THIS QUARTER
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sort of hollow victory over a prostrate and inferior foe that the
Fascist legions won in Ethiopia. And like the Ethiopian campaign,
its
chief utility was for internal consumption to soothe the grum–
bling masses and to inflate a little the collapsed morale of the
Red Army.
As for world revolution, it is noticeable that the Third Inter–
national, in its current anti-war phase, has not dared to raise any–
where the classic Leninist slogan, the only possible basis for a
revolutionary opposition to war: Tum the imperialist war ·into
civil war! The Kremlin is no more anxious for world revolution
than is Downing Street or the White House.
But Trotsky propounds the final and unanswerable question:
"If
the Kremlin wants to foment world revolution, how could it
sacrifice its influence over the international working class for the
sake of occupying some border territories?" "Eleven million more
people enjoy socialism!" exults the
New Masses.
But what of the
hundreds of millions of French and English and Indian and
Chinese and American and German and Italian and other workeri
throughout the world whose faith in socialism has received this
ultimate betrayal by the Kremlin gang and its agents throughout
the world? The exposure of Stalinism as the implacable enemy of
the international working class had to come sooner or later, and it
will
be, in the long run, a healthy and progressive development. But
the immediate effects are shattering and demoralizing. The labor
and socialist movement the world over has hardly been in a century
in
such a state of collapse as today. For this tragic situation the
Kremlin and its dupes and agents-the Browders and Pollitts and
Thorezes, the Lamonts and Stracheys and Cowleys and Lemers and
Hickses and Schumanns and Brouns-must bear full responsibility.
Some of these have already broken with Moscow, though for the
most
part in a hypocritical and disingenuous way, and more will
ijo so in the future. Those who keep silent or who continue to sup–
port
the policies of the Third International must from now on be
called bluntly what they are: agents of the Kremlin and, for the
present at least, of Hitler.
III.
The shift of Stalin to the side of Germany was temporarily
embarrassing to the liberals who had so long accepted his regime
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a mainstay of the "democratic" front. But already they are
