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PARTISAN REVIEW
ever it succeeded in demonstrating its unity and militancy. At any
rate, considering the difficulties that have been encountered in win–
ning the proletariat to socialism, it seems likely that other strata
would prove even less susceptible to such appeals.
The rejection of such proposals, however, should not deter
Marxists from examining anew their estimate of the proletariat,
particularly in its relation to its parties and leaders. Their views
in
this matter suffer, we think, from abstraction and from teleological
illusions. Instead of using the historical experience of the last few
decades to re-examine the problem of leader.ship, most of them
still accept, for example, Lenin's theory of a "vanguard" of pro–
f essional revolutionists as a reliable instrument of the masses. But
this theory of party-organization has failed to stand up againslthe
criticism of its opponents; and whatever its rationale may have
been prior to the emergence of Stalinism and
fas~ism,
at present
it can be seen that it is not immune to totalitarian ideas and prac–
tices. One cannot sympathize with Trotsky's desire to generalize
the
org~nizational
forms produced by the exigencies of the Russian
situation into a code of laws to be applied in all countries and at
all times. The question of leadership has become so central that
it
requires a complete theoretical overhauling.
RENEWAL
AND REVISION
Marxism cannot grow as a science and art of
the social revolution if it resists renewal and
revision. Yes, it is certainly true that most
attempts at revision, in this period no less than in the past, have
been attempts to emasculate rather to invigorate Marxist thought;
but this does not mean that no other kind of revision is pos–
sible; nor does it justify the deep-seated hostility of the ortho–
dox to any challenge of the old formulas. That which is dead must
be pronounced dead and given a decent burial, so that which is
alive might all the more efficiently assert its powers and values.
Consider, for example, the pitiful efforts of the old-time theoreti–
cians to defend the principles of dialectical materialism against the
onslaughts of scientifically-minded crites, such as Sidney Hook and
J
ames Burnham. This controversy proved, we think, that the dialec–
tic is in no sense subject to experimental verification and that the
statements made in its behalf are metaphysical through and
through. In the writings of the classic Marxists it functions not as
