CHAPTER 2Embracing Marxism

In 1932, Burnham began to entertain political ideas, even some radical ones. On the surface, the bourgeois professor was the epitome of balance and moderation. He was a dapper dresser, and his smooth, calm writing style seemed to match his ostensible temperament. But intellectually, Burnham went to extremes, albeit with the flat rhetoric of a logician. Instead of promoting the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Burnham sprinted left, embracing Marxism. Revolutionary Marxism—the idea that human salvation required the activity of leading individuals—seduced Burnham, like it did so many others, because it gave him a cause to fight for, a way to change the world. He dove in headfirst.

Burnham's first source on revolutionary Marxism was Sydney Hook, a philosophy colleague at New York University (NYU). Burnham could not have found a better mentor if he wanted to leave armchair philosophy. Hook's interpretation of Marxism can be found in the July 1931 edition of Symposium, in which his essay “Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx” appeared.¹ Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German socialists used the voting booth to gain some concessions for the working classes. Hook contended that this pacified workers and even Marxist leaders. Seeking to exploit the turmoil of the Great Depression, Hook maintained in Symposium that revolutionaries were required because “power is bestowed neither by God nor the economic process. It must be taken. When Marx spoke of communism as being a result of ‘social necessity,’ he was referring to the resultant of the whole social process, one of whose components was the development of objective social conditions, the other, the assertion of a revolutionary class will.”² Hook insisted that economic determinism did not mean that all human affairs are preordained. He believed that political activity is good, but revolutionary activity is better.

Hook pulled Burnham away from the metaphysics of Aquinas and toward the world of politics and revolution by championing Marxist revolutionaries, such as V. I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky. Insisting that Marxism was more than a determinist philosophy, they all demanded action in what for them was a daily struggle against capitalism. Something always had to be done for Burnham, too. For the next forty-five years, he would emulate Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemburg by preaching ideas that inspired action. And he always argued against those who wanted to wait. The struggle must always occur everywhere. All that changed over the decades was the opponent.

This call for action was just one theme from “Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx” that Burnham would employ for the rest of his intellectual career. Other specific concepts from the essay that the new man of action would utilize include Hook's argument (based on the ideas of Luxemburg) that the goal of the proletariat movement was not the establishment of socialism, but the “conquest of political power.”³ Power was at the heart of the struggle; it was the beginning and the end. And this seizure of power primarily depended on “will and organization.”⁴ Determined individuals must lead. Burnham always exhorted these themes, in one form or another.

Hook's works on Marxism piqued Burnham's intellectual interest in the movement, but Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (1932), which had just been published in English, started a fire. Trotsky's three-volume tome is relentlessly Marxist; it reduces even worldviews to economics. It extols the prescience of Lenin, who recognized that Russian workers were poised to revolt, and the Bolshevik Party, which “created not only a political but a moral medium of its own, independent of bourgeois social opinion and implacably opposed to it.”⁵ For Trotsky, the 1917 revolutions saw the masses fulfill their historic destiny by becoming rulers.⁶ What about his biases? The revolutionary scorned historians who sought to “stand on the wall” with “objective” works of history; they only promoted reactionary forces.⁷

Trotsky's classic cast a spell over the Burnham. In his review for Symposium, the editor gushed at the book's style, describing it as a “rapid succession of events, concisely given persons, clear analogies in the form of similes and metaphors … compact, logical structure, and throughout the powerful dialectic of historical materialism.”⁸ Giving life to large historical forces and protagonists, Trotsky's historical method provided the philosophy professor a new way to analyze the past. Whereas history traditionally had been written about great figures, Burnham recognized that this method provided limited understanding of society in an industrial age when impersonal forces shaped the world as much or more than individuals. Trotsky's Marxist method was an alternative. For example, Russia seemed the least likely European country to advance to socialism. Burnham asserts that Trotsky explained her progress without resorting to great figures. Trotsky argues, according to Burnham, that Russia's belated industrial development meant that during World War I “a much larger percentage of Russian workers were employed in giant industries than in other countries, and these workers were conscious of themselves as a class, better trained in political strikes, more aware of the inadequacy of the bankrupt bourgeoisie.”⁹ Parroting Trotsky, Burnham claims that the seemingly backward Russian nation became the vanguard of the proletarian revolution because its working class was most affected by the imperialist war of 1914–1918. A class possessed, the Russian proletariat surged ahead.

Burnham's review notes that although Trotsky believed in the inevitable victory of the proletariat, he was not a rigid historical determinist.¹⁰ The dialectic did not equate fatalism. Trotsky wanted to create a space for great men to participate on the historical stage. Not bound by determinism, they could become historical protagonists. The Russian Revolution showed that leading individuals—with free will—could propel history forward.

Burnham grappled with this issue of free will versus historical determinism his entire writing career. Like most Marxists, he would usually mix some form of historical inevitability with the notion that individuals mattered, too. Sometimes the first James Burnham would optimistically predict that with the assistance of determined individuals willing to use force, inexorable historical trends were blowing the world toward some form of democracy. More often, the second James Burnham expressed little confidence for democracy's future, although he occasionally left a small window open for the same resolute individuals to alter its course. Burnham's world was always moving somewhere. All that changed was where, and would anyone do anything about it?

The world was changing dramatically when the next issue of Symposium appeared in April 1933 as the Roosevelt administration launched the New Deal. Over the next five years, dozens of new government agencies were created along with a cast of bureaucrats who would alter the American social, economic, and political landscape. In response, Burnham and Wheelwright cowrote “Thirteen Propositions,” a statement of the journal's principles and how they related to current affairs. Rejecting communism but embracing some Marxist language, Burnham and Wheelwright declared that capitalism had failed. The piece argues that its degrading effects “threaten to destroy all vestiges of Civilization in a series of increasingly violent imperialist wars,” and that capitalism cannot reform itself.¹¹ Collectivization must be applied to property relations, even if it means revolution. Like Hook, the authors believed that parliamentary means might not suffice; violent and nonlegal measures may be required.¹² The exact details will be left “for history to decide.”¹³ The editors rejected Soviet communism because conditions in the United States in 1933 differed from those in Russia in 1917. Nonetheless, they insisted that profound change must occur, even beyond the New Deal.

By July 1933, Burnham's writing style had changed. It began to resemble the Marxist style that would characterize his articles for the next seven years. His articles became less precise and more dogmatic. The kind of unequivocal declarative statements that he cautioned against in Introduction to Philosophical Analysis became routine. An example comes from the July1933 edition of Symposium in which he reviewed The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. A classic in management and corporate law, the book describes the decline of firms in which the same group of people controlled all aspects of the corporation. Berle and Means describe how, in the early 1900s, individual capitalist owners began relinquishing control of businesses to managers, thereby losing direct control of the means of production. Now, corporations existed with two important and different groups: the stockholders who invested in the company, and the managers (or experts) who actually ran the company. The latter had little economic investment in the company, so they would be less likely to resist government intervention in the corporation, as long as their professional interests were not threatened. The book also notes the increased concentration of wealth that had occurred in the United States during the 1920s.

Burnham praised the work, claiming that no more significant book had been published in the United States in years.¹⁴ He declared, “The negative conclusions of the book are inescapable, incontrovertible; and they are faced by the authors with complete and admirable clarity. In three short brilliant chapters … they smash the ‘American Myth’ beyond its restorative ability of even the most skillful bourgeois surgeon-economist.”¹⁵ The review contends that Berle and Means had shown that wealth was increasingly being concentrated into the hands of “economic autocrats.”¹⁶ For Burnham, the book provided evidence for the Marxist theory of surplus value because the appendix showed that 0.4 percent of the population received 78.9 percent of stock dividends. He maintained that Berle and Means had effectively used the dialectic in showing that the changes in the American capitalist system had created an “objective opposition” that gave rise to an “active struggle of interests.”¹⁷ What the authors did not understand was that the changes they described were not changes within capitalism—they were changes from capitalism toward a new social order.¹⁸

The review also foreshadowed another hallmark of Burnham's writings: an incisive criticism of President Roosevelt and his administration. Burnham argues that the president reduced unemployment by merely hiring workers at the lowest possible wages. Sure, Roosevelt desired a just wage, but who determines what a just wage is? The burgeoning Marxist argues that because there were two main classes, the state must always favor the dominant class. He laments that big banks and Wall Street did not have to fear Roosevelt.¹⁹ Burnham predicts that class consciousness would continue to grow; the president and his allies could not stop what was coming.

His October 1933 contribution to Symposium expressed even starker Marxist sentiments. It partly responded to T. S. Eliot, who critiqued the editors of Symposium for placing political and economic issues above moral ones in “Thirteen Propositions.”²⁰ Burnham argues that the primary distinction between himself and Eliot was that Burnham wanted to overthrow bourgeoisie property rights, whereas Eliot defended them.²¹ The young editor asks, why tell the worker to be a good family man when his whole subsistence depends on the profits he could generate? How could one tell a woman to go to church on Sunday when she could not afford a coat or shoes?²² Burnham states that although he did not support everything the Communist Party stood for, he still supported it, much more so than he had six months earlier.²³ He even proclaims that he accepted the dictatorship of the proletariat.²⁴

A new Burnham emerged in the fall of 1933. He wrote that until this time his Marxism had been merely “theoretical.”²⁵ Now, his support for the ideology was “unequivocal.”²⁶ Burnham attributed this change to personal experiences, writing in the Symposium that his travels to places like Detroit and cities in Illinois showed him class struggle in action as factory workers struggled with owners.²⁷ During the Ford Hunger March of 1932, several thousand Detroit autoworkers marched to Dearborn, where clashes followed between the police and protesters. Four men were killed.²⁸ In the spring of 1933 in Chicago, after working for weeks without pay, thousands of teachers stormed and desecrated banks. Armed with textbooks, the teachers were beaten with clubs.²⁹ In the throes of the Great Depression, the revolution seemingly loomed. Burnham even began mentoring members of the Young Communist League in hopes of hastening revolution.³⁰ By 1933, the philosophy professor had become radicalized. A personal rift developed between Burnham and Wheelwright. The year 1933 would be Symposium's last.

At the behest of Hook, the neophyte Marxist joined the American Workers Party (AWP) in late 1933.³¹ It was an American-centered, less authoritarian alternative to the Moscow-directed Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), and one that the professors believed could actually ignite revolution in America.³² The AWP's Statement of Programmatic Orientation called the CPUSA a failure.³³ It accused the Communist Party of failing to radicalize American workers and advance their interests. The party had even brought discredit to communism.³⁴ Promising to succeed where the CPUSA had failed, the statement pledged to establish “a free workers’ democracy.”³⁵

Creating an alternative to the CPUSA allowed Burnham to establish his independent Marxist identity. Through the AWP, he could use his intellectual talents to influence the world. The party was originally led by A. J. Muste, a former clergyman who became radicalized during World War I. He still used Christian concepts to buttress his Marxist viewpoints. In an essay called “Pacificism and Class War,” he compares the working classes to Jesus: although Jesus was deemed a social disturber, it was really those in power who disturbed the social order.³⁶ The strikers could be blamed for violence and upheaval, but it was those in power who founded a system based on violence and created social upheaval.³⁷ Muste asserts, “In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.”³⁸ Under certain circumstances, Muste rationalized violence. Burnham would do the same.³⁹

Burnham became a respected member of the new party, but he always seemed a bit detached. Reluctant to subordinate everything to the imminent revolution, he continued teaching at NYU.⁴⁰ By now married, he lived in an upscale area of New York City where he mostly associated with his old college friends and family.⁴¹ Burnham gave to the party, yet he did not give everything. Fellow Marxist intellectual James Cannon called him the classic “petty-bourgeois intellectual,” meaning he wanted to teach the workers without fully integrating himself in the movement.⁴² As Hook recalled decades later, “there was something bizarre about this scion of a wealthy Midwestern Catholic industrialist, a product of Princeton and Oxford, who had delivered his oration as a class valedictorian in Latin, entering the lists as a protagonist of the working class.”⁴³ Like Superman, Burnham had a dual identity: on one hand, he was an even-keeled, modest philosophy professor, and on the other, he was a radical revolutionary, trying to save the world from bourgeoisie capitalism. (Except Burnham sometimes did not change his wardrobe; he would travel from upscale cocktail parties to communist committee meetings dressed in formal dinner attire.)⁴⁴

The new party member never connected with the average American worker, either personally or intellectually. Workers he addressed found him condescending.⁴⁵ Hook stated that whenever Burnham spoke, he lost support for his cause.⁴⁶ The young philosopher was too consumed with reason because he assumed that human beings would naturally gravitate toward logical arguments, regardless of how they were presented. The mature Burnham would know better; he would recognize that nonrational impulses could steer human thought. He would even go on to teach courses on irrationalism at NYU.⁴⁷

Burnham was more persuasive with the typewriter; he wrote forcefully using Marxist terminology. Burnham's first Marxist polemic for a national magazine appeared in a 1934 issue of The Nation. It responded to a piece called “Was Europe a Success?” by Joseph Krutch. Krutch argues that the rise of the Nazis and communists meant the death of Europe because they rejected traditional European values, such as freedom, democracy, and Christianity. Therefore, Europe was dead. But had it been a success? In a piece that appeared in the same section as responses from Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, H. L. Mencken, and Aldous Huxley, the new socialist avers that the revolution in Russia did not reject traditional European values but fulfilled them.⁴⁸ Krutch championed freedom as a European value and Burnham agrees while insisting that freedom had no “absolute” meaning; it existed only in the abstract. And because Krutch wrote as a capitalist, he interpreted freedom in a way promoted by capitalists. The socialist championed the socialist conception of freedom—freedom from exploitation and economic insecurity. Krutch's worldview—his definition of terms—would disappear. Burnham insists that only by embracing socialism could Europe fulfill her true destiny. Only by embracing socialism would it be possible to achieve real civilization.⁴⁹

Roosevelt always bore the brunt of Burnham's attacks. He relentlessly attacked the administration and its policies in a series of articles titled “THEIR Government.”⁵⁰ Noting in one article that Roosevelt had recently dined with J. P. Morgan, Burnham interprets this meeting as symbolizing a “new stage” of Roosevelt's capitalism. The first stage was characterized by presidential rhetoric that sounded sometimes “liberal” and even “radical” because the public demanded change.⁵¹ It frustrated the capitalists, however, who now forced Roosevelt to promote the interests of the bankers. This would characterize the next stage of Roosevelt's plan. Burnham cynically maintains that Roosevelt shrewdly used liberal slogans as cover for his reactionary program. He would emphasize the disconnect between words and actions for the next forty years.

In another article, the rising Marxist star declares that the depression had not yet killed capitalism, but it had left it “bruised and broken.”⁵² Burnham states that Roosevelt was merely playing the role of doctor, with the Agricultural Adjustment Act being a cast and the Civil Works Administration being iodine. The capitalists would use any tactic to preserve their system. Laws were flouted merely to protect the bourgeoisie; they were enforced when they benefited the ruling class and ignored when they did not. Burnham opined that capitalism may not be worth saving—maybe it should be killed now to put it out of its misery.⁵³ For the communist sympathizer, it was time to sweep aside capitalism and its representatives, like Roosevelt.

The revolution had to be led by great men. Burnham loved this idea, too. He idolized Lenin and Trotsky. In What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin demands that full-time, dedicated, professional revolutionaries prepare the masses for revolution because “no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders that maintains continuity.”⁵⁴ Worker advancement needed external assistance. The book asserts that training and preparing the masses was the intellectual's moral duty. Burnham always believed that the masses must be led by the elite, wherever he found himself on the political spectrum. Like Lenin, he always viewed himself as part of the intellectual elite whose writings were intended to inspire the masses.

Burnham showed his affinity for the great man in history in his review of Lenin, written by British Communist Party member Ralph Fox in 1933. The review venerates Lenin by contending that the world's greatest leader had orchestrated its greatest revolution.⁵⁵ Lenin's new student argues that the Bolshevik successfully subordinated everything to the interests of the working class, making him the opposite of demagogues, like Hitler or Roosevelt. The latter exploited the masses for their own interests, whereas Lenin showed the masses their strength. Burnham concludes that a man as great as Lenin deserved an equally fitting biography. Fox's work did not suffice because despite presenting many facts about Lenin, it failed to use them judiciously to describe the historical background that shaped Lenin.⁵⁶

The young Burnham's apathy about politics evaporated after studying Hook, Lenin, and Trotsky. The November 1934 midterm elections piqued his interest. Despite his criticisms and the persistence of the Great Depression, FDR's Democratic Party gained seats, something neither party had done since the Civil War. Burnham minimized the results by declaring in a “THEIR Government” article that elections under capitalism resembled prisoners electing new wardens. The prisoners could choose from among a few candidates, and they would be told this was freedom and democracy. Burnham asserts that one warden may be kinder than the other, but the inmates remained in jail. The election changed nothing; revolution was still needed to displace Roosevelt.⁵⁷

In December 1934, the AWP merged with the Trotskyite Communist League of America (CLA), led by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, to form the Workers Party of the United States (WPUS). Cannon viewed the union as an opportunity to expand communist propaganda and activities.⁵⁸ Shachtman recalled that both sides were united over their interest in theoretical questions, internationalism, and a struggle against Stalinism.⁵⁹ The merger also increased Burnham's proximity to Trotsky, something that may have motivated his support. Burnham had gained Trotsky's attention with his review of The Russian Revolution.⁶⁰ Alan Wald wrote of the now twenty-nine-year-old Burnham: “To the Trotskyite movement he brought some special qualities: a breadth of cultural knowledge, a writing style free of Marxist cliches, an aura of objectivity and impartiality, and a fresh perspective on indigenous political issues.”⁶¹ Burnham often used the pen name John West, again suggesting a dual identity.

When Burnham entered the WPUS, a divide existed between Trotsky and Stalin, one precipitated by Lenin's death. Trotsky appeared to be the superior candidate to replace Lenin, but Stalin outmaneuvered him. Portraying himself as Lenin's designated heir, Stalin exploited Trotsky's association with the Mensheviks; Trotsky had not even joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks until 1917. The Georgian also used his own position as secretary of the party to strengthen his hand—because most Communist Party members owed their position to Stalin, they remained loyal to him. The exiled and outcast Trotsky—who still considered himself Lenin's true heir—had to repudiate the leader of the first socialist society from afar. Many American communists, repulsed by Stalin, joined Trotsky's intellectual army in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Trotsky and the Soviet leader were also divided over how to build socialism in the Soviet Union and abroad. Lenin believed that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would spark successful socialist uprisings across Europe. This never happened. Questions began to be asked, such as could socialism be built by the Soviet Union alone, or was international help needed? Should socialists direct all of their efforts toward promoting socialism in the USSR, or should they work toward promoting socialism abroad? Stalin conceptualized his response as “socialism in one country” by arguing that the Soviet Union needed to strengthen itself before promoting worldwide revolution.⁶² The Soviet Union could and should advance toward communism, alone if necessary. Trotsky argued for “permanent revolution,” or the belief that socialists needed to promote revolution everywhere—even in countries with primitive economies—because economic systems should be interpreted globally, not nationally.⁶³ He wrote: “a national revolution is not a self-contained whole; it is only a link in the international chain.”⁶⁴ Trotsky's holism denied the existence of isolated nationalist economies. He maintained that genuinely nationalistic economies did not exist because all economies are shaped by global forces. Burnham had to side with Trotsky against Stalin.

He did so as coeditor (with Shachtman) of the Trotskyite New International. Burnham used his position to bring Trotskyite ideas to American workers and other Marxist intellectuals. For example, in a piece called “The Question of Organic Unity,” Burnham insists that “if we examine the political meaning of the resolutions and speeches of the Seventh Congress, we naturally enough find it resting firmly on the doctrine of socialism in one country, the heart and lungs of Stalinism. That is to say, it rests on the denial of revolutionary internationalism.”⁶⁵ The author continues that the gangrene of Stalin's “socialism in one country” was afflicting the whole body of communism, demonstrated by a mutual assistance treaty between the USSR and France.⁶⁶ According to Burnham, the pact disregarded the Marxist theory of the state—the belief that government merely managed the affairs of the bourgeoisie. Rather than fighting for workers around the world, Stalin had collaborated with the bourgeoisie. The new Trotskyite argues that by abandoning true Marxism and permanent international revolution, Stalin had poisoned the entire organism.

While Burnham was showing his fidelity to Trotsky, the winds of war were blowing across Europe. Unwilling to submit to the Versailles Treaty, Hitler was reconstructing the German Wehrmacht and demanding more living space for his people. Benito Mussolini was doing the same in Italy. He glorified his army and suggested that the Italians may need more living space, too.⁶⁷ No one thought this would be accomplished peacefully. In response to this militarism, pacifist movements burgeoned across the West. Millions of people signed “peace pledges” and “peace ballots.” “Peace Leagues” became fashionable.

Burnham would have none of this. One of his first articles as a formal Trotskyite (using the pseudonym John West) reviewed Richard B. Gregg's The Power of Non-Violence (1934). Burnham rejects the book's thesis that nonviolent resistance was the best way to promote social change. He asserts that the Marxist contention is that institutions, themselves based on material forces, determine the thoughts and feelings of people.⁶⁸ To create a just and peaceful society, the institutions must be overthrown. For Burnham, as Gregg had admitted, these institutions had been founded on violence; therefore, they must be eradicated with violence.⁶⁹ The review argues that because of the corrupt nature of the world, violence was a necessary precondition for a better world, a socialist world, stating that “Marxists are not worshippers of violence, but Marxists deal with the society that confronts them, not with hopes and dreams.”⁷⁰ In it, Burnham acknowledges that Marxists promoted war, but Marxists promoted only class warfare, and Burnham argues that his was justified because it overthrows the class that by its nature starts war.⁷¹

The antipacifist began an article for the socialist New Militant by declaring that the revolutionary movement seeks to eliminate the expansion of capitalism, the real cause of war.⁷² For capitalists, new capital investments must be made, and new markets found. The inability of capitalists to find new markets, however, leads to conflicts between them. The best way to end these conflicts? End capitalism. Burnham continues in the next week's issue that socialism will end the contradictions that lead to war.⁷³ In the meantime, the workers had to participate by provoking revolution, thereby obtaining power.⁷⁴ Burnham decries pacificism, proclaiming that every strike and militant demonstration was worth one-thousand Peace Leagues.⁷⁵ Only revolution on behalf of the working classes can bring peace.⁷⁶

Burnham loved the idea of violent revolution. Matthew Josephson, a journalist who met Burnham in the early 1930s, described him this way: “In expanding the doctrines of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky he sounded implacable; he became a true fanatic carried away by vast blood baths that would attend the overthrow of our society. I felt the cold flame behind the tortoise-shell glasses of that composed and well-mannered young man of twenty-six.”⁷⁷ Josephson also described the internal passion that guided the seemingly calm philosophy professor. Peaceful ideas and movements always earned his ire. Many of his future critics would note the apocalyptic nature of his thought.

Trotsky's worldview was also apocalyptic. Lenin had argued that imperialist nations inevitably competed against one another in search of ever-scarcer raw materials and markets to export their goods, provoking conflicts. Trotsky continues this argument in a 1934 essay titled “War and the Fourth International” by predicting that the same imperialist contradictions that caused World War I would ignite another European conflagration, and soon. The League of Nations was helpless to do anything about it. Trotsky calls the League “a secondary figure on the chessboard of imperialist combinations,” and asserts that the real levers of diplomacy were being pulled by the imperialist powers, not by the international governing body.⁷⁸ The geopolitical strategist argues that the important diplomatic work went on “behind the back of Geneva.”⁷⁹

How should Marxists respond when (not if) the imperialist Nazi state attacked the USSR? Trotsky argues that when the time came, the Soviet Union had to be defended because it was a “workers’ state.”⁸⁰ The USSR was a state for the workers, by the workers, and of the workers. Therefore, it had to be defended. It was part of a broader worldwide conflict.

Burnham heralds these ideas to his American audience in a 1935 piece titled “The Bands Are Playing.” He writes that Stalin's usage of the phrase “defend the Soviet Union”—one that gives priority to the Soviet Union over other working-class movements—misapplied the concept because workers around the world needed assistance: “What does the slogan, ‘Defend the Soviet Union!’ mean to a Marxist? The essence can be summed up quickly. It means: ‘Extend the October revolution.’ It means to strengthen the economic and political organizations of the world proletariat, to carry the class struggle on a world basis to ever higher levels, to drive toward workers’ power.”⁸¹ Burnham promotes a Trotskyite holism: no class struggle could take place in isolation; they were all linked. Defending the revolution meant extending the revolution worldwide.

This universalism was crucial idea for Burnham's future intellectual development. He applied this idea on the eve of World War II by maintaining that workers around the world must unite in their battle against capitalist countries: revolution for democracy everywhere. He would turn this idea on its head as a Cold Warrior because in about thirty years, he would distinguish himself from some other American Cold Warriors by demanding that the fight against communism be fought everywhere—it was a constant struggle. The universal nature of the conflict never left Burnham. And consistent with Lenin and Trotsky, it would not be peaceful.⁸²

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the fall of 1935 confirmed what Burnham already knew: the world raged in violence and aggression. Burnham explains this in a piece called “War and the Workers,” which had been influenced by Rosa Luxemburg's article of the same title. World War I had provided the context for her piece. Luxemburg argues that socialism would not descend from heaven; it could only follow a violent contest between the two competing classes. World War I was bad, although not necessarily because of the violence. Hoping the conflict would prepare the workers for their destiny, Luxemburg asserts they should not fight one another, but rather should aim their aggression against imperialism.

Burnham agreed. Running to almost fifteen thousand words, “War and the Workers” provides his most complete Marxist statement. It proclaims that war had begun: the Italian campaign in Ethiopia was part of a broader global imperialist struggle, from which the workers’ revolution must emerge.⁸³ A workers’ revolution eliminates the causes of war: contradictions inherent in capitalism that spawn imperialism.⁸⁴ Burnham favored war, but he demanded war by workers against their oppressive government and its representatives like Roosevelt. He castigated peace movements that bloomed across the United States on the eve of World War II, contending that this pacificism benefited the American capitalists. Their representatives may have talked about peace and neutrality, but they simultaneously increased military spending. As the workers suffered, the US army was modernized.⁸⁵ The apocalyptic Trotskyite insisted that pacificism should never be the response to war; the response had to be revolution. The working classes could save the world by directing violence against their imperialist rulers, not each other.⁸⁶

“War and the Workers” also contains a theme that Burnham advanced his entire writing career: a critique of disarmament. Here he draws from Lenin. As World War I raged, some European Social-Democrats recommended universal disarmament, even among socialist groups. Lenin dissented. The leading Bolshevik declares: “And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to ‘demand’ ‘disarmament’! That is tantamount to complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie.”⁸⁷ Opposing pacifism in this piece, Lenin argued that disarmament meant running away from an unpleasant reality rather than fighting it. For Lenin, an armed proletariat would lead to peace because upon eliminating the bourgeois class by using force, armaments could then be consigned to “the scrap-heap.”⁸⁸

Whereas Lenin criticized disarmament in the midst of World War I, World War II provided the context for Burnham's initial attitudes. He argues that pacifist demands for disarmament favored the reactionary classes that were preparing the world for war.⁸⁹ Fascist powers tried to “disrupt, weaken, and disarm the revolutionary struggle against war, which can be carried on only and under all circumstances against the state and the class enemy.”⁹⁰ Any socialist who promotes disarmament “betrayed” the class struggle (betrayal is an important concept in this essay that appeared as Trotsky was writing The Revolution Betrayed in 1936).⁹¹ For Burnham, disarming in the midst of a raging struggle benefited only the enemy. He would always believe this.

What could the League of Nations do to prevent the impending conflict? Following Trotsky and beginning another theme that would characterize his mature writings, in “War and the Workers,” Burnham harangues the world's international governing body. Founded in the ashes of the last imperialist war and designed to create peace, he maintains that the UN's architects demanded adherence to its principles of collaboration.⁹² Trotsky's American disciple deems the League a sham because it promoted only the interests of Europe's imperialist states, so it only perpetuated war.⁹³ It did nothing to stop the war between Bolivia and Paraguay, nothing to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, nothing to stop German rearmament, and nothing to stop the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.⁹⁴ According to Burnham, “every lesson of history since the foundation of the League serves to confirm this analysis. Whenever an international conflict rises above diplomatic maneuvering, it immediately and automatically goes outside the League framework.”⁹⁵ The League worked against the interest of the working class and those who promoted it were traitors. Burnham named socialist Leon Blum, Stalinist Maxim Litvinov, and Stalinist Earl Browder as conspirators.⁹⁶

Throughout his writing career Burnham loved to name names, often turning the intellectual struggle into a personal one against some (usually unfortunate) opponent. More so than most intellectuals, the irascible Marx had a poisonous pen that he used to condemn rivals. He bequeathed this style to his disciples, including Lenin and Burnham. Not only did Marxists seek to tear down capitalism, but they also tore down individuals, including their comrades. No group engaged in infighting and personal castigations the way Marxists did. Burnham continued this tradition; many writers, diplomats, and politicians would be left in the wake of his verbal assaults.

One of Burnham's first targets was Max Eastman. It was Eastman whom Trotsky had contacted when trying to learn more about Burnham after reading his review of The Russian Revolution in Symposium.⁹⁷ Twenty years Burnham's senior, Eastman's and Burnham's lives ran like a double helix, sometimes together, sometimes apart, but usually parallel. Like Burnham, Eastman studied philosophy and literary theory. He taught philosophy at Columbia and was a rising star in Marxist circles two decades before Burnham. He also edited leading socialist journals. It was Eastman who translated Trotsky's The History of the Russian Revolution into English (Burnham lauded Eastman's prose and translation in his review of the work). Eastman had also lived in the Soviet Union. Unlike most Marxist intellectuals who did the same, he was not impressed. Sooner than most, Eastman recognized that futility of the Soviet system, and, again sooner than most, he questioned Stalin. In 1925, Eastman wrote one of the first anti-Stalin pamphlets titled “Since Lenin Died,” and it was Eastman who smuggled Lenin's “Last Will and Testament” out of the USSR. Eastman became part of the “Left Opposition” to Stalin that was led by the marginalized Trotsky. But he was becoming disenchanted with the revolutionary around the time Burnham became a trusted disciple.

Eastman also had a contentious relationship with Hook. Eastman's Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution (1927) spurred the rivalry. The work asserts that Marxism resembled Freudian psychology in many respects because it recognized that ideas have suppressed motives: “The economic interpretation of history is nothing but a generalized psycho-analysis of the social and political mind.”⁹⁸ From Hook's perspective, this turned Marxism into a metaphysical philosophy. Hook preferred to see Marx as a pragmatist. Arguing that Marxism was a flexible method applicable to society, Hook asserts that Marx provided instruments that the working class could use to overthrow capitalism. Eastman responded by literally ripping out pages from Hook's Toward the Understanding of Karl Marx, contending that Marx's metaphysics could never be reconciled with pragmatism.⁹⁹ The feud simmered for years. Burnham showed his loyalty to Hook and Trotsky by disparaging Eastman.

In a piece titled “Max Eastman's Straw Man,” Burnham argues that Eastman uses a “deceptive” critical method when analyzing Marx.¹⁰⁰ Burnham writes that according to Eastman, Marx insisted in The German Ideology that Hegelianism marked the end of philosophy so now, only scientific philosophy could lead to human liberation. According to Burnham, Eastman argues that Marx's thought was in fact philosophical, as was proven by his use of the philosophical method to reject Hegelian idealism. Burnham responds that Eastman misinterpreted Marx because Marx did not reject philosophy, just Hegelian philosophy—philosophy that reasoned deductively using abstract concepts. Burnham maintains that Marx's scientific philosophy instead used the empirical method, distinguishing it from Hegelianism.

Another of Burnham's favorite targets was Earl Browder, a loyal Stalinist who led the US Communist Party from the early 1930s to the mid-1940s.¹⁰¹ In a February 1938 piece, Browder defends what was called “collective security,” or the belief that the United States should take an active role in international affairs. Opponents favored isolationism or neutrality because to them US involvement in world affairs only meant US involvement in war. Browder argues that the warmongers were Germany, Italy, and Japan. The rest of the world should not suffer the burdens of imperialist war. Browder urges cooperation between the USSR and the United States because both their people and their leaders desired peace.

Burnham responded in a piece titled “Browder Defends Imperialism.” The piece contends: “Naturally enough, Stalinists pretend to their own followers that they write from the point of view of the international proletariat. Even a brief survey of Browder's article in the New Republic can demonstrate beyond any doubt that he is reasoning and writing from the point of view of the defense of U.S. Imperialism.”¹⁰² Burnham argues that Browder's position was consistent with Roosevelt's policy. The Trotskyite then asks, what about class struggle? The Marxist must always promote class struggle. Because Browder says little about the class struggle, and because this leads him to adopt the same foreign policy as FDR, and because FDR is an imperialist, Burnham reasons that Browder is therefore an imperialist.¹⁰³

Roosevelt remained Burnham's bête noire as he even faulted Roosevelt for the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany: “The blood of the German Jews, dripping from the hands of Goebbels and Goering and their gangs of maddened sadists, drips also from the white hands of Chamberlain and Roosevelt and from the whole international association of cut-throats and murderers who sustain in life a system whose price for humanity is now measured only in a daily and continuous increase of torment and death.”¹⁰⁴ Burnham argues that the contradictions that begat Hitler's racial hatred were inherent in the capitalist system; Hitler incites hatred toward the Jews as a means to distract the German people from the failings of capitalism. And Roosevelt defends capitalism.

Burnham deemed Roosevelt to be an imperialist spokesperson. He states that the president sought an “American League of Nations” through which the United States would assert authority over the two continents. In “U.S. Imperialism at Work,” Burnham suggests that Latin America was already a colony because its basic industries were financed by US capital, evidenced by the fact that the American United Fruit Company handled most of Central America's orchards, railroads, and communications.¹⁰⁵ That did not mean the United States did not have worldwide territorial aspirations; capitalists required outlets everywhere.¹⁰⁶ What could Marxists do? Burnham begs workers and revolutionaries across the continent to unite in their quest to overthrow the imperialists and their spokesperson.

This position revealed the merging of the two James Burnhams during his Marxist phase. The first James Burnham was attracted to the apocalyptic nature of the socialist movement that optimistically predicted that real democracy would follow revolution. And the revolutionary violence had to be directed against America's faux representatives like Roosevelt. Marxism gave the second James Burnham a megaphone to decry the United States as a sham democracy, ruled by a corrupt elite who governed against the interests of the people. Burnham cynically argues that its rulers would use any means necessary—even war—to advance their interests. For democracy to succeed, the political elite had to be resisted and toppled. Soon, these two James Burnhams would become more distinct. They did not disappear.