506
PARTISAN REVIETI'
No, what has been lost in the past two decades through an uninter–
rupted series of blunders, betrayals, and defeats cannot so easily be
regained. Oracular appeals to history and a mere show of will on the part
of a few literary intransigents will avail us nothing. Life is running so
low in the revolutionary movement that only a top to bottom transforma–
tion, on a world scale, of our entire moral and political environment can
possibly bring about its recovery. In the meantime let us not lull our·
selves with illusions about the war-aims of the bourgeois democracies on
the one hand, or about the ability of the workers to fulfill the Marxist
prophecies on the· other. I am not suggesting that Greenberg and Mac–
donald and their political friends should rush to join the war-party.
Doubtless they have other things to do. In a sense this war, even if it
accomplishes the destruction of fascism, is not yet
our
war. But this fact
in itself does not permit us to take for granted that the salvation of man–
kind has been entrusted to us and that we alone know how to achieve it.
REPLY BY GREENBERG AND MACDONALD
Without attempting to match rhetoric with our fellow editor, we
want to make the following points.
1.
Distortions of our position:
1. Rahv identifies our position with Lenin's revolutionary defeatism,
and claims we view the outcome of the war with indifference. On the
contrary, we emphasize our concern with beating Hitler and fascism; we
present socialism as the means; and our "transitional demands" show con–
cretely the first steps to be taken.
If
this is "Leninism," Lenin never heard
about it. The propositions trace their paternity rather to Rosa Luxem–
burg's "revolutionary defensism."
2.
It
is not true that we claim that "the- social revolution is around
the corner," or that we expect Churchill to be overthrown by "a classic
Marxist uprising" (which Rahv apparently misconceives as a sudden,
violent putsch rather than a social process). There is no evidence for
either statement in the propositions. We agree with Orwell that there was
a "revolutionary situation" in
Engl~nd
after Dunkirk, and we can imagine
this happening again. While we hold no fixed conceptions as to how the
revolution is to be effected, we are certain that it will not be done by sup·
porting Roosevelt-Churchill.
3. Rahv charges we "assume" the American workingclass is ready to
fight for socialism today and that only the problem of leadership has to
be solved. We stated that the
objective
factors for socialism have matured,
not that the American masses are now
subjectively
in a revolutionary
mood. We "assumed" only that the solution of the problem of leadership
would itself have an effect on the total revolutionary process-and also
depend on its development.
