Slavery System of the pre-industrial-revolution period each
fought on American soil an utterly futile and foolish war to
save what was doomed by the inevitable and irresistible trend
of social changes. If the present system, or more particularly,
those features of it which are challenged by current trends be
doomed, the longer and harder the fight waged to preserve it,
the greater will be the suffering and losses of the people.
Assuming that the old system is doomed, the basic premise of
this book and an assumption which current events surely render
probable enough to be entertained as an hypothesis in explora¬
tory thinking about the near future, What are the possible
alternatives to ultimate social disintegration and chaos? Most
intelligent observers of the changing scene, whatever their per¬
sonal preferences and prejudices, are agreed that, in the event
the present system is not soon made to work better, the alter¬
natives fall into the broad classifications of fascism or com¬
munism.
Precise definition of these two terms, now on every one’s
lips, should give us little concern. Officially, communism is
whatever the latest encyclical from Moscow says it is, while the
fascism of every fascist country is whatever its authorized fascist
exponents proclaim it to be. Actually, of course, terms like
communism and fascism, just as terms like Christianity, Ameri¬
canism, or due process of law, must mean many different and
often mutually exclusive things to different people. It is always
possible to sustain two or more sides to an argument about the
precise meaning of terms which, in the nature of things, can-
vii
INTRODUCTION
Vlll
not have a fixed definition like that of an English yard or a
French metre. Still, if we are to have intellectual discourse, we
must use terms like Christianity, fascism, socialism and so
forth, in the expectation that other parties to the discussion will
accept such terms in the sense in which they have come to be
currently used and in the broad and almost undefinable sense in
which we accordingly use them. Naturally, if a party to the
discussion refuses to accept a term in a sense acceptable to the
other parties, discussion must end.
In the case of the term fascism as applied to a social scheme
yet to be developed in this country or as a term applied to the
mere advocacy of such a scheme, it should be clear that no argu¬
ment about the correct use of the term fascism can now be
settled by an appeal to authority. Certainly Signor Mussolini,
Herr Hitler or an American college professor who has written
a book against fascism cannot be appealed to as an authority
to define what fascism for America would be like. Obviously
the official definition given the coming American fascism will
be that of its authorized party exponents. This definition is not
likely to call the American fascism by that name. It is much
more likely to include an emphatic denial that the new Ameri¬
can fascism is fascism. And it is fairly certain, if it follows the
precedents of other important party platforms and propaganda,
to say that the official American fascism, probably called by
another name, is a great many things which it clearly is not.
This book is essentially one man’s definition of what a desir¬
able fascism, in his way of thinking, would be like. For obvious
reasons, it cannot be a definition of the future American
fascism, called by that or any other name. In discussing future
social developments we can talk to some point about desirable
and undesirable possibilities and probabilities. As these are
largely matters of speculation and deduction from the limited
field of the known to the unlimited field of the unknown and
future unknowable, such discussions cannot deal in certainties
nor can they to any good purpose give much time to questions
of pure terminology respecting what admittedly lies still in the
womb of time.
