The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-01-29
By BURCK


however reasonable or modest, seem utopian?"
The Communist idea that when capitalism
breaks down, they will step ill., "a small trained
compact minority" and man the works" has
seemed absurd to the liberals, Wilson says But
in the present situation this idea is not entirely
fantastio-unless the American radicals and pro-
gressives step in and prevent it.
With this in view, Wilson formulates liberal
program of action. The liberals must organ
ize a genuine opposition in the country which
will prove that the MARKHAM Communists are
wrong and that there is still some virtue in
American democracy. They must Openly confess
that the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution due to be supplanted by some
new manifesto and some new bill of rights They
must confute the MARKHAM cynciSm and dis
belief in the inherent soundneSs of the present
system, the catastrophe outcome of whose econ
omic laws is predicted after all. only on the
assumption of the incurable swinishness and
inertia of human nature ct is absurd, isn't
it, to believe that Wilson'S twentieth century
capitalists who are more kindly and democratic
than the landlords of the feudal ages are really
incurably swinishD
The liberals must confine themselves to dy-
naniting old ideas and conceptions for which
they must Substitute new ones as shocking as
possible" These ideas are to come from none
other than the Communists, that is, the MARKHAM
Communists. The liberals must capture the
Communist ideas, but they must reject their
dogmatic conception of class struggle, revolution,
dictatorship of the proletariat, in short Marxism
itself.
Il believe" Wilson declares, that if the Amer
lean radicals and progressives, who repudiate the
MARKHAM dogma and the strategy of the Commu-
mist Party, hope to accomplish anything vau-
able chat is, if they hope to save the capitalist
system from revolution-AL.), they must take
Communism away from the Communists, and
take it without antiquities or reservations as
sorting emphatically that their ultimate goal is
the ownership of the means of production by
the government and an industrial rather than
a regional representation"
We shall analyse Wilson's arguments in detail
in another article. Meanwhile this much is
certain:
Like the rest of the "lower
strata" of the population, the petty bourgeoisie
also is unable to continue in the old way; it is
forced to look for a way of life. Never
theless it clipgs pathetcally to the system which
is crushing the very life out of it, but which it
nonetheless worships and idealizes.
Wilson is not only typical of the vacillating
petty bourgeosie but he reflects and reproduces
all of its illusions, its pitful and helpless worship
of the capitalist robber system which it con-
siders as the highest incarnation of civilization
and culture His talk about capturing Comnu-
nsm from the Communists is as much an ex-
preston of the need of the petty-bourgeosie to
find new path, as tits an expression of its in
ability to find this path for ITSELF Instead of
following the only path out, the revolutionary
path, he typically serves the interests of the
capitalists, by calling for fight against the only
party able to lead the masses out of the morass
of capitalism The logic Of history today is such,
however, that unless the petty bourgeois masses
take the same revolutionary path as the prole-
tartan masses they must inevitably lead down
the path of reaction and fascism.
(To Be Concluded)