COMMUNISM existed in theory long before it existed in fact; perhaps it is the greatest single strength of Fascism that it reversed the process. Those writings of Marx and Engels which were so productive of enthusiasm has another and a less fortunate effect; they crystallized an opposition to the ideal which went to reinforce the more obvious opposition to its practice. Fascism labours under no such handicap. Its critics are never sure that they are attacking the concept rather than a mere imperfect application of it; and its high priests will appoint neither prophet nor creed to dispel a confusion that is so convenient.

Mr. Strachey, who analyzed the political evolution of the British in "The Coming Struggle for Power," has here extended his scope to an examination of the bases upon which Fascism and its success in Europe rest. For him the Fascist movement is, wholly and unequivocally, an attempt to preserve Capitalism by violence. To support this view, he has outlined once more the lines along which the class struggle is waged, through "the century of the great hope" to the present period of frustration and despair. It is his thesis that the progressive parties, Labour in England and the Social Democrats in Germany, have been unwilling to face the implications of their own doctrine at the time when that doctrine might most opportunely be materialized.

A man may approach a precipice gradually, and the working class movement can also be gradual up to a certain point, demanding and receiving from a prosperous capitalism a number of concessions both important and valuable. But these concessions can endure only so long as the capitalists can grant them without injury to themselves, and when their economic structure threatens to contract, the privileges won by long decades of agitation must be withdrawn.

In this withdrawal Labour and the Social Democrats concurred. If they had refused to do so, private ownership, the real issue of the class struggle, would have been clarified and its outcome hastened. To such an ordeal the progressive parties did not wish to commit themselves, and the capitalists of Germany and Italy took advantage of their hesitancy to install a regime of violent social reaction. Since the change was not a revolutionary transfer, but merely an assertion by the governing classes of their own actual power, it was not difficult to enlist, for the purpose, the support of a great number of the common people dependent on them.

As late as 1931, Mr. Strachey was a follower of Sir Oswald Mosley, the avowed leader of Fascism in England, and his knowledge of British social conditions is deep and intimate. From it he argues that desperate capitalism will use the Fascist instrument in Great Britain, and he can see no reason to suppose that it will not be similarly applied in the United States. Nor, if his analysis of the instrument be correct, is there any reason to suppose so. What has made capitalism, in the words of G.K. Chesterton "not only a discredited ethic but a bankrupt business" is a technical advance safe only under social ownership, and that advance has been operative even more in these countries than in Germany or Italy. Mussolini and Hitler found their work easier through the existence of large peasant classes, and these classes have no counterpart here or in Great Britain. But the reaction cannot long remain in abeyance, and even when all the human values of Graham Wallas have been given their due weight, we must finally speak in terms of movements and venctions.

The solution offered by Mr. Strachey is obvious enough; when interests are too vital for compromise, each side must mobilize its forces and see the struggle through to its conclusion. If the workers are disunited, and the present diffusion of ownership has militated against their unity, Fascism must be the outcome. Mr. Strachey believes that through Fascism the workers will be united for revolution; and though their work will be rendered difficult by the Fascist abolition of the instruments of democracy, the victory must ultimately be theirs. But an ultimate victory may easily become a Pyrrhie one.