436
PARTISAN REVIEW
What makes this difference worth remarking is that the followers of
Lenin and Trotsky-like little men, aping the externals of those they fol·
low-have cultivated in themselves that narrowness which passes for self·
oblivious devotion, that harshness in personal relations and above all that
desolating incapacity for experience which have become the hallmarks and
standard traits of the Communist "professional revolutionary." These
men have served well as organizers and agitators, they have shown adniir·
able energy, devotion and capacity for self-sacrifice; but as political
leaders in the larger sense they have been failures in every case and every·
where. Alas for any movement led by incomplete men. This is the liabil:
ity Bolshevism bmught the socialist movement. And it is this cultivated
and trained narrowness, this system which frightens away imagination and
spontaneity that is as much responsible as the stultifying smugness and
pettiness of the social democrats for the present plight of the working
class.
. . . Rosa Luxemburg's "teachings" are as cogent as her personal
example at the present moment. They form the only body of post·Marxist
revolutionary doctrine that can be counterposed to Leninism. Such a
counterpoise is greatly needed. Lenin's organizational principles, which
are all that Stalin has preserved in idea of the October revolution, have
proved inadequate to the problems of the socialist revolution in the
West. Lenin, whether he admitted it or not, developed Bolshevism as a
solution primarily to the Russian situation. Naturally, that was where his
attention was focu.ssed. Nor did he, I think, know the West intimately
enough (witness his illusions prior to 1914 about Kautsky and the Ger·
man Social Democracy) . Rosa Luxemburg, on the other hand, was a
product of Poland, which even under Russia had its face turned more to
the West than to the East, and was more advanced industrially than Rus·
sia itself. Her close association with the German socialist movement .made
it clear to her that the workers of the West would go into action effec·
tively only under organizational forms which, by allowing the maximum
democracy to the rank and file, insured the instantaneous sensitivity of
the revolutionary leadership to the moods of the masses. There are, of
course, serious liabilities in such organizational forms. But there are
equally serious and more vicious liabilities in those of Lenin.
It
behovea
us today to attack the problem with as much attention to what Rosa
Luxemburg said as to what Lenin said. The perfect solution will not
be
found, but some solution must be.
CLEMENT GREENBERG
THE WORLD BATTLE
BATTLE FOR THE WORLD. By Max Werner (translated by Heinz
and
Ruth Norden). Modern Age Books.
$3.00
The first three-quarters of
Battle for
the
World
presents perhaps the
most searching and intelligent survey of the War to date. Werner is not
