Worth reading for Burnham

"In Defense of Marxism" is one of the most boring books ever written. Yet, it's considered a classic of the Trotskyist movement.

The book is a collection of documents written by Trotsky during an intense factional struggle within the American Trotskyist movement, the Socialist Workers Party, between 1939 and 1940.

Most editions also contain two texts written by James Burnham, "Science and Style" and "Letter of Resignation to the Workers Party". Burnham's texts are the only interesting ones in the entire book! Burnham was a factional opponent of Trotsky and later left the socialist movement entirely. He is most known for his conservative books "The Managerial Revolution", "The Machiavellians" and "Suicide of the West". When he wrote "Science and Style" and the letter of resignation, however, he still regarded himself as a socialist (at least broadly).

The factional struggle within the SWP was triggered by the Hitler-Stalin pact and the subsequent Soviet attacks on Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic republics. Trotsky, while maintaining his political opposition to Stalin, nevertheless took up positions which could be interpreted as tacit support for the Soviet attacks. (It's somewhat unclear what his real position was.) He also insisted that the Soviet Union was still a "degenerated workers' state" due to its nationalized economy and central planning. While calling for a "political revolution" to overthrow Stalin, he nevertheless called for the defence of the Soviet Union against the capitalist powers. Trotsky's ideas where supported by the SWP majority, but met with opposition from a rather heterogenous minority group around Max Shachtman and James Burnham. They argued against support for the Soviet Union. Expelled from the SWP, the "petty bourgeois opposition" formed the Workers Party, which later split into a plethora of groups, each moving in a different direction.

That most editions of this Trotskyist work also contain two anti-Trotskyist articles by Burnham is probably a revenge of some sort. The SWP regarded Burnham's articles as extremely bad, and published them as proof positive that Trotsky had been right about this renegade all along!

In my opinion, Burnham's two articles are interesting and even funny. Burnham was a confused and eclectic intellectual, who was no match for the old revolutionary Trotsky in terms of hard-hitting arguments. Indeed, Burnham even admits as much, ironically paying tribute to Trotsky's "wonderful style" which he even claims to have "analysed at considerable length" in a review article. Frankly, "Science and Style" is a slightly frivolous text. And yet, despite his frivolity and self-professed profligacy, Burnham manages to corner Trotsky at several points in the debate.

Burnham never accepted Marxist dialectics, something Trotsky attempted to use against him in the factional struggle. Trotsky argued that Burnham's opposition to dialectics was the cause of his "petty bourgeois" politics, including his refusal to defend the Soviet Union and acknowledge it as a "degenerated workers' state". In response, Burnham points out that Trotsky never raised the issue of dialectics as long as he and Burnham were on the same side in various earlier factional squabbles within the Trotskyist movement. Burnham further points out that Plekhanov, the so-called father of Russian Marxism and a first rate defender of dialectics, was actually a Menshevik, while some Bolsheviks and other revolutionary Marxists refused to accept dialectics. Further, he sarcastically reveals that all works on dialectics distributed by the SWP were written by "Mensheviks", "Stalinists" and "Brandlerites", i.e. political opponents of the SWP and Trotskyism!

Burnham also expresses surprise at Trotsky's (ridiculous) statement that workers in some spontaneous and instinctive manner think dialectically. If so, how come most of them aren't socialists?

Still, Trotsky in a sense won the debate with James Burnham. When he wrote "Science and Style", Burnham somehow believed that one could be a revolutionary Marxist without subscribing to dialectical materialism. In his letter of resignation to the Workers Party (Shachtman's new organization), Burnham admits that he was wrong and Trotsky was right.

Wrote Burnham: "I reject, as you know, the "philosophy of Marxism", dialectical materialism. I have never, it is true, accepted this philosophy. In the past I excused this discrepancy and compromised this belief with the idea that the philosophy was "unimportant" and "did not matter" so far as practice and politics were concerned. Experience, and further study and reflection, have convinced me that I have been wrong and Trotsky--with so many others--right on this score; that dialectical materialism, though scientifically meaningless, is psychologically and historically an integral part of Marxism, and does have its many and adverse effects upon practice and politics."

Burnham thus broke with Marxism. Personally, I strongly disagree with the political positions he took up afterwards. Still, the man had a point: dialectical materialism is indeed a mostly psychological device, with little or no real empirical content. Why, one could argue *against* the defence of the USSR using "dialectical" arguments!

I hope that the Pathfinder edition of "In Defense of Marxism" contain Burnham's articles. If not, they are available on-line at the - wait for it - Trotskyist Encyclopedia.

The rest of the book is firewood.