FAlLURE OF THE LEFT
167
desperate hope to those who wish to think m a world m which
they must also act.
Platonic
The most doctrinaire sections of the revolutionary
Revolutionists
h
group have become Platonists. We s all describe
rather than identify them because they are cur–
rently being subjected to unjust and foolish prosecution by the
government. They worship a system of Ideas originally projected
as instruments of social action. Historical experience, having long
since been impolite enough to reveal the inadequacy of these Ideas,
is no longer regarded as capable of exercising a veto power over
them. And so they have become transformed into shining fetishes
valid in their own right. As abstractions, unrelated to the fresh
problems of the historical present, they illustrate what Marx once
characterized in his criticism of Stirner as the supernaturalism
of irreligion.
Socialism is the opposite of
C~pitalism.
History has been
frozen into this fixed antithesis. There are no other possible social
alternatives. Fascism is a form of Capitalism.
If
one is opposed
to Capitalism, then by definition it is illegitimate to support a
capitalist society which is still democratic in a war against Fascism.
One must oppose them both! Whatever difference in degree exists
between them, does not warrant a temporary choice, not even a
qualified temporary choice, between them. The state is the execu–
tive committee of the ruling class. The ruling classes in the demo–
cratic and Fascist countries are the same. Therefore a war be–
tween them is no concern of socialists, for both sides are im–
perialistic. This remains true even if a democratic country is
invaded by a Fascist power, and the labor movement and its allies
face the prospect of exchanging the status of democratic ,legality
for the iron heel of Fascist terror. In such a case there are two
variants in this Platonic heaven. Normal madness: the working–
class should fight
both
Roosevelt and Hitler at once. From heaven's
psychopathic ward: the workingclass should
first
fight Roosevelt,
and
then
Hitler, since according to the shade of Lenin "the chief
enemy of the workingclass is its own government," and everyone
knows you fight your chief enemy first.
