PARTISAN REVIEW
41
edge, you now have obedience through discipline. Instead of revolu–
tionary art, art as the joy of new discovery, you've got sentimentality,
empty idealism, fear of the unknown. Where is this new socialist
man, free of selfishness, ambition, competitive instincts and base de–
signs?
TROTSKY: I too have often had to fight hard against these nostalgic
visions, comrade. Against this personal sense of the shortness of life,
the vanity of effort. But then I see them before my eyes. Workers,
soldiers, sailors, peasants. Men, women, old and young activists. Their
faces. Their upright bodies. When I consider the mistakes of socialism,
my own deficiencies, these people living today give me a clear answer.
Their social system, for all its deformities, represents the greatest ad–
vance that men have ever made. In the struggle against fascism it is
they who will have to carry the main load. You must support them.
AFRO-AMERICAN STUDENT: Lenin spoke in the Comintern about the
black American's right to self-determination. But he didn't say how
it was to be got. How can we achieve social, political and economic
equality? Many of us are demanding a separate black state.
TROTSKY: That is a racialist slogan. Fight for equal rights by all means,
but don't let it lead you away from the class struggle. There is a
black bourgeoisie too, which shares your wish for equal rights. But
ideologically it won't go further than the white workers. You are out
for more. In the American class war your proletariat is the most im–
portant force, the one that will prove decisive.
AFRO-AMERICAN STUDENT: We can't join with the white workers. There's
nobody more chauvinistic than they are. And they'll go on trying to
keep us out of their jobs, their unions and their houses.
TROTSKY:
If
the white workers go on letting themselves be exploited,
if
they continue to believe the state is theirs just because their trade
union aristocrats make deals with industry and the armed forces, then
your first move must be to fight for your own liberation. That would
be a huge step forward. Sign of a great moral and political awaken–
ing. And as you improve your education, a Marxist leadership is
bound to arise. But you must never cut yourself off from the white
proletariat. You need allies, you need a common militant party. You
will be the vanguard. Remain divided, and they will finish you off
one after the other.
SOUTH AMERICAN STUDENT: The American maneuvers in Pearl Harbor,
with all those huge air squadrons, the build-up of armaments, they're
not only hints of what solutions are being planned for Western Eu–
rope. They also show us what we can expect in South America.
Roosevelt goes on talking about good neighborly relations. But we
