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PARTISAN REVIEW
masses; and since the issue of revolution has so far failed to take hold,
shall we therefore say that the outcome of the war is a matter of indif–
ference to us?
Moreover, it is wholly gratuitous to dismiss a bourgeois-democratic
victory as meaningless. While in itself. it will not bring socialism, it will,
on the other hand, bring us quite a few steps nearer "the only real solu–
tion'' by giving the labor movement an opportunity to take stock of itself,
to re-group its forces, and,
if
so minded, to resume the struggle for a fun–
damental reconstruction of society. Hitlerism in collapse would most
probably pull down with it the structure of fascism the world over, thus
eli~inating,
for a time at least, the most effective instrument of class and
national terror that modern imperialism has yet been able to devise. In
short, whereas a Nazi victory would bury the revolution for good, the
chances are that a Nazi defeat would recreate the conditions for progres–
sive action. At all events, we no longer have any real alternative to sup–
porting the democratic war·effort. Fascism is very strong; the accumu–
lated betrayals of Stalinism have caused millions of people to lose their
faith in the socialist program; and the Comintern and Social-Democratic
experiences have eaten up entire generations of revolutionary leaders and
activists. Under such circumstances if we can save anything substantial
through piecemeal solutions we ought to count ourselves fortunate indeed.
As for the idea that by going into a shooting war this country would
automatically turn fascist, that is one of those abysmal cliches that have
done infinite harm to the anti-fascist cause. After all, it is not Roosevelt
who now looms up as the potential Fuehrer but the isolationist Lindbergh;
and it is not the various interventionist committees but ·the America First
outfit which is today the leading the proto·fascist organization in the
United States. Having lost its character of a provincial movement, rooted
in the populist traditions of the farm-communities, isolationism has under–
gone a sea-change. It has been seized upon by the native fascists, who,
emerging from the back-alleys of the political world, have finally dis–
covered the true-blue "American" issue they have long been seeking. At
last they have come in contact with wealth, power, and respectability; and
if Hitler has his way in Europe they will have their way in America. This
danger, however, is overlooked by the authors of
1
the
10 Propositions,
who
are compelled by the peculiar logic of their political line to see in the
Roosevelt administration the mainstay of reaction.
Though formulated differently, with Luxemburgian interpolations,
Greenberg and Macdonald's program reduces itself in practice to the
~ninist
policy of revolutionary defeatism. But the trouble is that our
impetuous proposition-makers do not quite understand the conditions that
gave Lenin's policy its political stamina and consistency. Lenin saw
in
the defeat of one's own country the chance for revolutionary action.
In
this he was correct, for the collapse of the Eastern front led to the Feb·
ruary and October revolutions and, later, the collapse of the Central
