COMMENT
i79
scientific method but as a source of metaphors relating to the ideas
of change and transformation, and as a peculiar and often quite
effective syntax of dramatic discourse.
To deprive Marxism of the cosmological security which the
dialectic seemed to provide is not at all to impair its strength, as
its fundamentalist defenders would have us believe. Its assets still
far exceed its liabilities: it remains the greatest contribution to
social science and to the technique of social action made in modern
times. The materialist interpretation of history (in its larger
aspects, and not necessarily in all its applications by indi–
vidual Marxists), the theory of the class struggle, of the state, of
bourgeois economy, of imperialist conflicts, the theory and strategy
of internationalism, the analysis of reformist movements-all these
have retained their vitality, and though they can bear amplifica.
tion-and correction they are still as valid today as they were yes–
terday_ The liabilities of Marxism, on the other hand, are also
not a few in number; and these include, in our opinion, not only
the dialectic and the defective concept of the mass-leadership rela–
tion, but likewise its "history is on our side" mysticism, the fetish–
ism of economy which it appears to encourage among its adherents,
and the theory of the dictatorship of the preletariat in its Bolshevik
incarnation insofar as it negates the forms and traditions of democ–
racy_ Here is diseased tissue which it is not enough merely to cut
away. The job of replacing it must be approached creatively, not
as a means of appeasing the timorous and the derelict.
MARX AND LENIN
And now, having put in a strong plea for reo
~APEGOATS
valuation, let us see what enlightenment, if
any, is to be derived from some of the more
recent "revaluers." For this purpose we read
with care Lewis Corey's articles in
The Nation,
to which we have
already alluded, and Max Eastman's new volume,
Stalin's Russia
BJUl
the
Crisis in Socialism.
Well, we were not a bit enlightened;
and we cannot but report that these particular revisionist elforts
strike us as being no less barren than the works of the most be–
nighted sectarians. Corey and Eastman are not really investigating
Marxilim; what they are doing is taking out their disappointment
with the results of the Russian Revolution in punitive expeditions
against Marx and Lenin.
