POLITICS FOR THE NURSERY SET
189
others who think politically, use in a political article a phrase like "senti–
mental dilettante," it is not in the least a personal but solely a
political
characterization. Macdonald, as a political being, is sentimental because
his feelings have no plausible correlation with facts, because he mistakes
his personal feelings for reality. He is a dilettante in politics not because
of the way he allots his time-dilettantes are notorious for spending all
their time on 18th Century snuff boxes or Esquimaux dolls or whatever
their hobby may be-but because his politics are a pastime, a pl_aything;
they are not serious. They are not serious because they are irresponsible,
because they do not face either the logical or the practical consequences
of what they pretend to be saying. Macdonald's program shouts for
revolution without revolutionary parties; Trotsky without Trotskyism;
Bolshevism without Bolshevik organization ; the causes of totalitarianism
without the totalitarian result; the name of Marx without Marx's doc–
trines. Again, the spoiled child: he wants the candy without the stom–
achache, the thrills without the costs.
During one of the faction disputes not long before his death, Trot–
sky wrote in passing: "Every man has a natural right to be stupid; but
Dwight Macdonald abuses the privilege." I have a more tolerant concep–
tion of democratic rights than Trotsky's, but I can see his point. Mac–
donald is ignorant. What is one to do with a chap who writes that prag–
matism worships "What I s" and "excludes the principle of change";
who does not know the difference between the concepts of inevitability
and probability; who thinks that multi-national Bolshevism is no more
than a normal imperialist tactic that has been standard since the Pelo–
ponnesian War; who is so unaware even of elementary logic that he
believes
three
propositions can be "mutually contradictory"?
I feel justified in undertaking political discussion only if my opponent
has either political influence or theoretical competence; failing both of
these, it is mere self-indulgence. In Macdonald's case, there is the addi–
tional difficulty, for me, that I do not have the remotest idea what of
my views he objects to. I gather, of course, that he objects to
me,·
but
that is a matter I presume to be of no public concern.
As to my views, however, they have in the first place no resemblance,
in even a single case, to those opinions he here attributes to me. And, in
the second, I have never found in Macdonald's own writings of the past
ten or twelve years any intelligible and distinctive views, differing from
the commonplaces of radical tradition, except those which he has taken
over, with verbal refurbishing, from me. Without going back to the early
political lessons in the days when he was sharpening his revolutionary
spurs in Henry Luce's office, or his brief, belated swing through the
Trotskyist circuit, and quite apart from his subsequent borrowing of
the two decisive conclusions-the estimate of the Soviet state and the
theory of the managerial revolution (called by Macdonald, "bureaucratic
collectivism")--even in this present article he pauses for a parenthetical
