COMMENT
117
procedure, divorcing as it does the mass from its leadership, seems
to us to beg the question. Moreover, we detect in Trotsky's formu–
lation a kind of back-handed admission that the working class is
intrinsically lacking in sufficient independence and political self–
definition to check and control its leadership. Such an idea has
enormous implications, and if there is any truth in it, why not say
80
openly, so as to prepare the way for introducing into the Marx–
ist estimate of this class the necessary revision or modification
~
It
is time for Marxists to be rid of the absurd convention, essentially
moralistic and in part a carryover from Christian sentimentality
about the "meek and lowly," that plain speaking about the prole–
tariat is somehow indecorous,
if
not actually impermissible. In its
own right the proletariat represents no ideals-it is only in its role
as a dynamic and militant force in the struggle to liberate human–
ity
that values can be attached to it.
That the leaders of the Second and Third Internationals be–
trayed the revolution is incontestable. Yet the question that must
he
answered is this: How is it that these false leaders succeed in
duping the workers, not once, but over and over again? Is it not
true that, historically speaking, every class gets the kind of leader–
ship it deserves? Why do the workers; presumably the revolu–
tionary class, so consistently entrust their fate to non-revolutionary
and even counter-revolutionary organizations and thus put them–
selves into the position of being betrayed? No doubt, in each
instance it is possible to advance apparently objective reasons that
will
accowlt for their failure to repudiate the "misleaders." Upon
examination, however, these "objective" reasons usually turn out
to be nothing more than elaborate apologies for the subjective
limitations of' the workers.
This problem is not being raised here because we have dis–
covered the secret of its solution; nor are we raising it because we
wish to deny revolutionary status to the working class. On the
contrary, we believe that if socialism is ever achieved, it will be
first and foremost the workers who will achieve it. We wholly
disagree with Lewis Corey's proposal, as expressed some months
ago in
The Nation,
that in order to avoid alienating other strata of
the populati(m radicals should drop their emphasis on the prole–
tariat as the "carrier of socialism." It is
spiritles~
advice, for it
ignores the fact that this class has not been in want of allies when-
