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ists and the "still existent bourgeois democratic groups" (what! not
finally finished?) they "endeavor to view problems, _not only
~~om
the
point of view of a particular trade, but rather on a natiOnal scale.
The ambiguity of Democracy thus provides Rosenberg with a theory
of Revolutionary Socialism that should prove highly satisfying to Stalin's
up-to-date Americans. The peoples' rebellions of early capitalism are held
up as models for modern socialist action, and the bourgeois republics that
arose on their backs are treat"'d as the main agencies for freedom and
Socialism. The same equivocation also promotes the thesis that socialism,
as the continuator of revolutionary Democracy, ought to ally itself in
1939 with the governments of England, France, the U.S., and the U.S.S.R.
for action against Germany and Italy. It is through identifying these States
with the revolutionary mass movements of 1848 that this "Marxist" is able
to find a hopeful omen for the working class in the League of Nations'
sanctions against Italy in 1935, "the first sign of serious international
democratic solidarity since 1849." (This solidarity, Dr. Rosenberg com·
plains, failed chiefly because "the great English capitalists" could not
"see why they should sacrifice their wealth and their lives [sic] on the side
of the workers in a world struggle between fascism and social democ·
racy.") While the immortality of revolutionary Democracy is further
demonstrated in the "astounding stability", based upon "a class alliance
in the spirit of the social democracy of 1848," of the Czechoslovakian
democratic Republic! (The Preface to the American edition written after
Munich takes this hack.)
It
is
a Marxist principle that the working class, when its political
actions express its own class interests, draws behind it the city and rural
poor as well as a section of the lower bourgeoisie; so that under advanced
industrial conditions re"tolutionary Democracy, now composed overwhelm·
ingly of class conscious proletarians, goes over necessarily into Socialism.
By his sly shift in historical meanings, Rosenberg converts this principle
of "permanent revolution" into that of coalition governments and the
Popular Front. Yet world history since 1848 proves that if the working
class merges, "the people" will have no leadership, since the working class
alone can furnish the next step. Thus the Spanish "democratic front" is
as surely defeated as the "isolated" working class parties of Germany–
getting together is no substitute for a program.
As Democracy becomes more and more dependent upon the acts of
the working class, the thesis of Rosa Luxemburg against the reformists
casts a hurniniZ light upon the true relation between Democracy and Social–
ism today: "The solution is quite simple: from the fact that bourgeois
liberalism gave up the ghost from fear of the rising labor movement and
of its goal, it follows that the socialist labor movement is and can he the
only support of Democracy; and that the fate of Socialism does not
depend on bourgeois Democracy hut, on the contrary, the fate of demo·
cratic development depends on the socialist movement. Democracy does
not acquire greater chances of life in the degree that the workers give up
