CHAPTER 3Leaving Marxism
Marxism allegedly improves the human condition, provides a rational understanding of history, and even allows its adherents to predict the future. James Burnham, like many early twentieth-century intellectuals, found these prospects appealing. But critical events during the 1920s and 1930s caused some writers to reject the philosophy, or at least parts of it. During Burnham's tenure as a Marxist, evidence continued to mount that the Soviet Union—a society theoretically built on Marxist principles—was a tragedy. Joseph Stalin's purges of 1930s and famine killed millions of Soviet citizens. Millions more were sent to the Gulag. Most of the leaders of the 1917 Revolution had perished. Important Soviet military leaders had succumbed, too (a fact not lost on Adolf Hitler). Twenty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, things seemed bleak. But was it Marx's fault? How should Marxists interpret the Soviet Union? All Marxist intellectuals wrestled with what was called the “Russian question.”
Leon Trotsky tried to explain what went wrong in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1937). He argues in his characteristic dramatic style that initially the Soviet Union had developed an advanced, productive, socialist economy. The revolutionary proclaims that socialism had won, “not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earth's surface—not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.”1 He contends that at first, socialism had animated the USSR. Unfortunately, a bureaucratic class hijacked the revolution by transforming state property back into private property. The privileged bureaucracy moved Russia backward; counterrevolutionary, regressive forces prevailed. Trotsky insists that Bolsheviks should not be blamed. His old Bolshevik party was dead.
Trotsky maintained that Stalin was temporary. Like Marx, Trotsky used history to explain social reality: Stalin should be compared to the Napoleonic phase of the French Revolution because both perverted the true nature of the revolution. What began progressively turned violent and regressive under dictatorship, or the “Soviet Thermidor.” The Soviet Union was still a workers’ state.
Burnham was growing skeptical. No longer seduced by all of Trotsky's arguments, he replied to a 1937 party resolution designed to show support for Trotsky's positions with a piece titled “From Formula to Reality.” He asks: “We ask them, what kind of state is the Soviet Union? They answer, it is a workers’ state. We ask, why is it a workers’ state? They answer because there is nationalized property. We ask, why does nationalized property make it a workers’ state? And they answer, because a workers’ state is one where there is nationalized property.”2 Burnham continues that this was, in form, the same as arguing that the Bible is the word of God because God says it is, and God never lies.3
The wavering Marxist boldly argues that “the Soviet Union is at the present time neither a bourgeois state nor a workers’ state: that is, neither the working class nor a consolidated bourgeois class is the ruling or dominant class within the Soviet Union in any intelligible sense that can be given to the conception of a ruling or dominant class.”4 Burnham suggests that this may seem surprising, yet V. I. Lenin had described “a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.”5 He conceived of a state that was neither exclusively bourgeois nor proletarian. Calling the committee's description of the Soviet Union a workers’ state a “verbal habit,” Burnham now asserts that it may not be a workers’ state, and it did not have to be unconditionally defended.6
In 1938, Burnham publicly introduced motions to clarify the positions of the new Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP).7 Privately, his doubts continued to mount. In a letter to Sydney Hook, he muses about “the nature of democracy, and its relations to Russia, to socialism, to what [it] is worthwhile in general.”8 He writes that democracy typically meant the will of the people; and communists insist that their form of government is for the masses. However, what if only a small group of people in a society wants communism?9 Burnham asks, should communism still be advanced?10 What if the United States goes communist, but only a small minority in Canada want communism? Should the US army be used to spread communism to Canada? By 1939, these theoretical questions would have answers for Trotskyites.
Some of Burnham's questions were fostered by Max Eastman, or at least Burnham used Eastman's ideas to justify an escape from Marxism. Eastman earned Trotsky's censure by calling Marxism a “dialectical faith” and by arguing that the dialectic was not a form of science, but rather philosophy in the very way Marx denounced philosophy.11 Eastman replied to Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed (a work he translated into English) by penning a piece for Harper's called “Russia and the Socialist Ideal.” Claiming the status of a detached observer now that he had left Marxism, Eastman contends that he could see more clearly than those still under the spell of the dialectic.12 His conclusion was unequivocal: the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies in human history. What was supposed to become a free and equal socialist society had morphed into bureaucratic despotism. The culprit? Not Stalin, but Marxist philosophy.13 Eastman argues that Marxism resembled Christian beliefs or political beliefs, such as natural rights.14 Socialists whom Marx deemed “utopian,” such as Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier at least created a blueprint based on man's nature that made the construction of socialism realistic. Marx, however, never asked what it was about man that ensured “each according to his ability, each according to his need.”15 Eastman writes that Marx just assumed this, based only on the dialectic. No wonder Marxists were surprised by the Soviet catastrophe. Eastman singled out Trotsky for his inability to adjust his attitude toward socialism and the dialectic.16
Trotsky requested that Burnham reply, and the latter obliged in “Max Eastman as Scientist.” The piece condemns Eastman while only partly defending Marxism. Burnham insists that Eastman's new position as a nonbeliever did not make his analysis superior; it just meant he had less knowledge of the facts than Trotsky.17 Burnham concedes that Marx's scientific method may lack rigor, but that did not invalidate Marx's political philosophy. Eastman misunderstood the scientific method, anyway. Burnham argues that science never provides a complete blueprint because too precise a blueprint suffocated the agent, leaving no room for creativity.18 For Burnham, too perfect a blueprint was utopianism.19 Notably, this piece never refutes Eastman's ideas about the dialectic. In fact, it does not even use the word.
Eastman recognized this in his response titled “Burnham Dodges My Views,” published in the August 1938 edition of New International. He theorizes that Burnham probably knew the dialectic was a metaphysical as opposed to scientific concept, but, fearful of Trotsky's wrath, would not admit it.20 To deny the dialectic would end his Marxist career. Instead, Burnham resorted to word games, misinterpretations, and distortions.21
Burnham's reluctance to defend the scientific nature of Marxism was also influenced by Karl Popper. Popper employs the concept of confirmation bias to undermine both Freudian psychology and Marxism as any sort of sciences. He maintains that everywhere Marxists looked, they found economic explanations for phenomena. Psychologists displayed the same tendencies. Take the concept of resistance: if the patient accepts the theory, it is confirmed. If the patient resists, the psychologist asserts resistance, confirming his or her initial theory. This does not refute the concepts of economic determinism and resistance because sometimes economic factors determine events and sometimes resistance occurs. Instead, Popper rejects the scientific status of these theories.
What methodologies must scientists then use? Popper introduced the concept of falsification into the lexicon of scientific philosophy: a scientific theory must have a testable way to be falsified. For example, Newtonian physics says that every body exerts a force of attraction on every other body, so it would be falsified if we observed one body repelling another body. That has not happened. If it did, everyone would abandon classical Newtonian physics. For Popper, Marxism was different. Marx predicted that socialist revolutions would begin in the most industrialized nations. Instead, the first socialist revolution took place in Russia. Therefore, because Marxism was falsified, everyone should have abandoned it, at least as some form of science. Instead, Marxists just created ad hoc explanations.
Hook was having doubts, too. In a 1938 article titled “Reflections on the Russian Revolution,” Hook questions some contentions made in Revolution Betrayed.22 For instance, Trotsky suggested that the USSR was moving progressively toward socialism. Hook asks, is the Russian worker better off than twenty years ago? Trotsky said yes, but Hook argues that the answer depended on which year one was comparing with 1917. Certainly not 1933, when several million Russians starved to death. The period 1936–1938 had not been great either. Moreover, Hook maintains that worker standards of living had risen everywhere. Maybe capitalism promoted economic development more than socialism; nothing that had happened over the previous twenty years suggested otherwise.23 Did Stalin really betray the revolution? Hook agrees that despotism reigned in the USSR. Stalin's corruption of communist ideals needed no explication. Yet Burnham's first Marxist mentor saw Stalin's dictatorship as a result of Bolshevik theory: “That the identification of the dictatorship of the party and the class is an integral part of Bolshevik theory, and not a removable appendage, must be the inescapable conclusion of any critical inquiry into its party documents and historical practice.”24 Party dictatorship characterizes Bolshevik thought and this led to political dictatorship.25 Given this, there were no reasonable assurances that Trotsky's rule would be any different than Stalin's. Yes, the two disagreed on some philosophical questions, but Hook argues that the same conditions that spawned Stalin—the death of Lenin, the weak productive forces, the absence of world revolution, and declining morale—would have existed if Trotsky had followed Lenin.26
By the late 1930s, Trotsky was beset by personal problems. Besides being abandoned by former comrades, the society he had helped found was floundering. Usually in ill health, the “Old Man” had been exiled from numerous European countries to a small village in Mexico. He was Stalin's bête noire, essentially a death sentence not just for him but also for his associates. His sons-in-law were arrested, grandchildren were displaced, an ex-wife was deported, and a son was executed.
A commission led by John Dewey and Hook informally acquitted Trotsky in 1938 of the charges brought against him by Stalinists during the rigged Moscow trials. However, his personal reputation was still suffering because many on the left began wondering about his culpability in the rise of Stalin. Trotsky had explicitly rejected civil rights and parliamentary democracy, believing them to be tools whereby the bourgeoisie exploited others. During the October Revolution of 1917, he ordered the execution of resisters. During the ensuing Russian Civil War, Trotsky massacred innocents and the Kronstadters. American writer Selden Rodman denied any significant difference between Stalin and Trotsky, arguing that if Trotsky were in the Kremlin, he would be no less ruthless than Stalin because of their shared Marxist beliefs and dependence on violence.27 Henry Wallace contended that Thomas Jefferson was hated as much as Trotsky, but the third American president, unlike the Bolshevik leader, “kept his sense of balance.”28 George Orwell opined that Trotsky “is probably as much responsible for the [Soviet dictatorship] as any man now living, and there is no certainty that he as a dictator would be preferable to Stalin.”29 Both Stalin and Trotsky rejected parliamentary democracy, and once on that path, the kinship between the men becomes clear.
Trotsky replied to some of these criticisms in a June 1938 with a piece titled “Their Morals and Ours.” The “reactionaries,” he declares, see similarities everywhere: similarities between czarism and Bolshevism, Hitler and Stalin, Stalin and Trotsky, Lenin and fascism.30 And there are similarities, just as two armies in combat look similar; they have to act similarly or neither side would strike a blow. Trotsky argues that the mere fact that the reactionaries falsely call him complicit in the Soviet tragedy shows their weakness.31 The communist in exile asserts that Marxists differ because they assert the importance not of blood, honor, or immaculate conception, but class struggle. Marxists are superior because their means and ends come from the dialectic, with the goal of human liberation.32
Trotsky still employed Burnham as his bulldog, despite his growing skepticism with Marxism. Burnham used this opportunity to continue lifting his Marxist veil and to reveal a new identity in a piece titled “Intellectuals in Retreat” (January 1939), cowritten with Max Shachtman. It begins with Burnham's style of calling out his opponents: “WE ARE, IN THIS ARTICLE, writing particularly about the following persons: Group I: Max Eastman, Sidney Hook, Charles Yale Harrison, James Rorty, Edmund Wilson, Philip Rahv, Benjamin Stolberg, James Farrell, Louis Hacker, and others. Group II: John Chamberlain, Louis Adamic, Eugene Lyons, John Dewey, George S. Counts, Ferdinand Lundberg.”33 Both groups were anti-Stalinist intellectuals whom Burnham and Shachtman condemn for failing to advance any program. Desperate times called for some political measures. Calling their writings “negative,” insisting that they only criticized other programs, Burnham and Shachtman deem them “irresponsible” and “unprincipled.”34 Eastman was singled out: “Eastman, as so often, gives the show away. At the end of his polemic against Burnham (New International, August 1938) he confesses openly that he has no (conscious) program. ‘If I live,’ he promises, ‘I will complete my thesis. But he ‘would not hurry.’ To him, it seemed like a good time in America for ‘deliberation.’”35 Burnham and Shachtman believed deliberation would not defeat fascism, war, and unemployment.
Hook especially earned Burnham's and Shachtman's wrath, particularly his notion that the Bolshevik idea of party-dictatorship inevitably led to one-person dictatorship. The authors argue that no historical precedent exists for this argument.36 It was just one case. Hook notes that Russia became a dictatorship, and he then asserts a relationship between this and Lenin's ideas about dictatorship. Yes, Lenin preached party-dictatorship, and yes, Stalin emerged from this, but Stalin's dictatorship did not necessarily relate to Lenin. Lenin's ideas could lead in different directions, proven by the fact that Trotsky, also a disciple of Lenin, disagreed with Stalin on a myriad of issues.37 In fact, many of the writers named earlier broke from Stalin. Alternative avenues existed. Lenin could lead to Stalin or to Trotsky.
Yet in “Intellectuals in Retreat” Burnham and Shachtman hesitate when it came to defending the scientific nature of the dialectic, framing and answering the question this way: “Let us assume that the entire attack of our subjects on dialectical materialism is correct. Dialectical materialism is ‘contrary to science,’ an ‘idealistic metaphysics,’ a theology.’ Then let us ask: So what? What follows, politically?”38 The authors argue that one could promote revolution and not necessarily accept all the details of Marxist philosophy. Marxists routinely disagreed about Marxism. That did not invalidate any of their revolutionary political activity. This article, however, never denies the metaphysical nature of the dialectic. Popper's influence can be seen in part of the article: dialectics is not a science because “scientific hypotheses are tested by the predictions that are made on their basis.”39 The dialectic's inability to formulate clear and consistent laws about society revealed the nonscientific nature of the dialectic for Burnham and Shachtman.40
The piece naturally provoked a response from the Old Man. Divorcing politics and thought—claiming to support Marxism's revolutionary side but not the dialectic—was impossible for Trotsky. He wrote in a letter to Shachtman shortly after the article appeared expressing his dismay: “Comrade Burnham says: ‘I don’t recognize the dialectic.’ It is clear and everybody has to acknowledge it. But you say: ‘I recognize the dialectic, but no matter; it does not have the slightest importance.’ Re-read what you wrote. This section is terribly misleading for the readers of the New International and the best of gifts to the Eastmans of all kinds.”41 Burnham and Shachtman never rewrote their words.
Burnham's growing antipathy toward Marxism became clearer in a spring 1939 book review for Partisan Review, a journal that reflected developments in American communist thought. It originated in 1934 as its founding editors believed that the changing economic conditions during the Great Depression required a new literary style.42 Partisan Review tried to distinguish itself from other socialist publications by focusing on more than pressing political issues using Marxist jargon.43 It employed literary criticism, even embracing “reactionary” writers such as T. S. Eliot.44 By the late-1930s, its editors had to grapple with the fact the Soviet Union was faltering. The journal responded by providing a haven for American anti-Stalin leftists. Trotsky recognized it, stating that he hoped Partisan Review would “take its place in the victorious army of socialism.”45 Editors and frequent contributors included Dwight Macdonald, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and Hook.46 Burnham became a member of its editorial advisory board.
He helped turn the magazine away from any Trotskyite pretenses with a caustic book review titled “A Belated Dialectician.” The review analyzed The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences by J. B. S. Haldane, a mathematician and Marxist neophyte. Burnham pulled no punches with the new convert as the review begins: “This is a naïve and rather pathetic book.”47 Haldane opens his book modestly, stating that he was by no means an expert on Marxism; Burnham retorts, then why write the book? Haldane continues by noting the Hegelian principle “the unity of opposites.” Burnham replies in true-Burnham fashion:
What are opposites? We use the word loosely in common sense, relying on the context to give us a rough approximation to our meaning. Logic and science must be more precise. The word “opposites,” among its other meanings, may refer to: (1) “contradictories”—i.e., two sentences in such a logical relation that of them must be true and both cannot be true; (2) “contraries”—i.e., two sentences in such a logical relation that one of them must be false and both may be false; (3) points, angles, lines and other geometrical terms having certain geometrical relations with each other; (4) two human beings (or other animals) or groups of humans who are in physical conflict with each other; (5) or simply two particulars which are “different” from each other.48
Burnham implied that no one really knows what the principles of opposites meant. And the whole concept of dialectical materialism is neither true nor false.49 It certainly is not scientific because it could not be tested.50 Burnham recognizes that the vague nature of the dialectic was not Haldane's fault; he suggests that it was the fault of every Marxist writer since Engels (this tacitly included Trotsky). Marxists had to abandon their scientific pretenses and recognize that Marxism was a philosophy.
Burnham began offending other Marxists, too. Intellectual disputes were turning into personal feuds between Burnham and his comrades. Philip Rahv, a cofounder of Partisan Review, declared that Burnham acted as if he were giving out cards, determining who were real and fake Marxist revolutionaries.51 Burnham nearly came to blows with Hook.52 A feud simmered with Cannon, too, as Burnham tried to thwart his power in 1939.53
The Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 exacerbated this dispute. It was a traumatic event for Marxists because Hitler was considered an opposite, an enemy, like all other capitalist leaders. Supposedly a bulwark against fascism, the USSR now collaborated with fascists. Moreover, Marxists were disproportionately Jewish, creating more confusion; how could Jews possibly collaborate with the Nazi regime? It only got worse when on September 1, the Nazis invaded Poland, igniting World War II.The Soviets soon did the same, invading from the east as prescribed in a secret clause. Within two weeks, the Soviets had secured eastern Poland. Burnham's theoretical question (Should a communist United States invade a sovereign nation where communism was unpopular to spread socialism?) now had a Marxist answer.
Trotsky believed that the Soviet Union was justified and socialist gains in Poland should be defended. In a September 1939 piece titled “The USSR in War,” he states that private ownership of land would be eliminated in Poland, so socialism would spread: “Our general appraisal of the Kremlin and Comintern does not, however, alter the particular fact that the stratification of property in the occupied territories is in itself a progressive measure. We must recognize this openly.”54 Trotsky saw progress: socialism and the abolition of private property would soon exist in Poland. It was just another victory for the proletariat. Maintaining that his defense of the USSR did not relate to the deeds and crimes of the Kremlin, Trotsky insists that his views are determined by his “conception of the interest of the Soviet state and world revolution.”55
Burnham called the invasion Soviet imperialism—a confiscation ofland by Stalin. The seizure led Burnham to widen the increasing gap between himself and Trotsky. Knowing that Trotsky would disagree, Burnham recommends in a piece titled “On the Character of the War and the Perspective of the Fourth International” that the SWP condemn the Soviet invasion of Poland.56 He declares that “far from defending the Soviet state … we call upon the workers and peasants of Russia to overthrow and to re-establish their own socialist power.”57 These were fighting words. Exchanges between Burnham and Trotsky (and their followers) went on for months, leading Cannon to write, “For such a brief space of time, this is already the most voluminous party discussion in the history of mankind.”58 This was not the last conflagration that Burnham would help provoke among his intellectual peers.
Trotsky tried to defend himself against Burnham in a December 1939 article, “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party.” The piece asserts that two sides existed: on one hand, the antidialecticians, Burnham and Eastman, who represented the bourgeoisie; and on the other, Trotsky and Cannon, who moved with the dialectic and represented the workers. Trotsky proclaims that the dialectic was a “science of forms of our thinking” that allowed the follower to understand the material developments of society.59 He continues that dialectical thinking recognizes that everything changes—so A ceases to be A—depending on the material conditions.60 If the American philosophy professor would have employed dialectical thinking, he would have pondered the origins of the USSR, what changes it had undergone, and most important, whether these changes caused the rise of an exploitative class. If Burnham had asked these questions, he could have concluded only that the USSR was a “degenerated workers’ state.”61
Why did Burnham, Eastman, Hook, and Shachtman deny the dialectic? Trotsky noted their “pragmatism,” a distinctly American philosophy. In no other Western nation but the United States—the beacon of capitalism—had Marxism failed to grasp the minds of intellectuals and workers.62 This could not be a coincidence. For Trotsky, the rejection of the dialectic by American writers revealed not Marxism's weakness, but its strength because Marxism recognized the sway of economic forces in determining thoughts and ideas. The ideas of Burnham, Hook, Shachtman, Eastman, and their ilk merely represented the ideas of the ruling classes. Trotsky predicted that all of this would crumble.63
When asked for a reply, Burnham quipped to a comrade, “I stopped arguing about religion a long time ago.”64 After Trotsky learned of this, he fired off another article titled “Open Letter to Comrade Burnham.” It ran about ten thousand words. Burnham's assertion that the dialectic was a religious concept stung Trotsky. The subtitle reads: “Is There Logic in Identifying Logic with Religion?” Trotsky argues that two types of logic existed: Aristotelian logic (syllogism) and Hegelian logic, the dialectic. The dialectic, like Aristotle's syllogism, provides knowledge:
As I understand this, your words imply that the dialectic of Marx, Engels and Lenin belongs to the sphere of religion. What does this assertion signify? The dialectic, permit me to recall once again, is the logic of evolution. Just as a machine shop in a plant supplies instruments for all departments, so logic is indispensable for all spheres of human knowledge. If you do not consider logic in general to be a religious prejudice (sad to say, the self-contradictory writings of the opposition incline one more and more toward this lamentable idea), then just which logic do you accept?65
Trotsky feared that Burnham was right. And Burnham was right: the dialectic had become the providential god for Marxists. As Trotsky asserts in “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party,” it guides everything—a spring that moves the clock.66 Following the dialectic leads to human liberation from this wretched world. Human beings must subordinate their individual interest to become followers; everything must be abandoned, save what conforms to the dialectic (e.g., class struggle). For believers, it produces knowledge and essence. There can be no truth, wisdom, or logic without it. Nor can there be any social reality—past, present, or future. It, and only it, allows the believer to understand the world. You do not directly see the dialectic, of course. You just see it in action, everywhere and always. The mere existence of reality is evidence of their existence.
Burnham, obviously frustrated with Trotsky, replied three days later in “The Politics of Desperation” that he had never believed in the dialectic in the first place.67 Burnham continues that Trotsky knew of his agnosticism toward the dialectic, yet still employed him to promote Marxism. Trotsky trusted him to edit Marxist works, at Burnham's discretion. Using the syllogism-style logic that Trotsky advocated, Burnham reasons: if the dialectical method was fundamental to understanding everything, and Burnham questioned the dialectic, then why did Trotsky trust him to interpret Marxism?
In February 1940, Burnham discharged another lengthy piece called “Science and Style.” One biographer notes: “In contrast to Trotsky, Burnham never lost his composure. He replied to Trotsky's tirades in an even tone that sometimes hinted at sadness.”68 Another describes Burnham's “controlled prose.”69 But Burnham's seemingly calm and detached prose belied his anger. Burnham was not stoical, despite appearances. Reminiscing how he had first been mesmerized by Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, the repentant Marxist now realized it was Trotsky's style, his marvelous literary skills, that seduced him—not his method or logic. Burnham declares: “Comrade Trotsky, I will not match metaphors with you. In such a verbal tournament, I concede you the ribbon in advance. Evidence, argument, proof: these only are my weapons.”70 Burnham proceeds with an assault that began:
I will now summarise your argument:
With reference to your own position, you assert the following:
The philosophy of dialectical materialism is true.
Marxian sociology, in particular the Marxian theory of the state, is true.
Russia is a workers’ state.
A tactic of defence of the Russian state in the present war is correct.
With reference to the position of the opposition—or, more exactly, of Burnham who you claim expresses the “essence” of the opposition—you assert the following:
Burnham is a bourgeois democrat.
Burnham rejects dialectics.
Burnham rejects Marxian sociology, in particular the Marxian theory of the state.
Burnham denies that Russia is a workers’ state.
Burnham's practical politics are “abstentionist.”
Burnham rejects Bolshevik organization theories and methods.71
Burnham suggests that Trotsky was a great historian and political scientist, but his philosophy lacked rigor, especially scientific rigor. The fact that Trotsky continues to rely on the nineteenth-century philosopher G. W. F. Hegel proved his lack of interest in more contemporary logicians, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, and C. I. Lewis. Burnham thus deems Trotsky's idea of logic “incorrect” and “out of date.”72
In April 1940, Trotsky's view of the Soviet Union was endorsed by the SWP.73 It was, indeed, a workers’ state. Opponents could no longer hold party posts.74 This intentionally marginalized Burnham. Another party of outcasts quickly formed, but Burnham resigned the following month.75 His resignation announcement kicked Marxism where it counted. In his letter of resignation, he calls Marxist economics “false or obsolete or meaningless.”76 He declares: “Not only do I believe it meaningless to say that ‘socialism is inevitable’ and false that socialism is ‘the only alternative to capitalism’; I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitive society (what I call ‘managerial society’) is not only possible as an alternative to capitalism but is a more probable outcome of the present period than socialism.”77 Burnham would expand on this idea of a “managerial society” soon. He concludes by defending his bourgeois upbring. He asks, did his upbringing lead to confused thinking that kept him from embracing Marxism, or did it lead to clear thinking that kept him from embracing Marxism?78
There were several ways to poke a Marxist in the eye and Burnham chose all of them. First, he denied that Trotsky and his brand of Marxism were “progressive.” Second, he disagreed that Marxism was any sort of scientific socialism. Third, he not only rejected the existence of the dialectic but also called it a religious concept. These were not jabs, but right-hooks. This relationship—like so many of Burnham's relationships—was a boxing match. And this time, he fought a great historical figure. Burnham provoked rebukes because it was only a boxing match if both sides got punched. Trotsky was one of the foremost Marxist theoreticians of the twentieth century and, at one level, his attacks must have stung Burnham, like a professor who shuns a student, or even a parent who shuns a child (the Old Man was about the same age as Burnham's father).
It was painful for both sides. Burnham burned his correspondence with his former mentor. Trotsky called his former disciple “an educated witch-doctor” who succumbed to “petty-bourgeois fatheadedness.”79 William Troy, who knew Burnham personally and contributed to Partisan Review, wrote that Burnham “inclines to be strongly influenced in an intellectual sense by people, and then to turn on them drastically … Father D’Arcy. Then Wheelwright. Then Hook.”80 Now Trotsky. Sometimes people sabotage relationships so they do not have to confront the pain of being left—a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least the relationship ends on their terms.
The immediate catalyst for this fallout shaped Burnham's future political philosophy in two important ways. First, Trotsky's attempt to justify the Soviet invasion of Poland in accordance with Marxism showed Burnham the weakness of ideology. He began to believe that ideologies attempted to explain reality in accordance with their principles, but reality was messier and more complex than ideology suggested. Ideologies led people to distort reality—to misinterpret the facts—to ensure everything conformed to ideology. This spelled disaster. Second, the Soviet invasion of Poland underscored the role that power played in politics. Regardless of what Stalin and Trotsky said, the invasion of Poland was nothing more than a naked power play. Ideology could not explain this; it masked truth. Recognizing that power dominated human impulses could reveal the true nature of the world. Words meant nothing. These ideas would be expanded in future works by the more cynical Burnham.
Burnham was a Marxist in mind only; his heart was never in it. As a young intellectual, he may have believed that only mind mattered. Moreover, Burnham had invested—maybe wasted—seven years of his intellectual energy on his relationship with Marxism. He had left the party and felt alienated by one of its leaders. Yet like any serious relationship, it left an indelible impact on Burnham, one that would shape his future intellectual relationships.