REPLY BY GREENBERG AND MACDONALD
507
2.
Rebuttals:
l.
Rahv asks if we can "cite a single political turn" since the war
began that supports our interpretation. We can cite the following: (a) the
low army and civilian morale in this country; (b) the poor showing to
date of British and American war production; (c) Churchill's inability to
take advantage of Hitler's involvement in Russia; (d) the persistence of
widespread strikes in "'defense" industries; (e) the inability of Roosevelt–
Churchill to put forth any war aims that are either politically meaningful
or propagandistically effective;
(f)
above all, the fact that the only army
Hble to cope with the Reichswehr so far in morale, equipment and strategy
is the Red Army, product of a society that, whatever it is, certainly is not
bourgeois-democratic. (We can't help noting that the basic defect of
Rahv's approach to the war is its naive idealism and romantic optimism.
He apparently takes seriously Roosevelt's fireside chats. )
2. Rahv writes that the British ruling class would make a deal with
Hitler if revolution threatened. But if there was a revolutionary situation
-:-and we neither expect nor aqvocate revolutionary action
witlwut
such a
situation, Rahv to the contrary notwithstanding__:.then im attempt to make
peace with Hitler would simply precipitate the overthrow of the rulers
and enormously speed up the revolutionary process.
3. We concede that we underestimated the strength of anti-Nazi feel–
ing on the continent and that "without the benefit of any socialist promises
from Churchill ... all of occupied Europe is in a state of latent revolt."
tRahv forgets he has written earlier that "by his swift conquests Hitler
has removed one country after another from the area of possible revolu–
tionary action"-a typical exaggeration of Hitler's strength and under–
estimation of the masses, which he himself here . contradicts.) But these
very events strikingly confirm our
general
analysis.
(l)
We claimed that
Churchill could neither lead nor exploit the continent's deep hatred of
the Nazis, and these recent acts of violence have remained sporadic and
historically sterile precisely because they lack
political
leadership. (2)
Don't these outbursts, above all, show that the European workingclass is
not
the corpse Rahv thinks it is, that revolution is still a factor with which
Hitler's "New Order" must reckon?
4. Rahv asks us if we still see the workingclass as the social force
Marx and Engels did. We believe the workers must take the lead in any
revolutionary social change, and that their class interests express the
general interests of society more fully than do those of any other existing
class.
3.
And
what
about Rahv's own position?
l.
"Greenberg and Macdonald forget that an issue becomes real only
insofar as it takes hold of the minds of the masses." But it is precisely the
job of politically-minded writers, including Rahv, to see things a bit
ahead
of the masses, not merely to follow along after events. Rahv seems to
