Published: Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 19, 11 May 1940, p. 3.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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(This is the fourth of a series of articles by Comrade Cannon, to acquaint our readers with the party’s estimate of the dispute which arose in the party, was debated in a seven-months’ discussion, and was settled by a decisive majority at the Third National Convention, April 5–9.) |
The outspoken proletarian orientation of the majority is represented by Burnham as an expression of antagonism to “intellectuals” as such, and as an ignorant backwoods prejudice against education in general. In his major document, The War and Bureaucratic Conservatism, he writes: “Above all, an ‘anti-intellectual’ and ‘anti-intellectuals’ attitude is drummed into the minds of party members. The faction associates are taught, quite literally, to despise and scorn ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intellectualism’.” For reasons best known to themselves, Shachtman and Abern sign their names to this protest and take sides in a conflict where they have every right to proclaim neutrality.
The Workers’ Age, organ of the Lovestoneites, which is following our internal discussion with unconcealed sympathy for the opposition, enters the scuffle as an interested partisan. Commenting on a remark in my published speech, to the effect that worker elements engaged in the class struggle understand the Russian question better than the more educated scholastics, the Workers’ Age of March 9th says:
“This is obviously aimed at Burnham, who has the ‘misfortune’ of being educated. What is this kind of a slur but the old Stalinist demagogy contrasting the virtuous, clear-sighted ‘proletarian’ element to the wicked, confused ‘intellectual’? It is the same kind of rotten, unprincipled demagogy, make no mistake about it!”
Let us see. The question at issue is the attitude of proletarian revolutionists to educated members of the petty-bourgeois class who come over to the proletarian movement. This is an important question and deserves clarification. Burnham is indubitably an intellectual, as his academic training, profession and attainments testify. There is nothing wrong in that, as such, and we cannot have the slightest reason to reproach him for it. We are quite well aware, as Marx said, that “ignorance never did anybody any good,” and we have nothing in common with vulgar prejudices against “educated people” which are cultivated by rascally demagogues to serve their own ends. Lenin wrote to Gorky on this point: “Of course I was not dreaming of ‘persecuting the intelligentsia’ as the stupid little Syndicalists do, or to deny its necessity for the workers’ movement.” It is a slander on the Marxist wing of the party to attribute such sentiments to us. On the other hand, we are not unduly impressed by mere “learning” and still less by pretensions to it. We approach this question, as all questions, critically.
Our movement, the movement of scientific socialism, judges things and people from a class point of view. Our aim is the organization of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian struggle for power and the reconstitution of society on socialist foundations. That is our “science.” We judge all people, coming to us from another class, by the extent of their real identification with our class, and the contributions they can make which aid the proletariat in its struggle against the capitalist class. That is the framework within which we objectively consider the problem of the intellectuals in the movement. If at least 99 out of every 100 intellectuals – to speak with the utmost “conservatism” – who approach the revolutionary labor movement turn out to be more of a problem than an asset it is not at all because of our prejudices against them, or because we do not treat them with the proper consideration, but because they do not comply with the requirements which alone can make them useful to us in our struggle.
In the Communist Manifesto, in which the theory and program of scientific socialism was first formally promulgated, it was already pointed out that the disintegration or the ruling capitalist class precipitates sections of that class into the proletariat; and that others – a smaller section to be sure, and mainly individuals – cut themselves adrift from the decaying capitalist class and supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress. Marx and Engels themselves, the founders of the movement of scientific socialism, came to the proletariat from another class. The same thing is true of all the other great teachers of our movement, without exception.
Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, Luxembourg – none of them were proletarians in their social origin, but they came over to the proletariat and became the greatest of proletarian leaders. In order to do that, however, they had to desert their own class and join “the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.” They made this transfer of class allegiance unconditionally and without any reservations. Only so could they become genuine representatives of their adopted class, and merge themselves completely with it, and eliminate every shadow of conflict between them and revolutionists of proletarian origin. There was and could be no “problem” in their case.
The conflict between the proletarian revolutionists and the petty-bourgeois intellectuals in our party, as in the labor movement generally in the whole world for generation after generation, does not at all arise from ignorant prejudices of the workers against them. It arises from the fact that they neither “cut themselves adrift” from the alien classes, as the Communist Manifesto specified, nor do they “join the revolutionary class,” in the full sense of the word. Unlike the great leaders mentioned above, who came over to the proletariat unconditionally and all the way, they hesitate half-way between the class alternatives. Their intelligence, and to a certain extent also their knowledge, impels them to revolt against the intellectual and spiritual stagnation of the parasitic ruling class whose system reeks with decay. On the other hand, their petty-bourgeois spirit holds them back from completely identifying themselves with the proletarian class and its vanguard party, and re-shaping their entire lives in a new proletarian environment. Herein is the source of the “problem” of the intellectuals.
The revolutionary workers’ movement, conscious that it “holds the future in its hands,” is self-assured, imperious, exacting in the highest degree. It repels all flirtations and half-allegiances. It demands from everyone, especially from leaders, “all or nothing.” Not their “education,” as the Lovestoneite sympathizers of our party opposition maintain, brings the intellectuals into conflict with the proletarian cadres of the party, but their petty- bourgeois spirit, their miserable halfness, their absurd ambition to lead the revolutionary labor movement in their spare time.
It is not true that the advanced militant workers are hostile to education and prejudiced against educated people. Just the contrary. They have an exaggerated respect for every intellectual who approaches the movement and an exaggerated appreciation of every little service he renders. This was never demonstrated more convincingly than in the reception accorded to Burnham when he formally entered our movement, and in the extraordinary consideration that has been given to him all this time. He became a member of the National Committee without having served any apprenticeship in the class struggle. He was appointed one of the editors of our theoretical journal. All the recognition and the “honors” of a prominent leader of the party were freely accorded to him.
His scandalous attitude towards the responsibilities of leadership; his consistent refusal to devote himself to party work as a profession, not as an avocation; his haughty and contemptuous attitude toward his party co-workers; his disrespect for our tradition, and even for our international organization and its leadership – all this and more was passed over in silence by the worker elements in the party, if by no means with approval. It was not until Burnham came out into the open in an attempt to overthrow our program that the worker elements of the party rose up against him and called him to order. His attempt now to represent this revolutionary action as an expression of ignorant prejudice against him because of his “learning” is only another, and most revealing, exhibition of his own petty-bourgeois spirit and petty-bourgeois contempt for the workers.
A proletarian party that is theoretically schooled in the scientific doctrines of Marxism cannot be intimidated by anybody, nor disoriented by a few unfortunate experiences. The fact that the learned Professor Burnham revealed himself as just another petty-bourgeois may possibly engender a little more caution in regard to similar types in the future. But it will not change anything in the fundamental attitude of the workers’ vanguard towards the intellectuals from the bourgeois world who approach the movement in the future. Instructed by this experience it Is possible that the next one who comes along will have to meet stiffer conditions. It is hardly likely that in the future anyone will be permitted to make pretensions to leadership unless he makes a clean break with his alien class environment and comes over to live in the labor movement. Mere visiting will not be encouraged.
The American movement has had very, bad experience with intellectuals. Those who have appeared on its horizon up to date have been a pretty shabby crew. Adventurers, careerists, self-seekers, dilettantes, quitters-under-fire – that is the wretched picture of the parade of intellectuals through the American labor movement as painted by themselves. Daniel DeLeon stands out as the great exception. He was not merely an intellectual. He was a man and a fighter, a partisan incapable of any divided allegiance. Once he had decided to come over to the proletarian class, the stale atmosphere of the bourgeois academic world became intolerable for him. He departed from the university, slamming the door behind him, and never once looked back. Thereafter, to the end of his life, he identified himself completely with the socialist movement and the struggle of the workers. Revolutionary workers of the present generation remember him with gratitude for that, without thereby overlooking his political errors. Other, and we hope, greater De Leons, will come to us in the future, and they will receive a wholehearted welcome from the party of the proletarian vanguard. They will not feel sensitive if we scrutinize their credentials and submit them to a certain apprenticeship. They will not be offended if we insist on an explicit understanding that their task is to interpret and apply the proletarian science of Marxism, not to palm off a bourgeois substitute for it. The new DLeons will readily understand that this preliminary examination is simply a precaution against the infiltration of intellectual phonies and does not signify, in any way whatever, a prejudice against intellectuals who really come to serve the proletarian cause.
The genuine Marxist intellectuals who come to us will understand the cardinal point of our doctrine, that socialism is not simply a “moral ideal,” as Burnham tries to instruct us in the year 1940 – 92 years after the Communist Manifesto – but the necessary outcome of an irreconcilable class struggle conducted by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. It is the workers who must make the revolution and it is workers who must compose the proletarian vanguard party. The function of the Marxist intellectual is to aid the workers in their struggle. He can do it constructively only by turning his back on the bourgeois world and joining the proletarian revolutionary camp, that is, by ceasing to be a petty-bourgeois. On that basis the worker Bolsheviks and the Marxist intellectuals will get along very well together.
Last updated on 1 February 2019