Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky¶
Core Argument¶
In his reply to Leon Trotsky’s Open Letter, James Burnham systematically dismantles what he regards as a rhetorical evasion of substantive political debate. Burnham argues that Trotsky’s polemic relies on stylistic flourish rather than logical proof. He distils Trotsky’s argument into eighteen explicit propositions, contending that once stripped of metaphor, each must stand on its own merits; many, he claims, are trivial, irrelevant, false, or unproven, causing the entire edifice to collapse. The introduction of dialectics into the factional dispute is, for Burnham, a safe and untestable diversion from political positions refuted by events. He dismisses Trotsky’s Hegelianism as a stale rehash of Engels, ignoring 125 years of progress in logic and science, and insists it has no connection to modern scientific method. The appeal to the authority of past revolutionaries is reactionary in form, and the fact that Stalinists also defend dialectics suggests its only consistent adherents are those who already agree with Trotsky politically.
Burnham challenges Trotsky to demonstrate how dialectics yields any answer to the strategic dispute over the movement’s orientation in the first phase of the Second World War. His inability to do so proves the invocation is an evasion. The notion that ‘fundamental questions’ concern grand abstractions is a popular illusion sustained by churches; in reality, each field has its own fundamentals. For the present dispute, the only fundamentals are political: the central aim of socialism and the most important means for achieving it. The opposition does not reject the Marxist theory of the state, but disagrees with Trotsky’s interpretation. Trotsky’s charge of ‘abstentionism’ is supported by only two items, unrelated to the hundreds constituting the opposition’s political course. On the Dies Committee question, Trotsky’s estimate of consequences was wrong and the opposition’s proved correct; the invitation and its withdrawal legitimised the Committee and appeared as cynical opportunism.
Burnham insists the opposition does not withdraw from struggle, but refuses to fight alongside the GPU for counter-revolution in the Kremlin. The central political issue is the strategic orientation of the Fourth International: Trotsky and Cannon propose defence of the Stalinist bureaucracy as the lesser evil; the opposition proposes the third camp. The second issue is the regime in the Socialist Workers Party, treated in ‘The War and Bureaucratic Conservatism’. Trotsky’s polemics, Burnham concludes, evade the truth, distort positions, and employ gossip and slander to defend a false doctrine and a cynical bureaucratic clique. Socialism is a moral ideal; a social order based on truth cannot be won by lies and disloyalty.