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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 20, 18 May 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The appointment of Bertrand Russell, English mathematician and philosopher, to the faculty of the City College of New York has been in the headlines of the bourgeois press for many weeks. Russell wrote books in which he expressed opinions of sex relations that did not please the bourgeois moralists. Because of his ideas about free love, the family and religion, there arose a storm of protest from religious and other reactionary sections of New York society.
Bishop Manning himself sent a protest to the school board which appointed Russell. As a result a law suit was started by Mrs. Jean Kay, a Brooklyn taxpayer; she contested the legality of the appointment on the grounds that Russell was not a citizen of the United States and that he would have an immoral influence on the children of New York attending City College. Judge McGeehan made a decision cancelling the appointment because:
“The contention of the petitioner (Mrs. Kay) that Mr. Russell has taught in his books immoral and salacious doctrines is amply sustained by the books conceded to be the writings of Bertrand Russell.”
There is no doubt but that this decision is a blow at academic freedom and that it must be opposed by all interested in maintaining what democratic rights we still possess.
But the liberals who protest so vehemently against this reactionary example of captitalist democracy really present a sorry picture. Bertrand Russell, their standard bearer in the fight for freedom, is the sorriest of the lot – not even having the courage to issue a fighting statement. He preferred to leave all of this to the Civil Liberties Union and took his whipping docilely in the hope that the bone would be tossed back to him if he submitted quietly.
Professor Speer of N.Y.U. is “astounded,” Dr. Boas of Columbia, “deeply shocked” – the Committee for Cultural Freedom petitions Mayor LaGuardia to urge the appeal of the McGeehan decision; sixty Northwestern University faculty members pledge the sum of five dollars apiece to fight this “serious menace to academic freedom.” (We might ask of the Committee for Cultural Freedom if they were at all disturbed by LaGuardia’s attempt to destroy the Transport Workers Union a few weeks ago.)
But the past year has seen other “shocking” events. The Russell case is just one more incident, and a minor one at that, in the organized campaign to prepare the country for war. The attempts to force the unemployed into the army and navy, the WPA prosecutions in Minneapolis, the frame- up of the Teamster Union officials in Sioux City, LaGuardia’s attempts to smash the TWU and many other incidents have been more than “shocking” to workers; they have shown the necessity for a militant, working class policy against the bosses and their government.
And these liberals – these white knights fighting for academic freedom – Russell himself – have they shown their readiness to join the working class in its struggle against the bosses and thereby the cause of reaction? Or do they continue to humble themselves in search of more professorships?
No, these liberal professors prefer to exercise on a comparably safe issue like the Russell case rather than to challenge directly the real reactionary force in our society – capitalism, imperialist war and the governments, democratic or dictatorial. They prefer to ask favors of the boss class rather than to cross the barricades and throw their lot in with the working class. The government campaign directed against the very existence of workers’ organizations receives scant attention from our professors and their friends. They are too busy safely defending the academic freedom of Bertrand Russell, while the power of the working class, which is the foundation of academic freedom as of all our liberties, is being eaten away before their very eyes – if they would only open them.
The Call (Mr. Norman Thomas’ paper) of April 13th declares that “... Professor Russell deserves the unhesitant support of the progressive forces in American life.” Now, as was stated above, the defense of academic freedom is an important cause, worthy of the support of the workers. But this cause should never be placed on a personal plane as The Call does when it says that Russell is personally “deserving” of the support of progressive forces. Some perspicacious people have said that we have not supported Russell because we disagree with his philosophy. This is stupid and we can only shrug our shoulders. It is true that we oppose his philosophy which will be dealt with shortly in our press. However, although Russell’s philosophy is in some respects reactionary, we defend his right to express himself against still more reactionary philosophies.
But we defend this right because academic freedom is involved and not the freedom of a man who is “deserving” of support. On the contrary, Russell’s record as a fighter for democratic rights has hardly earned him the defense of which The Call speaks.
It is difficult to find in the period of the last few years a greater injustice done to a single man, a more reactionary blow at the progressive force in society – he revolutionary working class – than was carried through at the Moscow frame-up trials. The Commission to investigate these trials and defend Leon Trotsky had as its mission not merely the defence of an individual or even a group. Its mission was the ascertaining of the truth which would either condemn Trotsky and the Fourth International as a group of traitors and assassins or reveal them as the true representatives of the only progressive force in society – the revolutionary proletariat.
Bertrand Russell was asked to lend his support to the British Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. However he was not at all anxious to become involved in this progressive force. In a letter to L. Trotsky on May 7th, 1937, Charles Sumner, secretary of the British Committee for an inquiry into the Moscow trials writes as follows:
“First, with regard to the intellectuals, Bertrand Russell is far the most distinguished intellectual we have on the Committee, but in joining it he made it quite clear that he was prepared to give ‘neither time nor money,’ a condition of which we were rather rudely reminded when we asked him if he would sit on the Commission.”
Russell apparently was too busy elaborating his “advanced opinions on fundamental social questions” to put either time or money in investigating the greatest frame-up in history directed against the only progressive force in society.
The case of Bertrand Russell and the excited liberals is just another illustration of how they choose to see the trees rather than the woods. For the trees are such figures as Judge McGeehan and the woods are the democratic or dictatorial oppression of the entire working class by the powerful state machine of the capitalist class. When it comes time to fight the violent and decisive battles against this reactionary class, they are always prepared to give “neither time nor money,” are “too old and too preoccupied with other matters” or have another Russell case to peck at. They either remain on the side with the boss class or at best are “impartial.”
The decisive blows in defense of academic freedom as well as liberty and progress in general will have to be dealt by the workers. The uninspiring figure of a Russell, afraid to open his mouth, can never be the leader in the fight for academic freedom. This worthy and important struggle as part of the struggle for all democratic rights can and will be led by a militant, revolutionary working class which by dauntlessly throwing its force against those of its class enemy can inspire and gain the support of all the oppressed strata of society.
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