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PARTISAN REVIEW
ignore the factor of
change
in history; he simply projects the present
balance of forces into the future.
2. In line with the above, Rahv assumes that the forces arrayed
against Hitler at present assure us within a reasonable amount of time a
neat, orderly military victory over Hitler, and that such a victory will be
a solution. We think a military victory can be achieved by the Allies
only as the result of profound changes in their present social structure,
and that these changes will add up to either fascism or socialism. It's
quite likely that Rahv will refuse his victory by the time it's ready to be
presented to him, that he will then be clamoring for unconditional sup·
port of a status quo threatened by an even greater evil than Hitler.
3. Rahv's approach to history is that of the home-owning commuter.
He makes great play with such terms as "pure speculation," "episodic
contingencies," and "problematical situatimts"; he wants his revolution
covered by 5% gold bonds and insured at Lloyds against failure. But
any
policy that looks to the future-Lenin's in 1910, Hitler's in 1925-instead
of merely paraphrasing, as Rahv's does, the status quo, must "speculate"
on "contingencies," and
all
future situations are "problematical." Social
change is always a gamble.
4. Rahv is extremely vague about his own concrete program-which
is, of course, of considerable polemical advantage to him, since he can
measure the weaknesses of our program against an ideal program instead
of an actual one. In politics, no program but has defects and faces
obstacles. The question must always be: what is the best policy
relative to
other possible policies
to achieve the end in view? Rahv seems to agree,
by implication rather than direct statement, with our end, namely, social–
ism. His program for getting there-also merely hinted at here and there
-seems to be prostration before the status quo on this side of the battle
line. He rejects
both
the revolutionary and the reformist programs for
moving in the direction of socialism, and argues for concentrating entirely
on winning the war, after which the masses "if so minded" will have that
famous "breathing-spell" in which to resume the struggle for "a funda–
mental reconstruction of society." (We think the pace of social change is
too fast for any such breathing-spell to materialize; and even if it should,
Rahv's war policy seems to insure that the masses will
not
then be "so
minded.")
1'.11
this would indicate that Rahv is for this war and for
unconditional support of Roosevelt-Churchill in it. But in his penultimate
sentence he remarks that this war "in a sense ... is not yet
our
war." In
what sense? "Not yet"-then when?
Whose
war, then?
What exactly is our co-editor's position?
It
is a position for which
he refuses to take any moral or intellectual responsibility. He knows only
too well upon what he is relying to protect us from Hitler. He realizes
the emptiness, the shabby hypocrisy of the present British and American
war aims. Like Macbeth, he would like to profit by the crime without
committing it.
