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Source: New Militant, Vol. II No. 17, 2 May 1936, p. 3.
Transcribed/Marked up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Not every book has the importance of a political program; indeed very, very few have. The present volume [1] may, however, be counted among the limited number. Nor is this all. By its contents as well as by the circumstances surrounding its conception, it is possible to get a good mental picture of the movement for which it serves as a program and of the man at the head of the movement.
What has struck reviewers who are not direct partisans of the author and consequently do not need to render the volume the dithyrambic homage which is otherwise compulsory, is the startling contrast between What Is Communism?, published early in 1936, and Communism in the United States by the same Earl Browder, published less than a year ago. Briefly, where the 1935 exposition of the C.P., standpoint said Black, the 1936 exposition says White; where the former said No, the latter says Yes; where the former had a plus sign the latter now puts a minus sign – and vice versa.
This inconsistency, by itself, would be enough to cause a stir. But it is complicated by the phenomenon of consistency. The official C.P. reviewers are just as unrestrained in their encomiastic praise of the second volume as they were of the first. However opposite may be the views expressed by the two volumes, in the eyes of the average reading mortal, he is nevertheless gushingly assured that in both cases the author has displayed a wisdom, a simplicity, an insight, a scope, a majesty that are associated in each communist party with only one member: the beloved leader in his particular country.
The modern “beloved leader” of the communist parties (each of them is plagued with one) is a new phenomenon directly associated with and expressive of the politics which gave it birth. We do not believe that the significance of the present volume’s contents can be fully grasped without an understanding of the author, not so much as a particular individual but as a political phenomenon.
Browder was recently elaborately introduced to the bourgeois world through the columns of the debonair monthly The American Magazine (Feb. 1936). The tone employed by Hubert Kelley, the author of the article, who writes like more than a casual acquaintance of the secretary of the Communist party, indicates that “Our No. 1 Communist” (as the presentation is entitled) is a semi-official introduction of Browder to the respectable public. The fact that Browder has nowhere commented on the article, much less challenged or disowned it, fortifies this conclusion.
“I think Earl Browder is the leader of the Communist party,” writes Mr. Kelley, “for the same reason that certain other men are leaders in the capitalist world which he hates – because they are, as a rule, more intelligent, harder-working, and longer-suffering than anybody else – because they are loyal to one idea in life.”
This might explain Browder’s leadership of the C.P., were it not for the fact that Mr. Kelley unwittingly deprives this explanation of any foundation in the paragraph directly preceding it.
“Nobody back home [i.e., in the U.S.] can account for his rise. Some said he had a routine mind like an adding machine. I have often heard persons who know him wonder how he got the job and kept it.” (My emphasis)
As an introduction to a consideration of the book proper, let us attempt to analyze the phenomenon which causes even “persons who know him” to wonder.
In a properly organized working class party, the principle of democratic centralism is deemed essential not primarily out of moral or ethical considerations but above all because it is socially, politically correct. Party members rise to the position of leadership because of superior ability in their work, their ideas, their devotion to the cause, as displayed over a period of time, and not in this or that isolated instance. Often enough, leadership is acquired not only by virtue of prominent participation in the general class struggle, but in the course of internal disputes in the party itself. Ideas, platforms, programs are counterposed, and when the best of them prevails (either after internal discussion or after verification in the class struggle), it is logical that their spokesman should prevail with them. So-and-so has demonstrated by his proposals and his activity in this situation in 1919, that situation in 1920, the other situation in 1921, etc., that the party would be well- advised in elevating him to the post of leadership where his political talents may be most beneficial to the movement.
The good leader does not operate by himself; he surrounds himself with other qualified men in whose company, as the old Romans had it, he is first among equals. The good leader does not convert this company into an aloof bureaucracy separated from the ranks and striving above all for self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Quite the contrary. He does not fear to give a thorough and periodic account of his stewardship; he welcomes criticism. If his course is correct, he has sufficient confidence in the ranks to know that they will endorse it. If his course is wrong, the same confidence assures him that the ranks will help him by correcting it. By means of this mutual consultation and influencing, the leader keeps his indispensable contact with the ranks of the movement – a contact without which he is sure to go wrong; and the ranks are not only in a position to check and control, but they arc constantly being trained to a better understanding of problems, and prepared for leadership themselves. And the job of the revolutionary party is to lead.
In general, this represents the normal and healthy way in which the party ranks and leadership must function. A bureaucratic regime represents the abnormal and unhealthy way. It is interested primarily in keeping itself intact, and consequently develops distinct caste interests of its own. Having lost contact with the ranks, it loses that indispensable knowledge of the moods, needs, interests of the masses. Without that, its charts are no good and more often than not it leads the ranks onto a reef. The history of the labor movement is rife with examples of this fatal connection between organization and politics. Unable to give an accounting of itself that will he acceptable to the ranks, the bureaucracy draws further and further away from them. It resents their interference and fears it. Once it has gained organizational control of the movement, by virtue of one or another combination of circumstances, it must inevitably deprive the ranks of the possibility and opportunity to express themselves politically in a free and thorough manner, for they would eventually and unfailingly draw such organizational conclusions from their political expression as would mean the end of the bureaucracy. Bureaucratism therefore strangles the party organizationally and politically. Communism means the establishment of a new relationship between man and man. Reactionary bureaucratism, its antipode, ends by establishing between the summits and the ranks the relationship of feudal lord and serf.
But what if differences arise in the ranks of the bureaucracy itself, as they always do and inevitably must? As a rule, the bureaucrats cannot appeal to the ranks to intervene in the settlement of the differences. That would mean to loosen the bonds of the masses, to awaken them, to present them with political problems to solve, to set them in motion. Once that is done, the bureaucracy lias no way of telling where the re-awakened masses will stop. Good gracious! They might decide that the real solution to the bureaucratic dispute lies in the elimination of the bureaucracy itself! Increasingly reluctant to refer its unavoidable disputes to the masses, the bureaucracy always lends to set up a Supreme Arbiter in its own midst, one upon whom if relies tor the protection of its caste interests from attacks by obstreperous members of the caste itself as well by the masses whom it dominates.
This is, roughly, the general outline of the mechanics of the evolution of a Bonapartist leadership, clearly discernible in the development of the Soviet Union, especially of its Communist party, in the last decade. The more insufferable the bureaucratic regime becomes, the narrower the organized base of its existence, the more imperiously it requires periodic “endorsements” from the masses. The closer it comes to utter bankruptcy and exposure, the more feverishly does it seek to bolster the legend of its successes, its infallibility and its popularity.
Lenin, serene in the knowledge that his policies were correct, or if wrong, could he corrected in a normal manner, had no fear whatsoever to expose himself and his course to the widest public discussion. Stalin, the incarnation of the bureaucracy, is anything but serene, and’ for good reason. The nude king of the fairy tale who compelled his subjects to comment loudly upon the beauty of his garments which they could not see, was disconcerted by the little child who cried, “But the King is naked!” In the Soviet Union, even the smallest child is taught to say that his nude sovereign is not only not naked but is garbed in the most ravishing mode.
To preserve itself, the bureaucracy puts all its hopes in the Supreme Arbiter, Stalin. To preserve him, the bureaucracy carries on a systematic, well-organized, and thoroughly hair-raising campaign of panegyrics to The Leader. Steadily dinned into the minds of the masses is the notion that they must believe what they are told, not what they see. If the masses can be made to believe that The Leader is as wise, as infallible and as good as Omniscient and Omnipresent God himself, then the decrees which he issues, primarily in the interests of the bureaucracy, will find more favor and less opposition.
That, we believe, is the main reason for file incredible system of delirious laudation of Stalin which ought to bring a flush of shame to everyone save the mamelukes of the regime, and even to some of them. Just look at a few examples from a recent compilation.
Renamed or newly-named cities of the U.S.S.R. now include Stalinsk, Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalin, Stalinabad, Stalinissi, Stalin-Aoul, Stalinir and Stalinogorsk, to say nothing of the highest peak of Mount Pamir, Peak Stalin (the second highest being named Peak Lenin). Factories and streets bearing the august name are legion.
In the field of belles lettres, Stalin has assumed a position of the very highest renown. A contributor to The Literary Gazette tells you that “It is the role of linguistics and criticism to study the style of Stalin.” The versifier Demian Biedny declares at a meeting; “Learn to write like Stalin writes.” An effusive, but entirely typical lady of letters, describes Stalin in a Russian journal as nothing less than the direct contributor of Goethe. A writer in At the Literary Post casually informs the reader that Stalin “has always been distinguished by his profound comprehension of literature.” A manifesto of the Association of “proletarian” writers says without a smile: “Each section, each paragraph of the speech of Stalin is the most fertile theme for artistic works.”
No less a genius does The Leader display in the field of philosophy. An unblushing professor tells the Communist Academy in Moscow: “The position of the theses of Kantism cannot be completely understood in contemporary science except in the light of comrade Stalin’s last letter.” (The reference is to Stalin’s putrid attack on the memory of Rosa Luxemburg; the connection it has with the Kantian theses is, of course, perfectly obvious.) A writer in Revolution and Culture sets down the fact that Stalin is to be counted among the “profound connoisseurs and critics of Hegel” (as Stalin’s collected works on philosophy amply reveal). Still another lover of bureaucratic posteriors adds that Stalin belongs among “the most competent authorities on contemporary philosophical problems.” A fourth stipendiary notes in passing in The Cultural Front that “Essentially, certain prognostications of Aristotle have been incarnated and deciphered in all their amplitude only by Stalin.”
The late Kirov described Stalin at the 17th Congress as not more and not less than “the greatest leader of ail times and of all peoples.” The editor of Izvestia, at another congress, relieved himself of this:
“On the threshold of the new era stand two peerless titans of thought, Lenin and Stalin ... Can anything be written nowadays on anything at all without knowing Stalin? Absolutely not! Nothing can he understood without Stalin, nor anything interesting written.”
Among the titles by which this shy Georgian flower graciously permits himself to be called, are: The colossus of steel, the great pilot (or the great engineer, architect, master, theoretician, collective farmer, etc.), the great disciple of the great masters, the field marshal of the revolutionary army, the chief of the world proletariat, the heroic organizer of the Red Army, the inspirer of the October Revolution, the best Leninist, the best among the best, the gifted leader, the beloved leader, the dearly beloved leader, the most dearly beloved leader; and more of the same if you can stand it.
As in the U.S.S.R., so in the rest of the world. In every communist party, Stalin appoints an agent upon whom is automatically conferred the title of “beloved leader,” just as the commoner appointed Vali of a province conquered by the Turks in times gone by automatically became a Pasha or a Bey. The designation of “beloved leaders” in every country is not merely done in servile imitation of the Russian state of things. It is politically necessary for the Stalin regime. Under it, the Comintern has been reduced to the position of a department of the Soviet Foreign Office. Stalin has no time or need of revolutionary working class politics. The idea of the normal development of a leadership indigenous to its communist and working class movements is entirely superfluous – even dangerous – to his calculations. In every party, he merely needs a Governor-General who can trustworthily translate into the language of his country the requirements of the Soviet bureaucracy. The fact that this agent is exclusively dependent upon the goodwill of those who appointed him has a double advantage: 1) the ranks of the party, which have been trained that way, will take what this mechanical transmitter says without questioning it; 2) he can be removed just as easily as he was appointed. Each agent is like a light along the communications system of the Comintern. Stalin throws the master switch, all of them turn pink, and the trains will move accordingly in each country; a twist of the master switch and all lights turn yellow or green or blue.
In China, one day, the masses will suddenly be informed that the Stalinist leader they love is Li Lisan; but it can happen (it did!!) that the masses should wake up some morning and find that they do not love him the least hit, they love Wang Min instead, in France, the proletariat must accept Thorez and nobody else as its “beloved leader’’ – for France only, to be sure; on a world scale, only Stalin is the object of its affection. Similarly, in every other country, from Australia to Zanzibar.
In his chapter Of Those Who Have Attained the Position of Prince by Villainy, Niccolo Machiavelli gives the advice that “in taking a state the conqueror must arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to recur to them every day, and so as to he able, by not making fresh changes, to reassure people and win them over by benefiting them.”
In point of fact, that is what Stalin did in the United States. Taking over the American C.P. from those suspected of “rotten liberalism” towards Bukharin – the Lovestoneites – he committed “all his cruelties at once”: Browder was appointed General Secretary and Beloved Leader in one. In turn, he has created Beloved Leaders on a lower scale in the hierarchy, Lem Harris is thus the beloved leader of the farmers; Herbert Benjamin the Beloved Leader of the Unemployed; James Ford the Beloved Leader of the Harlem masses; Israel Amter the Beloved Leader of the New York workers. But over and above them all is the Beloved Leader Browder, only one step removed (but what a step!) from THE Beloved Leader of the World Proletariat.
In making his choice, Stalin was not deceived. Be the figure as colorless and mediocre as possible – it does not matter much. Obscurity, too, is no handicap – a reputation will be speedily and elaborately manufactured and disseminated for him. All that is really required of the Beloved Leader is that he have a vacancy in those spots where a normal human being has his spinal column and his cerebellum, and that the hinges of his knees be well-oiled. Time was when Browder would not have qualified for the post; those old in the movement recall days when he had ideas of his own, even if they were almost invariably wrong. But he has since sternly repressed this defect. He has learned the all-sufficing virtue of Obedience. This virtue, in the Stalinist order of things, has its own reward in the form of Beloved Leadership.
Last year, Browder put between covers a collection of articles and speeches which made him sound like a lion – a somewhat deranged lion, but one with a deep and intolerant roar. Nothing was too radical for him in those days, for he was Obedient to the Stalin of the moment. Hoover? Roosevelt? Green? Lewis? Thomas? Cahan? Trotsky? Olson? Coughlin? All of them were combined in a colossal conspiracy to defeat Browder’s plans for an immediate and stormy revolution in the United States.
Then came the news of the turn proclaimed by the 7th Congress. Result? Where once he roared, he now bleats pathetically. The turn is towards conservatism, respectability, patriotism, nationalism, united frontism. In his new book, as in all his other writings and actions, Browder makes the turn with the late convert’s zeal. In the Beloved Leader of the American proletariat the new turn of the C.I. is full-bloodedly incarnated. Budenz, the turncoat who took refuge in the Stalinist camp, emphasizes to the readers of the Daily Worker that his leader has a “Kansas twang” (the frontier touch). A Boston leaflet announcing the C.P. Lenin memorial meeting anxiously describes Browder as the “Kansas-born American leader of the Communist party.” His bourgeois biographer assures his readers that “Our No. 1 Communist” has ancestors who “came to the Colonies not after the landing of the Mayflower, and members of the family have fought in every war waged by this country up to the last one” (The D.A.R. touch). In his book (the new one!) Browder assures Mr. Hearst that “we cannot think of any other spot on the globe where we would rather be than exactly this one” (p. 13) and on the next page he generously pleads on behalf of the foreign-born workers: “They deserve, at a minimum [!] a little courtesy [!!] from those who would speak of Americanism.” To Kelley’s question about the problem of saluting the flag faced by Browder’s children in the public schools, the latter replies: “It’s their flag. Why shouldn’t they salute it?” (American Magazine, Feb. 1936, p. 111.)
Why not, indeed? For the point is that the Stalinist parties, their Beloved Leaders included, have changed flags. Another word for such action is: betrayal. How completely the principles to which the C.P. once bore allegiance have been abandoned, is revealed by a thorough reading of the new Browder book.
1. What Is Communism? by Earl Browder, Vanguard Press. New York. 50 cents.
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