MAX EASTMAN

CROTON-ON-HUDSON

NEW YORK

Dear Mr. Brooks,

I don't know just when your
autumn number comes out, but Mr. Norton is
not planning to bring out my book until
September 26. If that is too early I am
sure he could be persuaded to delay it a
little.

Sidney Hook tells me you pay appreciable fees for articles, and if that is so, I could put up a strong argument with Mr. Norton in case a slight delay is necessary.

Judging by your present haste, however,
I guess it will not be necessary,

I am very glad you like the essay. I
would like to call Trosky a "reckless amateur"
instead of a "bungling amateur" in the last
sentence of a paragraph not far from the end.
It might be worth while to make that correction
before it is set up, though I trust I shall see
the proofs.

MAX EASTMAN

CROTON-ON-HUDSON

NEW YORK

Dear Mr. Brooks,

I am very gald indeed that
you want to publish my piece on Trotsky
and the Dialectic. I have forwarded your
letter to Mr. Norton with a plea for a
postponement of the book's appearance.
I feel sure that it will be postponed
a week or so just as a result of the
mind's delays, and if you could also
speed up your machinery a little, or
cut down its lag, an adjustment can be
reached.

Mr. Norton is on his vacation, but not
far away, I think, and I am sure you
will have a letter from him a day or so
after this comes.

Chilmark, Mass.

7/30/40

CROTON-ON-HUDSON
NEW YORK

June 10, 1937

Dear Mr. Pipken:

Professor Schuman is such a green-horn in matters both of fact and theory relative to the Russian revolution that I find it difficult to comment briefly upon his article. He makes four crude mistakes on the first page, which contains only 10 lines of type, and keeps pretty close to that average throughout his article.

Trotsky is not the "son of a middle class Jewish family of Moscow"; he is the son of wealthy farmers of the vicinity of Odessa. He was not exiled from France for "pacifist activity"; he never engaged in pacifist activity in his life. He did not "return to Russia as 'Leon Trotsky' in the Spring of 1917"; he left Russia as Leon Trotsky in the summer of 1902 and has been Leon Trotsky ever since. He did not organize a "coup d'état" on November 7th; by no stretch of the meaning of words can the October insurrection be described as a "coup d'état". This Mr. Schuman could have ascertained by looking in the dictionary.

I have obviously no time to go through his article listing half a hundred such mistakes. Suffice it to say that if he were discussing a matter about which the editors of the "Southern Review" were themselves informed, his article would be sent back with the suggestion that he read up a little on the subject before writing about it.

Aside from ignorance, however, his article is as full of political and class prejudice as a gall-bladder is

CROTON-ON-HUDSON
NEW YORK

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June 10, 1937

of bile. His pretense to be a detached liberal taking an
"objective" view of Trotsky's position, is one of the every-day
tricks of the Stalin propaganda. If he were an objective
he would know the position of Trotsky and the Trotskyists. He
would have read their literature before describing it. That he
has not done so is evidenced on every page he writes. Two
examples must suffice:

1. He says on page 56 that after 1928 Stalin "denounced all non-communist socialists as 'Social Fascists'," and adds: "The Trotskyists had been urging this for five years." If he knew anything at all about the doctrines of Marx and Lenin, to say nothing of the program of the Trotskyists, Professor Schuman would know that the position of the non-revolutionary socialists, and their function in the class struggle, and the attitude to be taken toward them by a revolutionary Marxian party, is clearly defined and understood and has been defined and defended constantly and in its entirety and all the time, by the Trotskyist opposition. Denouncing Socialists as "Social Fascists" was at all times and will at all times continue to be, to revolutionary Marxists, a grosslie demagogism and a rank abandonment of the scientific Socialism, the理论of Science as well as of sane intelligence in general. It is almost unquestionable that to that piece of insane demagogism we owe the triumph of Hitler in Germany.

(I must add that the whole paragraph on page 36
beginning: "When Stalin in 1936 ...", assuming it is honest,

CROTON-ON-HUDSON
NEW YORK

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June 10, 1937

reveals about as much political understanding as you could find
in Father Coughlin's little finger).

2. If Professor Schuman knew ~~all~~ his subject, he could not possibly -- again assuming his honesty -- base his principle argument upon the assumption that Trotsky's policy of revolutionary struggle against the bureaucracy in Soviet Russia was in force at the time of these alleged conspiracies. Up to two years ago Trotsky stood like a rock against every inclination of extremists, among his followers or anywhere else, to advocate political revolution in the Soviet Union. In the "Revolution Betrayed", the very book quoted by Professor Schuman to show that he does advocate political revolution, Trotsky reminds his readers that his faction has, throughout the whole preceding period, pursued a policy of reform within the party, and not revolution against it. To ignore that fact is also one of the every-day tricks of the Stalin campaign of falsification.

Those, however, are but two outstanding points in
Professor Schuman's ocean of ignorance and prejudice. ( I combine
the two terms because each one is both cause and effect and they
reinforce each other throughout his article.)

In conclusion I want to quote to you one true and
fundamental statement which he makes. He says, on page 71

"Whatever it was yesterday or may be tomorrow, Trotskyism
today is a program of uncompromising class war, of repudia-
tion of liberal "bourgeois" democracy, of universal revolution,
of the conversion of the Soviet state into a center of world-
wide revolt and conflict. Stalinism today stands for appease-

CROTON-ON-HUDSON
NEW YORK

June 10, 1937

ment, for collaboration with liberalism, for order and
peace in a world society threatened with destruction and
war between classes and war between nations."

That is the unvarnished truth. I think you surely
remember -- or at least have heard it remarked -- that the Russian
Bolshevik party was revolutionary. The Russian revolution led by
Lenin and Trotsky was the enactment of a program of "uncompromising
class war" and "universal revolution", and was a "repudiation of
liberal "bourgeois' democracy" in all its forms.
"Collaboration with the liberals"
was in fact the essence of the Menshevik program and his rejection
of that policy gave to Lenin's party its name and its place
in history. "Peoples Front" is nothing but a western name for
Menshevism.

Then, according to Professor Schuman's own
assertion, Trotsky is defending the revolutionary program of the
Bolshevik party and Stalin has abandoned it. When we read on the
same page, and as an inference from these facts, that Trotsky
"emerges" as a "renegade", I think we must, if we have any historic
sense or sense of logic at all, or even know that it means to be
objective, conclude that Mr. Schuman's essay is animated neither
by historic sense nor by logic, nor by an objective interest in
the truth, but by a violent political and class animus against the
party and the idea. He is entitled to that animus. But to try to
do in the leader and defender of the party and the idea, both
on the ground of his loyalty to principle, and on the ground that
he is a renegade, is political dirty work, and no amount of aca-

CROTON-ON-HUDSON
NEW YORK

June 10, 1937

demical tall talk and the pose of objectivity can cover it up.

To put it briefly, Mr. Pipkin, although your letter
shows that you are not aware of it, Professor Schuman's essay is
"phony". It is almost as phony as the Moscow trials themselves,
and to any person of political hard sense, anyone not just yearning
to be bamboozled, that is about as phony as a thing can be.

Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
June 10, 1937

Excuse any credit due to
hasty dictation.