10 PROPOSITIONS AND 8 ERRORS
505
cns1s a zero-hour revolution in London would
be
a futile gesture of
despair. Another variant: a change of government is possible in case
Churchill bungles some extremely important campaign; the Labor Party
might then be charged with exclusive responsibility for the conduct of the
war, but this is a far cry from the classic Marxist uprising that our left–
wing irreconcilables have in mind. As for the prospect of an American
revolution in the near future, the logic of a sanguine outlook in this
respect escapes me altogether.
The Fatal Lack
But throughout Greenberg and Macdonald assume that their program
is in no sense invalidated by the absence of an organized movement to
shape and lead such a revolution. Proposition No.9 reads: "There exists
today no organized leadership for such a revolutionary policy as we
advocate. But, while this is a serious lack, it is not a fatal one. New
organizational forms must and will be found." Now I am not in the least
impressed by the categorical phrase, "must and will be found.'' During
the past decade we have all encountered this rhetoric of confidence too
often in Marxist brochures to mistake it for anything more than a ritual–
istic invocation, a kind of
leitmotiv
of History on the March. What is
fatal, in my opinion, is precisely this lack of a revolutionary movement.
(For in this article I .am not arguing against a revolutionary policy in
principle; I am arguing that in the absence of a revolutionary movement
and also because certain other essential conditions are wanting such a
policy is illusory.) The fascists are not going to withhold their blows
until the leftists have finally discovered the "new organizational forms"
and filled them with the proper political content. It's all very well to
write: "Parties sometimes make history, but history also makes parties."
Yes, but in our epoch history has undone before our very eyes quite a
number of parties-the degeneration of the Comintern is one example
and the breakup of the Fourth International into splinter groups is an–
other. At bottom all that Greenberg and Macdonald are really saying is
that if a revolutionary party existed it would not fail to act in a revolu–
tionary manner. But that is a tautology, not an insight.
In Proposition No. 9 it is further assumed that the American workers
are now ready to undertake a struggle for socialism and all that remains
to be solved is the seemingly 'technical' problem of leadership. But the
workers are by no means ready, nor is leadership by and large a 'technical'
problem. It is closely related, rather, to our estimate of the political
capacities of the workers as a class and to our whole conception of the
tasks and functions of a revolutionary vanguard. Do Greenberg and Mac–
donald still believe in the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
for instance, and do they still see in this class the kind of social instru–
ment that the founders of Marxism saw in it. It is meaningless to say, as
they do, that we want a "loose" party instead of a tight one on the Bolshe–
vik model. Loose or tight, what are the working principles and organiza–
tional methods of this party?
