LI O NS AND FOXES
197
the 'lesser evil' policy of supporting Roosevelt-Churchill presents are:
military defeat, owing to the superiority of fascism in total warfare;
or victory under a fascist system of our own." Aside from the per–
spicacity of these observations, one cannot help noting that through–
out Macdonald's prophesies of the collapse--or fascization--of de–
mocratic capitalism there runs an unseemly respect for the prowess of
Hitler and his order, the very thing Macdonald now throws up to
Burnham. "Hitler's advanced methods of waging war," wrote Mac–
donald, "reflect his advanced politics-advanced in the sense that
they manifest a greater awareness of the present state of the world
and a more serious resolution td meet its problems than shown by the
bourgeoisie." ("1 0 Propositions.")
·
Then, too, there are Macdonald's periodic discoveries, too numer–
ous to quote, of "revolutionary situations" on the continent, in Eng–
land, even in the United States. One need hardly comment on the
wishful-thinking thus exhibited by Macdonald. But even
if
we grant
that on all these occasions everything
was
ripe for the ushering in of
socialism, the question arises: why the unbroken series of failures and
defeats? Nor is 'it enough to invoke those ever-handy scapegoats: the
workers were not stripped of their illusions, the power of the bour–
geoisie
was
too strong, the Stalinists (or other compromising groups )
misled the working class. For the next question is: what reason is
there to believe that these formidable obstacles to any socialist bid
for power will not continue to exist? Or, we must ask too, what modi–
fications have been made in socialist theory and strategy to insure
greater success in the future? Obviously none. Take the present situa–
tion in Europe. One would think that Macdonald's "revolutionary
optimism" would be tempered somewhat by the fact that militant
socialists play a minor role in the resistance movements, that every–
where they face Allied guns and local governments not disposed to
yield without a fight, and, most important of all, they face the Stalin–
ists, who, by their combined power and prestige have so far been
ab~e
either to capture or smash any genuine trend toward socialism.
The fact is that the development of Stalinism has brought a new
factor for Marxists to cope with, not envisioned by the classic Lenin–
ist strategy. Lenin's bolshevik tactics were evolved in a backward
country, where the overwhelming masses of people were opposed to
the rotting regime, and were not daily persuaded of its benefits by a
streamlined press, radio, cinema, etc. The problem for Lenin, there–
fore, was to maintain the revolutionary integrity of the party with
the expectation that in a moment of crisis the people would naturally
gravitate toward it.
To
prevent their stopping at some middle-of-the
