10 PROPOSITIONS AND 8 ERRORS
501
guarding their interests have been successfully exposed to disintegrating
propaganda. Plainly no such prerequisites exist, nor is there any real
evidence that they are
in
process of formation, either in the United States
or in Britain. And this being the case, the categorical "must" employed
in
the
10 Propositions
reduces itself to mere braggadocio.
Both the revolutionaries by class-war and the revolutionaries by
"consent" approach situations abstractly, in terms of what is uncondi–
tionally desirable, not
in
terms of what can actually be accomplished
within a given period. And in this connection I would like to quote the
concluding sentences from Macdonald's review (September-October issue)
of Francis Williams' book,
War by Re-volution.
"Mr. Williams' book was
published a year ago," Macdonald writes tauntingly. "India is still not
free, the British government has moved steadily to the right, and, instead
of the democratic manifesto he urges on Mr. Churchill, we have the famous
Eight Points. To Mr. Williams must be addressed the question: how
much longer can you continue to believe that Messrs. Churchill and
Roosevelt are on your team?" This is surely correct. By the same token,
however, one can address a similar question to Macdonald. Since the war
began, we must say to him, you have advocated the policies embodied in
the
10 Propositions.
Now, after two years, can you cite a single political
turn of any significance that substantiates your expectations? Is it not
true that the labor movement here as in England, especially now that the
Stalinists have returned to the fold, is more than ever committed to sup–
p orting the war-effort of Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt? Politics is a
r.-ame ruled by empirical considerations.
If
it is quite fair to subject Mr.
Williams' notions to the test of reality, why not test your own in the
same manner?
Today's War and Yesterday's Strategy
Greenberg and Macdonald's first two propositions declare that (l)
"This war is 'different' from the last one'' and (2) that "Fascism is less
desirable than democratic capitalism." The Kaiser's victory, they con–
tend, "would not have meant a
brealc
in our civilization. Hitler's would."
Agreed. But the remaining eight propositions, which seem to me an
amalgam of Leninist and Luxemburgian strategies of the last war literally
applied to this one, tend to cancel out, if not altogether to refute, the first
two. It appears that the openinG gambit-"this war is different"-is a
mere argumentative concession leading to no revision of policy. Take
proposition No. 3: "The issue-not war but revolution." Even winning
the war, they write,
~ill
not advance us. "one step nearer the only real
solution, which is to deflect the current of history from fascism to social–
ism. In the war or out of it, lhe United States faces only one future under
capitalism: fascism." Here we have a series of bald assertions that wholly
ignore the element of time, which is the one element one can least afford
to overlook in political calculations. Greenberg and Macdonald forget
that an issue becomes real only ir:sofar as it takes hold of the mind of the
