PARTISAN REPJEJP
war effort, including its domestic
and foreign propaganda, which I
stressed as part of the
immediate
agitational program of an inde–
pendent Labor Party. Without
discounting the importance of in–
dustry or arms, I was urging the
military importance of
political
war against Fascism both at home
and abroad. This line cannot be
tested until it is actually followed,
and the chances of it being fol–
lowed are unfortunately remote.
But if there were in existence an
independent Labor Party of the
kind I described the likelihood of
its being adopted would be far
greater. It would be easier to
rally public sentiment against re–
actionaries everywhere. Merian
twists my proposals as if they were
intended to tie labor to imperialist
elements in the government, in–
duce it to forego strikes, and not
to resist unjust economic burdens.
He misses the whole significance
of the fact that my article was di–
rected, in the main,
against
the
"progressive front" whose support
of Roosevelt has led to the neglect
of organization and militant ac–
tion on the home front. It is
downright silly to infer from my
view that workers should never
strike--or, for that matter, that
they should always strike. Merian
wants an easy answer, but all we
can say is that here, too, it is a
question of weighing consequences
in each case in the light of certain
general principles. The effect of
a strike on a military victory over
fascism must always be consid–
ered, but there are effects and ef–
fects; and they have a different
significance in different phases of
the war.
(c) One who has not looked at
p. 78 of Dewey's
Liberalism and
Social Action
will hardly believe
that the very next sentence after
the one quoted by Merian to prove
that Dewey counterposes force to
intelligence, reads: "Insistence that
the use of violent force
is
inevit–
able
limits the use of avallable
intelligence, for wherever the in–
evitable reigns intelligence cannot
be used." The context of the sen–
·tence quoted by Merian is not
whether force can ever be used
intelligently but whether it must
always be used in revolutions.
And on p. 87 Dewey actually dis–
cusses the conditions under which
"force may be intelligently em–
ployed"! Yet Merian insists that
Dewey's real meaning is that force
and intelligence are necessarily
opposed. Professor Dewey, who
is a democratic socialist, may
be
as "anti-revolutionary a thinker"
as Merian believes him to be; but
only rabid political bias will pic·
ture him as an egregious fool , sys·
tematically guilty of
a
contradicto
in
adjecto.
There
is
nothing de–
liberate in Merian's misreading of
a plain text. It is a petty symbol
of the moral tragedy of our time,
of . that political cannibalism,
which, growing out of the Bolshe·
vik Revolution, denies to those
who question it, whether on strate–
gical or even tactical issues, first
sincerity, then intelligence, and,
finally, humanity.
(d) "As a supporter of demo–
cratic liberalism Hook directs his
attack chiefly against two oppo·
nents: Leninism and the remnants
of feudalism, and discovers that
the greatest menace to our culture
comes from the metaphysicians
and theologians, not from capital–
ism itself ..." On this delicious
passage I _wish to conclude. Now,
why should I, as "a supporter of
democratic liberalism", mainly at–
tack Leninism (by "Leninism"
Merian invariably means "Trotsky–
ism") and feudalism? Should not
a democratic liberal mainly attack
Fascism? It would seem so, but
not from Merian's position. After
all, what is democratic liberal-
