504
PARTISAN REVIEW
Churchill or
~ven
the semblance of an ultimate program, all of occupied
.Europe is in a state of latent revolt. No sooner did the German setbacks
in Russia become known than the conquered r ations were swept by a
wave of sabotage, arson, terrorism, and guerrilla warfare. Clearly, what
the masses in the conquered countries find ir tolerable is precisely the
Nazi occupation, and they do not need to be artificially pr_ovided by the
British with reasons for hating their alien masters. Their suffering in the
hands of the Nazis is a sufficient incitement to hatred and, should the
opportunity come at last, to armed rebellion. But if these oppressed
peoples finally regain their national independence, they will doubtless
learn from their own experience that there is no road back to the pre–
Hitler world-and one can expect that at this historical turning-point
socialism will again become a concrete issue. This whole process, how–
ever, must be lived through: the consciousness of the masses knows of no
short cuts.
The Bonanza of a rrpeaceful" Revolution
To speak seriously of a revolution without taking into account the
very real hazards of a civil war is the height of political frivolity. But it
is exactly to such frivolity that Greenberg and Macdonald are driven
when they actually go so far as to "promise," as
it
were, that a social revo–
lution in England or America, if it comes at all during this war, "would
probably be short and relatively peaceful." Nor would it "necessarily"
open the gates to Hitler through a
belated
civil war, they claim. Not nec–
essarily, to be sure, but it is quite likely that in case of a grave revolu–
tionary threat the British rulers would know how to strike a bargain with
Hitler at the expense of the rebels. At any rate, this is not a matter to be
dismissed airily, by means of a frail historical analogy with the French
Revolution, which ran its course under totally different circumstances. A
ruthlessly logical revolutionary would openly accept the risk of a civil
war and the consequent danger of "opening the gates" to the foreign
enemy; but Greenberg and Macdonald want to have their cake and eat
it too.
This blithely optimistic theory of a " short and relatively peaceful
revolution" anticipates that the ruling class would be "so discredited by
its military incapacity and so demoralized by its own mistakes as to
be
unable to offer serious resistance for some time to come." But this is pure
speculation, and one cannot build a realistic policy on the basis of epi–
sodic contingencies. Do you want the British workers, then, to sabotage
the war-effort of the Churchill government, thus exposing themselves to
mortal danger, in order to prepare for a problematical situation that
might never arise? Such a course of action might be worthwhile if there
were little to choose between Hitlerism and the existing order in Britain;
but this primary condition of a Leninist anti·war strategy is no longer
available. A militarily decisive and demoralizing defeat for the British
would most probably be followed by a successful invasion, and in such a
