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From New International, Vol. XIII No. 4, April 1947, pp. 109–111.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In its summer 1946 issue, Partisan Review printed an editorial attacking the Stalinist “Fifth Column” in American intellectual life: the New Republic, The Nation and PM. Marking a demonstrative return to contemporary political concerns by a magazine which in recent years showed slight visible interest in them, this editorial serves as a central point from which to discuss the attitude of radical intellectuals to political problems.
Though intended primarily as an exposé of the corrosion of the liberal press by Stalinism, the editorial casually and by the blandest references adopts a position toward the current political scene which can only render impossible an effective struggle against Stalinism – not to mention making hopeless any sort of positive socialist aim. Partisan Review has succumbed to Stalinophobia, a disease common among intellectuals who were once radicals; its major symptom is that regular tired feeling. Stalinophobia takes the form of bitter and quite justified denunciations of Stalinism, without any corresponding effort to develop a sociological understanding of it. Hatred for Stalinism becomes an emotional bloc to its political analysis. (The pages of The New Leader – from whose basic position the editors of PR cannot distinguish themselves) even if they would wish to – are cluttered with such vulgar articles which do not even attempt to understand Stalinism and which always lead to support of one or another reactionary imperialism solely because of its conjunctural opposition to Russia.) The victims of Stalinophobia – which disease the editors of PR, in their November–December 1946 issue, coyly try to equate with mere concern at the expanded power of Stalinism – succumb to the same inadequate and often hysterical method of thinking which characterized most American liberals at the time of Hitler’s power. As witness:
PR declares that “as long as American policy is weak and halting, the peoples of Europe ... will gravitate helplessly ... into the Russian orbit.” (My emphasis – I.H.) The italicized phrase is central. By its use, PR rejects the method of analysis which characterizes the basic aspects of American foreign policy in class terms and substitutes instead the typical liberal (as opposed to socialist) approach of “test your strength.” PR wants a strong foreign policy in relation to Russia and objects to the present (“weak” and “Caspar Milquetoast” policy of the State Department. It accepts the State Department’s own declarations at face value without understanding that the “soft” policy is a necessary stage in consolidating public support at home and abroad as a prelude to a “get tough” policy at the proper time. These complaints of PR about U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Stalin are in no essential way different from the complaints which filled the pages of The Nation, The New Republic and PM (the “fifth column” press ...) about U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Hitler.
The phrase quoted is not an isolated expression but typical of a political approach. PR urges, similarly, a policy of “trying to needle this timidly conservative (State) Department into a more aggressive (foreign) policy ...” Here again the same idea – even the same stale cliché – of PM, The New Republic and The Nation during the period when they supported the Stalinist collective security policy as a means of defeating Hitlerism ... or, to be more accurate, of hastening the already inevitable imperialist war between the Allied bloc and Germany. That the editorial writer of PR recognizes, if only in some uncharted area of his subconscious, this identity of spirit and approach with the very Stalinoid magazines he is now castigating, is evident from his statement that “Hitler might have been permanently checked had he been firmly opposed at his very first steps toward aggression.”
The logic of this position, incidentally. has always been rather difficult to follow. It asserts that if the Anglo-American bloc had been “needled” into threatening war with Hitler, war would have been avoided. Unless its proponents wish to suggest the preposterous idea that Hitler could have been “peaceably contained,” their proposal merely meant a war ... to prevent war; from which conclusion the Stalinists did not shy away.
One word of commendation, however, is due the editors of PR: though only in a passing phrase, they did not hesitate to face the consequences of their position – at least in the Summer ’46 editorial.
They write: “But granted (which we do not believe) that ...
any consistent criticism of Russia will necessarily lead to war; will
appeasement, then, do any better? If war is inevitable, does it not
become a man’s duty to cry stinking fish and face up to the
inevitable?” Of course, of course. And by “stinking fish”
it is clear that support of U.S. imperialism is meant. An apt image.
Apparently stung by the numerous criticisms which their editorial evoked, the editors of PR return to the same subject in their November–December 1946 issue. They print several letters, the main one by Heinz Eulau of The New Republic, and then launch sharp polemical arrows against 1) the Trotskyists; 2) Dwight Macdonald, and 3) the liberals. PR’s sole, though considerable, advantage over the Nation-New Republic liberals is its anti-Stalinism; though, as we have tried to point out in this article, its present political methodology is in no essential respect different from that of the liberals. Macdonald [1] defends himself in the November 1946 issue of his Politics. So we shall content ourselves with a few words here on the attack on Trotskyism, as well as the further elaboration of its own position, contained in the PR editorial. The attack on the Trotskyist position on war is made in three major points:
1) By a “verbal sleight of hand” the Trotskyists “surreptitiously place democratic capitalism and Stalinist totalitarianism on the same plane, as if the evils of the two systems were really comparable ...” and then they denounce those who support U.S. imperialism in the Second or Third World Wars as adherents to the theory of “the lesser evil.” Now there is here a bit of “verbal sleight of hand” but not by the Trotskyists. Just what does PR mean by its accusation that we place democratic capitalism and Stalinism “on the same plane”! One is surprised to find such a vague spatial image in a magazine which, in non-political matters, is so concerned with verbal precision. For several meanings are possible: a) democratic capitalism and Stalinism are the same kind of social system, which we of the Workers Party deny; b) democratic capitalism and Stalinism are both manifestations of an international social disintegration which if continued will lead humanity to barbarism of one kind or another, which we affirm; and c) there is no difference between the kind of political rule (civil liberties, etc.) existing in the U.S. and Russia, which neither we nor anyone else with faintly perceptive eyes affirms.
If is c) which PR means, as seems it likely, then its point is a total and obvious non sequitur. For one can clearly admit the differences in political rule between the U. S. and Russia, without necessarily supporting the former in a war against the latter. The mere fact that one country is a capitalist democracy and the other a bureaucratic dictatorship is no necessary reason in and of itself, as PR assumes, to support the former in a war; for there may be, and in fact are, other and more fundamental considerations, and the differences in political superstructures may not be, and in fact are not, the issues at stake in such a war.
We reject, however, PR’s contention that no comparison is possible between democratic capitalism and Stalinism and that there is between them “the incommensurability of life and death” (demonstrated perhaps during the recent war?). Though they are different social systems, they are both reactionary social systems and a choice between reactionary systems would be necessary only if one abandoned the socialist perspective.
We affirm rather that support of either democratic capitalism or Stalinism in a war means support to the social forces leading humanity to the abyss of barbarism. Or does PR wish to contend that only Stalinism, and no longer capitalism, is the vehicle of international social decay?
2) PR no longer believes that “the masses are at present capable of overthrowing both capitalism and Stalinism,” which leads it therefore, logically enough, to support U.S. imperialism in its “resistance to Stalinism.” (You must admit that “resistance to Stalinism” is a delicate way of putting it.) Here again we discover lamentable verbal imprecision on the part of PR. If by the above-quoted statement, it merely means that the masses have not yet overthrown democratic capitalism and Stalinism or are not doing so at this moment, they have scored an irrefutable but not very useful point. For what is at stake is this question: is there a possibility, sufficiently reasonable to warrant socialists acting on it, of stimulating the masses to such revolutions? The reasons which lead us to answer this question affirmatively we shall not detail here; they have been discussed in this magazine many times, as well as in my article against Dwight Macdonald in the October issue of Politics, who also no longer believes in the possibility of proletarian socialist revolution. But we have come a long way from the question of attitude to war; we have come to the central question of socialism itself. That this statement is no exaggeration can be seen when considering the next point.
3) PR writes: “And even if ... the old order could not be completely destroyed, there still remains one of the basic questions of our period: what reason is there to believe that the new society will not repeat the pattern of Stalinism by creating a new ruling elite and a new form of oppression? Not only have the Trotskyists failed to present a single scrap of evidence – or theory – to show that the masses are able to accomplish their own revolution and retain control of it, but they do not seem to be interested in the question.”
The last clause quoted is simply incredible: the pages of this magazine have contained dozens of articles which in one way or another, ably or poorly have discussed this question. PR may not find our answers satisfactory, but to suggest that we are not interested in the matter is to show very bad taste in conducting a polemic.
However, a much more fundamental question is here raised: what does PR itself believe? For our part, we continue to maintain “that the masses are able to accomplish their own revolution and retain control of it” – but perhaps that is merely Marxist obtuseness? Very well then. If PR believes that such a possibility does not exist, then it has the responsibility to demonstrate that contention to the socialist movement in general, which has labored along now under that belief for a good many years. And what then happens to PR’s socialist protestations? For if the masses cannot make “their own revolution and retain control of it” then socialism is prima facie impossible.
PR owes its readers a blunt statement on this matter. Either it believes that “the masses are able to accomplish their own revolution and retain control of it” – in which case their polemic against the Trotskyists is, to be charitable, irrelevant; or it does not so believe – in which case it must cease to speak, as it attempts to do in its editorials, as part of the socialist tradition. Anything less is intellectual irresponsibility.
I wish to conclude this discussion with a few notes on PR’s November–December 1946 statement, where it attempts to wriggle out of some of the more embarrassing formulations of its first statement.
In response to the question “whether we will support America in a war with Russia,” PR writes, “we can only say now that will depend on the existing situation when and if war comes.” Such squeamishness seems strange in people who only two months before were ready to “cry stinking fish and face up to the inevitable.” That this half-hearted attempt to squirm out of open commitment to U.S. imperialism comes from embarrassment rather than conviction is shown in the very next sentence where PR urges “that we propose to support the American policy of resistance to Stalinism so long as this policy meets the test of genuinely liberal and democratic standards ...”
Though we know that Philip Rahv and William Phillips edit PR, we solicit letters from readers explaining how Freda Kirchway, Max Lerner and Bruce Bliven – 1938 versions, to the very phrase – happen to write their editorials.
Everyone has the right to maintain whatever political position he wishes, provided he thinks through to the end its logical consequences. We suspect PR on this score because we fail to note one little phrase in its editorials – atom bomb. But since PR is preparing to support the U.S. in a war with Russia, it must also be aware that that would be an atomic war. What then are the possibilities of the retention after such a war of the democratic human and cultural values in the name of which PR prepares to “cry stinking fish and face up to the inevitable?”
PR must consider the consequences of its course. What attitude does it have toward current American military preparations? Are they not essential if “we” are to have a firm foreign policy toward Russia? For whatever Stalin’s attitude toward editorials, it is known that he respects armored divisions.
What is PR’s attitude, again, toward the proposals for conscription? And toward proposals to cease manufacture of the atom bomb? And what about strikes which weaken U.S. imperialism vis-à-vis Russia? If PR comes to the conclusion that Stalin, like Hitler, will not be impressed by powerful editorials and ferocious speeches, is it prepared to urge American imperialism to drop a few atom bombs on Russia, before Stalin gets the bomb too?
These questions are neither wiseacreish nor tricky. They point to the inescapable consequences of PR’s political position and it is incumbent upon its editors, who are so insistent upon intellectual responsibility in other fields, to speak frankly and openly on this, a central question of our times.
1. The exchange between PR and Macdonald, though incidental to our purpose, has a few precious aspects. Relations are bad between these political Heldenkämpfer but they do have a few good words to say for each other. PR finds that Macdonald “as against the Trotskyists, has at least two points of contact with reality in holding: 1) that the masses are not revolutionary in the sense that they can be counted upon at present to rise up of themselves (sic!) and overthrow both capitalist and totalitarian oppressors; and 2) that Stalinist Russia is a new class society with a peculiar dynamism of its own which makes it an expanding threat to the whole world.” As for the first of these “points of contact with reality” we cheerfully grant PR and Macdonald their common position and readily acknowledge our faith in the possibility of proletarian socialist revolution, though not of course by a rising “of themselves,” whatever that may mean. On the second point. the editors of PR are either ignorant or most forgetful, for they must know that at least one section of the Trotskyist movement – that associated with this magazine – not only believes but was instrumental in expounding in this country the idea that “Stalinist Russia is a new class society with a peculiar dynamism of its own.”
Macdonald, for his part, finds PR’s polemic against the Trotskyists “masterly, as far as it went, since it repeated what I myself have said often ...”
To this mutual accolade comment would be supererogatory.