FROM the earliest days of our country, we Americans have been known as preeminently a “practical” people. That practicality, when it means efficiency, when it means hardheaded realization of the importance of testing theories in practice, is a great and useful quality. But when it leads to contempt for all theory, to narrow smugness and self-satisfaction, its usefulness ceases; it become dangerous to the development of scientific understanding of the problems facing us.
Such underestimation of theory leads at the same time to gullibility for any kind of quack cure-all which pretends to give the concentrated knowledge of the world in a few pages. When a situation arises in which hand-to-mouth thinking becomes clearly inadequate, the natural reaction, due to contempt for real theoretical understanding, is to welcome eagerly any savior who comes along with a patent medicine cure.
Like the synthetic products that crowd the drug store counters, a series of synthetic books, philosophies, and movements have been exploding with dull thuds across the American scene throughout the past few years. Durant’s canned philosophy, Lippinann’s old wives’ tales brought forward as the last dispensation of political science, are only outstanding examples of this tendency.
Pragmatism, the most widely accepted philosophical point of view in America, reflects this pseudo-scientific attitude. In its various forms, pragmatism is an attempt to escape solving the most important of theoretical problems, that of the nature of existence. When the pragmatist denies the importance of the struggle between idealism and materialism, he is simply doing on a more “learned” level what the ordinary citizen does when he scoffs at theories in general and then accepts the first bogus theory that comes along. As Lenin showed, the pragmatist’s refusal to consider this vital struggle leads him straight into the camp of idealism.
This tendency of American thinking is a serious matter for the American working class. Only by theoretical understanding through which it makes a thorough analysis of society and plans the future, can the working class break through the accumulated pressure of the existing system. Property relations must be understood to be broken through; class forces must be evaluated, for capitalism to be destroyed and socialism established. Society cannot be transformed by 469 spontaneous action and day-to-day thinking. However much capitalism may develop the spontaneous energy of revolt, so long as that revolt is not organized by theoretical understanding which reaches beyond the narrow limits of the capitalist horizon, it can only attempt changes within capitalism itself. And, further, without this wider view, it becomes impossible even thoroughly to understand how to wring concessions from the exploiting class, to bring about reforms today under capitalism so as to lay the base for the transformation of society.
Lenin’s famous statement that "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice," warns against underestimating scientific, revolutionary theory and urges us to combat—as strongly as we combat false theoretical positions—all antitheoretical attitudes, which reduce themselves to a defense, whether conscious or not, of the existing order.
In the youth of the American labor movement, during the great strike wave of 1886, Engels already saw the special danger of this tendency in the United States. Writing to Sorge in November of that year, he said:
“. . . from good historical reasons, the Americans are worlds behind in all theoretical things and while they did not bring over any medieval institutions from Europe, they did bring over masses of medieval traditions, religion, English common (feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism, in short, every kind of imbecility which was not directly harmful to business and which is now very serviceable for making the masses stupid. And if there are people at hand there whose minds are theoretically clear, who can tell them the consequences of their own mistakes beforehand and make it clear to them that every movement which does not keep the destruction of the wage system in view the whole time as its final aim is bound to go astray and fail—then many a piece of nonsense may be avoided and the process considerably shortened." (Correspondence of Marx and Engels, p. 451, International Publishers.)
THE BOGEY OF WORDS
The latest example of this antitheoretical attitude is a series of articles in Harpers Magazine by Stuart Chase, and his recent book, The Tyranny of Words.
Chase has for years been appalled by the waste and misery of our society. The rottenness of capitalism in decay has impressed him with the necessity of looking for a way out of the morass in which he saw civilization. He became for a while the champion of ideas closely akin to technocracy. Like many of the cure-alls for capitalism which base themselves on some surface aspects of the system, technocracy held that the mechanism of exchange, the "price system" was the root of the trouble.
The inadequacy of this approach became apparent to everyone within a few years. Chase himself examined that failure and attempted to learn from it. But he has learned the wrong lessons. He does not ’see his mistake in the shallow nature of the analysis, the lack of basic study of the society he was attempting to cure. Rather he has now constructed an elaborate apology for making no basic analysis at all, bolstering his position with an attack upon all theoretical thinking. He has become acquainted with the work of men who can be classed broadly as pragmatic-positivists—P. W. Bridgemari, C. K. Ogden, I. A. Richards, and Count Alfred Korzybski. From their writing he developed his present position, that the futility of our thinking and that of the classics arises from 470 bewilderment by words: We construct words for which there are no “ referents” (things to which the words refer) in the world, we identify the existence of these words with the existence of things, and then we develop our thinking on the basis of these words.
Thus, the whole trouble in the world today becomes a mere misunderstanding between people who are using words with different meanings. That, even if they understood each other, Tom Girdler and a worker in Republic Steel might have different interests, does not seem to enter Chase’s head. The way out for him is to reject any word for which he can find no direct "referent," to reject all generalizations, and, therefore, all scientific laws. He attacks such terms as "unemployment," "fascism," " classstruggle," "capitalism," "proletariat," maintaining that these words bring misunderstanding and failure to solve our problems. Instead of making our task examination of the world around us and on that basis formulation of generalizations, conclusions with which to attack in practice the problem of changing what we find, the task for Mr. Chase is simply to put our words in order.
The starting-point of pragmaticpositivist thinking in general is refusal to face the basic philosophical conflict between idealism and materialism, which leads them to rejection of materialism. Reality is, by such reasoning, only the direct experience of human beings. The pragmatists state either that experience itself is all that exists, or that anything beyond that “pure” experience is irrelevant to science and knowledge. Their theories derive from Immanuel Kant, who rejected the possibility of ever knowing the real nature of the world ( thething-in-itself), upon the grounds that all we can ever know is our own experience.
The answer to this agnostic position arises out of the fact that we live and work in the world and are continuously changing it through our understanding and our practice based upon that understanding.
“The most telling refutation of this, as of all other philosophical fancies, is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible ’thing-in-itself.’ The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such ‘things-in-themselves’ until organic chemistry .began to produce them one after another, whereupon the ’thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin, the coloring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow in the madder roots in the fields, but produce much more simply and cheaply from coal tar." (Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 32, International Publishers.)
Alizarin existed in coal tar long before human beings knew it, had “ experienced” it. It was not an unknowable “thing-in-itself”; it was simply a not-yet-known thing. As Lenin said:
“There is absolutely no difference between the phenomenon [the thing known] and the thing-in-itself, and there can be none. The difference is only between what is already known and what is not yet known." (V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 77, International Publishers.)
Kant’s position can only lead to the idealist conception that matter is nonexistent, that everything except our 471 thoughts is only a false appearance derived from them.
At the end of the last century, Mach and Avenarius put forward a version of this position called EmpirioCriticism, which became popular in Europe. It penetrated Russian Social-Democratic circles, and Lenin attacked it from the viewpoint of dialectical materialism:
“The difference between materialism and Machism in this particular question is thus reduced to the following: Materialism in full agreement with natural sciences takes matter as the prius [the starting-point] regarding consciousness, reason, and sensation as derivative, because in a well expressed form it is connected only with the higher forms of matter (organic matter). . . . Machism clings to the opposite, idealistic viewpoint, which at once leads to an incongruity since, in the first place, sensation is taken as the primary entity, in spite of the fact that it is connected with particular kinds of processes (in matter organized in a particular way), and, in the second place, the hypothesis that bodies are complexes of sensations is here destroyed by the assumption of the existence of other living beings, and, in general, of other ‘complexes’ besides the given great Self." (Ibid., p. 26.)
Lenin’s criticism applied also to the American school of pragmatism which was developing at the time. For William James, leader of the pragmatists, the test of a statement’s validity was its “usefulness” to the believer. In this, of course, he proceeded from the premise that since we can only know things through our own experiences, they are the only reality. But Lenin wrote:
“Knowledge may be biologically useful, useful in human practice, in the preservation of the species, but it is useful only when it reflects an objective truth, independent of man. For a materialist, the ‘success’ of human practice proves the correspondence of our representations to the objective nature of the things we perceive." (Ibid., p. in.)
Recently the "logical positivists" have given rebirth to the general position of which we are speaking and which Chase’s authorities share. They differ from the earliest groups largely in that instead of saying experience is all that exists, they “merely” say that it is impossible to know what is behind experience, therefore we must act as if experience alone existed. Since they reject the scientific, materialist view that our experience reflects a real, material world, they, too, like the pragmatists and positivists, are constantly constrained to consider everything as the product of our minds. This means that 7 must consider everything as the product of my mind; for, if all that exists is merely my experiences, my sensations, my thoughts, then I have no more reason to believe in the existence of other people, of other minds, than of material objects. This solipsism, as Lenin pointed out, is the only possible conclusion if the material, external world is denied.
All non-materialist thinking is nonscientific. It is the basis for every kind of reaction; for progress and the revolutionary transformation of society are built upon a scientific understanding of the world.
“Amongst the varieties of idealism there may be thousands of peculiar shades and kinds and it is always possible to add a thousand-and-first shade. To the author ot this thousand-and-first puppet system ( empirio-monism, for example) its difference from all other varieties will seem to be very momentous. From the point of view of materialism, however, these distinctions are totally unimportant. Important only is the point of departure. Important only is that the attempt to conceive motion without 472 matter, smuggles in thought separate from matter—that is idealism." (Ibid., p. 227.)
Chase has suddenly discovered what is wrong with the world. He is full of the crusader’s spirit. The great leaders of human thought of the past become for him misguided and misguiding babblers, creators of "a solemn procession of verbal ghosts." There was once another man who knew the secrets of the universe so thoroughly that all the classics were to him the work of children; Marx was one whose "works and achievements in the general history of intellectual tendencies can take their place at most as symptoms of one branch of modern sectarian scholastics." No one remembers that man today except as part of a book by Engels.
“When a man is in possession of the final and ultimate truth and of the only strictly scientific approach, it is only natural that he should have a certain amount of contempt for the rest of erring and unscientific humanity. We must therefore not be surprised that Herr Duehring should speak of his predecessors with the utmost disdain, and that there are only a few exceptional cases, admitted by him to be great men, who find mercy at the bar of his deep-rooted principles." ( Frederick Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 36, International Publishers.)
Chase might well learn modesty from the fate of Herr Duehring.
But what have the pragmatic– positivists given him that enables him to throw over all the thinking of the past? He takes no position on the nature of the world. He apparently admits the existence of a material world; but he says that the only words which have real “referents” are simple designations of objects—and that any abstraction or generalization to be valid must^^1^^ be reducible to a series of concrete simple designations. At first sight this looks like a praiseworthy attempt to avoid mysticism and idealism. But actually, the assumption that no words which do not refer to a series of isolated objects have meaning implies that we can speak only of things we have directly experienced.
CATS VERSUS CONCEPTS
Chase relies much on the physicist, S. W. Bridgeman, who invented the so-called "operational method": "The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it. ... The concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.”
This means that only words which denote direct experiences can have meaning, for the operations to which Bridgeman reduces his concepts are nothing but his own experiences and sensations. His operationalism is ultimately trapped in solipsism, to which anything convenient or “ useful” to the subject becomes true. (If Trotsky’s “innocence” is convenient or “useful” to Dr. Dewey, then Trotsky is innocent.) Operationalism, like pragmatism, by claming the purely relative character of all truth, denies the objective validation of our thoughts.
Marxism sets forth the scientific inter-relationship of the absolute and the relative in the realm of human knowledge.
"The materialist dialectics of Marx and Engels certainly does contain relativism, but it is not reduced to it, that is, it recognizes the relativity of all our knowledge, not in the sense of the denial of objective truth, but in the sense of the historical conditions which determine the degrees of our knowledge as it approaches this truth." (V. I. Lenin, 473 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 108, International Publishers.)
“Human reason then in its nature is capable of yielding and does yield the absolute truth which is composed of the sum total of relative truths. Each step in the development of science adds, new fragments of truth, and from this the absolute truth is constituted, but the limits of the truth of each scientific statement are relative, now expanding, now shrinking, with the growth of science." (Ibid., p. 106.)
This materialist-dialectic principle, which, as Lenin points out, shows the distinction between the relative and the absolute to be itself relative and which reveals the absolute in the relative—this principle proceeding from the basis of the material world—- becomes for us a guide to transform that world.
Chase’s rejection of theory leads him to the rejection of materialism, and, as we shall see below, to a reactionary political position.
Like all the pragmatic-positivists, he tries desperately to escape (in words) from his idealist position. He writes: "The road to understanding ... is through experience of the outside world." (P. 358.) Yet on the next page we read:
“For those who have followed Einstein and Bridgeman in their destruction of the concepts of ’absolute substance,’ ‘materialism’ is a foolish symbol. We are done xwith rigid principles which exist only in the brain.”
The teachings of Marxism are not rigidly fixed principles created by the subjective whims of an individual, on the authority of his mind and personality alone. They are scientific generalizations based upon observations and practice in a material world, tested by their power to serve for transforming the world. Dialectical materialism is true because, in the words of Engels: "The success of our actions proves the agreement of our perceptions with the apprehensible objective truth of things." If our theories guide practice which successfully changes the objective world, then our theories are true of the objective world.
For this reason Marx’s analysis of society in 1848 is still our guide today. While we recognize, with Chase, that the world of today differs in many respects from the world of 1848, we also recognize that basically we are living in the same world of capitalist exploitation. Marx’s analysis was not rigid. In the epoch of imperialism, the higher stage of capitalism, it was further developed by Lenin; but Leninism is the Marxism of today, as imperialism is present-day capitalism.
Chase sees only the differences. Each event must be handled as a separate one. In an early chapter he speaks of his cat which is not led astray by abstractions, and in his article in Harpers Magazine for November, 1937, he says:
“Man is the one creature who can alter himself and his surroundings. . . . Yet . . . no other animal creates verbal monsters in his head and projects them on the world outside of his head.”
Yet it is precisely man’s ability to create concepts and project them on the world which enables him, through the unity of theory and practice, "to alter himself and his surroundings." The animal that does not creatively change the world does not use generalizations. All that Chase can learn from his cat is how to lap milk.
“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to 474 shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees, is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor-process, we get a result that has already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement." (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 198, Charles H. Kerr & Co.)
Chase would throw aside man’s power consciously to change his environment, by denying the validity of the only method by which he can do so, that of living concepts derived from the material world, concepts which can never become rigid and doctrinaire and out of date because materialistic dialectics—
“. . . includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historical social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it and is in its essence critical and revolutionary." (Ibid., p. z6.)
Perhaps the impact of the matter which Chase denies will some day convince him of its existence and wake him rudely from his word-fenced dream. In his 1873 preface to Capital, Marx said :
“The [periodic economic] crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy, Prusso-German empire." (Ibid.)
As we examine Chase’s treatment of economic and political questions, it seems almost as if that passage had been written in 1938 with Mr. Chase for its subject. Perhaps the developing economic crisis and its political accompaniments will drum into his head that there exists in the material world such a system as capitalism, that fascism is a menace to him as well as to the rest of humanity, that the class struggle is a reality.
UNEMPLOYED—BUT NO UNEMPLOYMENT
Chase’s method of treating social and political problems is developed from his philosophical thinking. Let us consider his approach to the problem of unemployment. The test of his method, as of any method, can be only in the social practice which results from it. Let us apply that test:
“Unemployment is not a thing. You cannot prove its existence or non-existence except as a word. The validity of the concept rests upon the shoulders of millions of your fellow-citizens." (Tragedy of Waste, p. 249.)
Unemployment as an actuality cannot be proved. It is “only” millions of men and their families. Chase does not set out to make light of their suffering; but in rejecting the validity of the concept "unemployment," he removes the possibility of understanding and fighting it as a social problem chargeable to capitalism. He demands that each one of the millions of unemployed should be treated as a separate problem. By denying unemployment, he leaves no solution but that which the Duke of Windsor, then Prince of Wales, proposed years ago in England: "Break up the problem of the unemployed into little pieces" —that is, no government assistance, but throwing the unemployed millions and their families upon the mercy of private charity and local hunger doles. This is the policy of the Liberty League and the Vandenburg Republicans, of Mr. Hoover’s "rugged 475 individualism" which would allow the unemployed to starve.
If there is only unemployed Jack, unemployed Jim, unemployed Tom, up to 17,000,000, no real unemployment with a common cause and a common solution in a real material world, how can the people of America carry out an attack upon the economic royalists and fight against unemployment? How can they struggle for social security provisions?
When he comes to analyze the world in which we live today, Chase likewise rejects the lessons that can be learned from the past. Marx lived in 1848 and since he did not experience what is happening today, he cannot, according to Chase, contribute to solving the problems of today.
“Marx’s philosophy was the first comprehensive statement of the theory of socialism. As an offset to the classicists, it was badly needed. As a contribution to knowledge, the case is more dubious. In drawing inferences from the facts which he so conscientiously collected, he mixed in Ricardo’s labor theory of value, Hegel’s interpretation of history (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), and a large and very human dose of emotional sympathy for the downtrodden, together with hatred for their exploiters. So the final product was part scientific observation, part classical theory, part contemporary philosophy, part good rousing propaganda.
“The followers of Marx, by and large, have dropped the scientific observation overboard, and clung to the theory, the philosophy, and the hatred." (Tyranny of Words, p. 265.)
Chase does not see how a man can build upon the contributions of a predecessor and yet make them his own; develop his theories from what is correct in a number of previous theories, while at the same time transcending those theories. Marx demonstrated this scientific attitude in regarding the works of Ricardo and Hegel as reflections of existing reality, distorted by the limitations of their historical position, yet historically important contributions to knowledge.
The test of the validity of Marx’s theories today stands clearly forth to be seen by anyone whose vision is not restricted to the narrow limits of his own personal experiences. From his solipsist viewpoint, Chase cannot understand how Lenin and Stalin based themselves on Marx’s theories and developed them. Since reality is the material world of which minds themselves are only the most highly developed part, reflecting it and laying the basis for action to change it, Lenin and Stalin are not dogmatists "changing this great scholar into a kind of a demigod," but scientists using theories tested constantly in practice. The successful construction of socialism in the Soviet Union is the verification of these theories. The guidance which Marxism-Leninism gives to the world struggle for socialism today, the complete bankruptcy of all other “socialist” theories, is the test of their truth. That only the theories of Marxism-Leninism can give consistent leadership to the democratic forces of the world today demonstrates Marx’s importance for every anti-fascist, for every lover of peace.
Against these triumphs of Marx’s understanding, Chase presumes to measure his eclectic emptiness. When Marx’s theories are being proved in the practice of hundreds of millions of human beings, when one-sixth of the earth’s surface is being transformed under the guidance of his teachings, when in every corner of the world his scientific leadership carried forward by the Communist 476 International gives hope to the oppressed, to every fighter against reaction; when Marxism is vanquishing in practice every hostile’ ideology, Chase’s pigmy challenge is like the picture of a peacock preening himself against a battleship.
AN ACCOUNTANT MEASURES VALUE
The theory of value and the theory of the class struggle are foundation stones of Marxism, a key to the understanding which has guided the working class to the victories of twenty years of Soviet power and construction. Let us see how Chase measures himself and his petty, self-centered philistinism against the greatness of scientific socialism and its founder.
“The labor theory of value was a concept which could not be adequately verified even in Marx’s day, when industrial undertakings were relatively simple. ... No scientist would waste five minutes attempting to verify this ’law.’ What are the referents for ’value,’ ’labor-time,’ ‘production’? Today the concept is even further from being verified." (Ibid., p. 267.)
With the pedantic pride of an " expert," he goes on to show how impossible it would be to measure the labor in an individual commodity, and triumphantly concludes:
“But exact measurement of man-hour cost, including both capital and operating factors, is too complicated to perform. I know whereof I speak, for as an accountant I have tried to measure it more than once. So there is no operational foundation to prove the labor theory of value." (Ibid., p. a68.)
Marx long ago answered this criticism. In a letter to Kugelmann, in 1868, referring to an early critic of the labor theory of value, he stated:
“The unfortunate fellow does not see that even if there were no chapter on value in my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give would contain the proof and the demonstration of the real value relation. The nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of value arrives from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the method of science. Every child knows that a country which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but for a few weeks, would die. Every child knows too that the mass of products corresponding to the different needs require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of distributing social labor in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production, but can only change the form it assumes, is self evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change, in changing historical circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate. And the form in which this proportional division of labor operates, in a state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products." (Correspondence of Marx and Engels, p. 246, International Publishers.)
The proof of the correctness of the labor theory of value rests upon its ability to help understand and so change for the better the society in which we live. It is correct if it is the correct reflection of the material, social relationships in the capitalist system. It does not depend on the possibility of performing an "operation," internal to the “experience” of the operator, upon this or that sector of the system.
The bankruptcy of the “ operational” method is precisely that it can make no such analysis of the system as a whole, failing, in fact, to recognize that such a thing as the system as a whole exists. It is not surprising that Chase finds the concept of “ capitalism” also one for which he challenges us to "find the referents.”
The labor theory of value does not 477 assert that the value-determining labor is directly measurable in the individual, isolated commodity. Thus, Lenin said:
“We can only understand what value is when we consider it from the point of view of a system of social production relationships in one particular historical type of society; and, moreover, of relationships which present themselves in a mass form, the phenomenon of exchange repeating itself millions upon millions of times." (V. I. Lenin, Marx– EngelsMarxism, p. 16, International Publishers.)
Value is a social phenomenon. Any method which makes impossible the generalization necessary for the understanding of a phenomenon manifested only in multitudinous appearances can penetrate neither to the understanding of value, nor of any other social or natural law.
This insistence that there is no law of value, that the social relations which exist between men (expressed in the law of value) are only relations between things (expressed in Chase’s accounts)—this mystic confusion Marx called the "fetishism of commodities.”
Chase is an outstanding victim of this fetishism. He has the same misconceptions as the vulgar economist whom Marx discussed in the letter quoted above, who
“. . . has not the faintest idea that the actual everyday exchange relations need not be directly identical with the magnitudes of value. The point of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious, social regulation of production. The reasonable and the necessary in nature asserts itself only as a blindly working average. And then the vulgar economist thinks he has made a great discovery when, as against the disclosure of the inner connection, he proudly claims that in appearance the things look different. In fact, he is boasting that he holds fast to the appearance and takes it for the last word. Why then any science at all? But the matter has also another background. When the inner connection is grasped all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their practical collapse. Here, therefore, it is in the interest of the ruling class to perpetuate this unthinking confusion. And for what other purpose are the sycophantic babblers paid, who have no other scientific trump to play, save that in political economy one should not think at all?" (The Correspondence of Marx and Engels, p. 247, International Publishers.)
CHASE “ANNIHILATES” THE
CLASS STRUGGLE
Having “annihilated” the theory of value, Chase turns to the class struggle. One would think that here at least he could find his "referent." But no. It appears that "the term is without tangible validity"; there are class struggles but there are also other economic struggles; "the term ’class struggle,’ by giving an incorrect picture of the world as it is, hinders the strategy of those who want to improve economic conditions." (Tyranny of Words, p. 273.)
Because the struggle between working class and capitalist class takes a thousand different forms, the class struggle does not exist for Chase. Marx and his followers have taken a hypothesis based on conditions of 1850 and erected it into an absolute. He cannot see that through the thousand forms of social conflict, the class struggle is in class society the basic struggle, showing itself in the thousand different forms. Lenin answers him:
“That in any given society the strivings of some of the members conflict with the strivings of others; that social life is full of contradictions; that history discloses to us a struggle among the nations and societies, and also within each nation and each society, 478 manifesting in addition an alternation between periods of revolution and reaction, peace .and war, stagnation and rapid progress or decline—these facts are generally known, Marxism provides a clue that enables us to discover the reign of law in this seeming labyrinth and chaos; the theory of the class struggle. Nothing but the study of the totality of the strivings of all members of a given society or group of societies, can lead to the scientific definition of the result of these strivings. Now, the conflict of strivings arises from differences in the situation and modes of life of the classes into which society is divided." (V, I. Lenin, Marx-Engels– Marxism, pp. 13-14, International Publishers.)
When the existence of the two worlds of capitalism and socialism gives objective reality in clearest form to the fundamental antagonism of working class and capitalist class; when the struggle between fascism and democracy reflects the class struggle on every side; when the utter decay of all class-/m explanations of society becomes obvious in the intellectual nihilism of fascism; when the American working class, as never before, is organizing in progressive industrial unions and advancing toward independent political action; Chase sticks his ostrich head into the sands of his pragmatic “experience” and asks: "Where in this turmoil (America today) is a valid distinction between ’working class’ and ’master class’?”
Chase may want to be progressive, yet even when he considers the immediate burning questions of today his idealism leads him straight to lending objective aid to fascism and reaction. He hates persecution, dictators, war-like aggression; but he cannot make the scientific analysis which would lay bare the cause of these evils.
He asks a hundred people what fascism is. Because most of them reply by mentioning one or another aspect of it, he concludes there is no reality corresponding to the term. But the answer is at hand. We scientifically define fascism as "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialistic elements of finance capital." The statements which Chase quotes vary, but 90 per cent recognize the viciousness of fascism, and, what Chase fails to see, the need to fight it. Since fascism is for him merely a word, then, of course, it is not a menace to be fought.
“The student of semantics [the science of meaning or sense-development of words] is not afraid of evil spirits and takes no steps to fight them. If he observes, or is reliably informed, of secret societies devoted to seizing by force the government of the United States, he may be prepared to fight ... if he observes a group persecuting people called Jews or members of the Negro race, he may be prepared to fight. If the armies of Mussolini or Hitler invade his country, he is prepared to fight. But he refuses to shiver and shake at a word, and at dire warnings of what the word can do to him at some unnamed future date." (Tyranny of Words, p. 193.)
In short, until the force hits you, do nothing about it. Do not find out whence come all these dangers and "dire warnings." There is no material world from which they arise. They are merely separate "experiences." And being unable to understand fascism, Chase is equally unable to understand communism or democracy. Fascism and communism are merely "different names for one-man governments.”
His semantic method keeps him from understanding that the proletarian state, the Soviet Union with the Stalinist Constitution, signalizes the highest form of democracy in the world, the participation of the widest masses in government and 479 administration, the development of every potentiality of humanity, the championship of world peace; while the dictatorship of fascism means denial of democracy, the brutal dictatorship of the most reactionary monopolists, the strangling of every potentiality of humanity, the death of culture, the armed invasions of weaker lands and the drive towards a new world war. At a time when the Soviet Union has internally succeeded in the main in building a socialist society, but is still faced externally with the danger of intervention, when, in Stalin’s words, "the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of socialism in one country cannot be solved," when the Soviet Union stands forth as the strongest bulwark of world peace, Chase permits himself to write:
“Sympathizers with the Russian form of dictatorship are afraid of attack by the socalled fascist dictatorships. Naturally they desire all the help they can get. So they make statements about democratic governments supporting one another. Such statements are loud noises to me." (Tyranny of Words, p. 339-)
Compare this statement with what Upton Sinclair, who is far from being a Communist, states:
“I watched Gorky all through this period, and I know how he suffered and how more than once he wavered. But in the end he made up his mind that the Soviet regime was the best hope for the workers of Russia, and that is my conclusion today. I do not think it is going to change so long as Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Araki continue to menace the world with a return to the middle ages, and so long as the Soviet Union continues to hold out to America, Britain, and France the invitation to join her in standing against this menace." (Upton Sinclair on the Soviet Union, p. 14. Weekly Masses Co., Inc., New York.)
This is the position of a progressive who, whatever his doubts or reservations, understands that fascism is reaction and war, and that socialism is peace and progress. But to Chase, they are both "different names for oneman governments.”
Of course, if there is no fascism, there is no need to fight it, there is no need for the People’s Front, there is no need for collective .security, there is no need for anything but sitting back and waiting till a storm-trooper walks up your porch and kicks the cat Hobie Baker (the object of Chase’s observations) in the tail. Then you are semantically permitted to tackle this “referent” single-handed.
The pragmatic-positivist denial of a criterion of objective truth is denial of. the possibility of understanding what is happening around us. Every form of idealism is a weapon against progress, a weapon of reaction and barbarism. Even those who are fighting with us in the struggle against fascism often bring with them ideologies inimical to this struggle. We say to them:
“We grant you non-socialists the right to believe that the ultimate outcome will not be socialism, but in the meantime only our unity and common front will prevent fascism from being the immediate outcome; therefore it is better if we continue our debate on this question behind the common lines of defense we set up against fascism which would stop all our discussions." (Earl Browdcr, The People’s Front, p. 147, International Publishers.)
We will work with all progressives on every issue for peace and democracy, but we must remember that our Party is based upon the firm rock of Marxism-Leninism. Study, 480 understanding, vigilance against hostile ideas, are vital safeguards of the movement. So equipped, we cannot lose the battle.
“Revolutionary theory is the generalization of the experiences of the labor movement in all countries. It naturally loses its very essence if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory. But theory can become the greatest force in the labor movement if it is indissolubly bound up with revolutionary practice, for it alone can give to the movement confidence, guidance, strength, and understanding of the inner relations between events; it alone can help practice to clarify the process and direction of class movements in the present and near future." (Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 26, Marxist Library, International Publishers.)
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