One of the most significant and authoritative contributions to the philosophy of the New Deal is to be found in a pamphlet by Mr. Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, which was released this week. As one of the men closest to the President, whatever Mr. Wallace has to say carries particular weight, and in this statement he has a great deal to say. It is couched in broad and general terms, and it is, unless I am greatly mistaken, the clearest adumbration of what Mr. Roosevelt's future policy, foreign as well as domestic, is going to be, that has yet appeared.
It is refreshing to find Mr. Wallace frankly recognizing the great problem which now confronts America along with the rest of the world, and the full implications of which no thinking man can avoid facing. This problem, of course, is--and to state it sounds almost like a truism--whether we are to embrace economic nationalism, or embark on a policy of vigorous internationalism with all that that implies, or merely to continue drifting. Wallace himself is in favor of a policy of internationalism, but he admits that it is extremely likely that it could succeed. We will then, he says, be forced into economic nationalism; and the economic nationalism as it is defined by Mr. Wallace bears a more than superficial resemblance to Fascism. The government must exercise the most rigid supervision over industry as a matter of course, and in addition to this agriculture will be subjected to just as close a regulation; we must go so far that "it may be necessary to have compulsory control of marketing, licensing of plowed land, and base and surplus quotas for every farmer for every product for each month in the year." No one possessed of any foresight could doubt that this would be the eventual end of the Roosevelt programme; but it is highly significant that it has been officially promulgated by one of the President's closest advisers.
Perhaps the important thing that Mr. Wallace has to say is his virtual confession that nineteenth century liberalism along with its dominant idea, freedom of expression, will have to be abandoned; he says that we must submit to "a completely army-like, nationalist discipline even in peace time," and this also requires "a certain degree of regimental opinion." In short adoption of the new order means the definite and final end of democracy as anything but a myth and a dream.
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Mr. Wallace by his own confession is not in sympathy with these trends which be believes to be inevitable; as a liberal be must resent the collapse of the system of liberal capitalism. But there is nothing that can be done about it and while the methods which he advocates are anathema to him, it is evident that they must be utilized as a means of survival.
What Mr. Wallace does not recognize, however, is that in the very liberalism which is about to fall are contained the germs which are causing that fall; for liberalism, as Professor Babbitt has pointed out contains the same essential fallacy that characterizes the rest of Ronsseauistic ideas. Nationalism and it is almost synonymous with liberalism being Ronsseauistic and Romantic in its origins, is fundamentally contradictory; that is to say that the ideals contained in the nationalist conception are inevitably overwhelmed by the real, just as Rousseau after a long essay on the beauty of pure childhood announces that he has just placed one of his children in an orphanage. In the same way nationalism starts as the doctrine of the brotherhood of man and finally culminates in integral Fascism and inevitable war.
While Mr. Wallace may be mistaken as to the philosophic cause of the movement which he deplores, he is correct in assuming that this country must follow the lead of the rest of the world and join in it; and the programme of Mr. Roosevelt is, I think, the best means of accomplishing the inevitable and unavoidable, for it at least holds out some hope of achieving the economic nationalism which Mr. Keynes believes will be eventually beneficial; best of all there is some hope that under Roosevelt we may for the present, anyway, steer clear of the emotional concomitants of economic nationalism which result in Fascism of the Hitler type. NEMO.
