That’s more or less what I was getting at.
Orwell in The Lion and the Unicorn complains that Britain’s production of war materiel badly lagged Germany’s. And he lays the blame on the fact that Britain was not able to mobilize the heavy industry as effectively because they were not as “socialist” as Germany was.
All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern scale you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to armaments, which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or eight thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread. Clearly you can’t have many bombing planes without lowering the national standard of life. It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But in Chamberlain’s England the transition could not be made. The rich would not face the necessary taxation, and while the rich are still visibly rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either. Moreover, so long as profit was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive to change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessman’s first duty is to his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it pays better to manufacture motor cars. To prevent war material from reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell in the highest market is a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac — and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your throat with. But it was ‘good business’...... And while England in the moment of disaster proved to be short of every war material except ships, it is not recorded that there was any shortage of motor cars, fur coats, gramophones, lipstick, chocolates or silk stockings. And dare anyone pretend that the same tug-of-war between private profit and public necessity is not still continuing? England fights for her life, but business must fight for profits. You can hardly open a newspaper without seeing the two contradictory processes happening side by side. On the very same page you will find the Government urging you to save and the seller of some useless luxury urging you to spend. Lend to Defend, but Guinness is Good for You. Buy a Spitfire, but also buy Haig and Haig, Pond's Face Cream and Black Magic Chocolates.
[Meanwhile, he remarks of Germany: “In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen”.]
And indeed it was true. A country in which the government could not quickly commandeer industrial production and direct it towards military effort would crumble; and a country where the “capitalists”, as a class, were too strong would suffer from this problem. Government directing industry in the national interest — whether done by the USA or Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia — sounds quite “socialist” to me. Britain survived because, unlike France, she had the Channel to defend her.
And indeed the United States was able to muster a remarkable military production effort — though we also had more time than anyone else. If the United States had shared a land border with Nazi Germany, probably we would have suffered to even a greater degree than Soviet Russia, having had a relatively small and inexperienced army at the beginning of the war. And we did fairly poorly in our first battles against Germany in North Africa, after all — it was only after a bit of time that the United States army became a really effective fighting force.
