157. The Effects of Intense Class Consciousness among the Russian Communists⁵

When class conflict becomes concentrated as to symbol and object into one sharply divided area, when other phases of conflict 457 such as those of sex, age, religion, or race tend to disappear, there takes place a heightening of the sense of difference and an intensity of emotion and feeling that is not found when the conflicts of any given society are expressed along a number of divergent fronts. (See Chapter XXI, Selection 145.) This is true of the ardent patriot in wartime. It is clear in sectarian conflict. And it is most apparent today among the Russian communists. The opposition of the ardent communist to all things bourgeois is not unlike that of the fanatical sectarian who stands not only against the world of sin and Satan outside, but against the denomination from which he sprang. In the following quotation from Maurice Hindus one sees the manner in which the symbols of conflict in terms of the righteous we-group of communism and the wicked out-group of capitalism become fastened in the ideas and attitudes of the communists in Russia.

Not all of the new Russian’s reactions are negative. His waning consciousness of God and of race is being supplanted by an even more powerful class consciousness. Indeed, this humanitarian concept is the chief pillar of his new faith. He has divided the world into two groups: heroes and villains. The heroes are the exploited, or the workers; the villains are the exploiters, or the capitalists. The villains are fat, crass and foul. The heroes are lean, dignified and noble. Everywhere the Russian sees capitalists and workers thus depicted—in cartoons, in plays, in motion pictures—until he comes to think of them only in this way. The capitalist has no virtues that he need respect; the worker, no vices that he need condemn. The capitalist always wallows in luxury; the worker always swelters in misery. If in some other land there are workers who do not swelter in misery but on the contrary enjoy quite a fair degree of modern comfort—pos-sess a radio, a house of their own, perhaps an automobile and an insurance policy—then they are either unimportant exceptions, or else victims of a vicious capitalistic plot which permits the elevation of a few workers to superior comforts in order to inspire false hopes in the others and thus deaden their class consciousness and their revolutionary ardor. No other explanations are acceptable, for they would be contrary to the basic tenets of the proletarian creed.

In the face of such dogmatic principles, it is no wonder that the new Russian manifests such a sturdy spirit of super-righteousness; that he cannot see why a koolack should ever be pitied or a political offender treated with leniency. Justice for the sake of justice he abjures as a mere legend or chimera. It is always either capitalist or proletarian justice. He will recognize none other. If a mob outside a 458 courthouse in Scottsboro seeks to rouse the jurymen’s prejudices in order to insure a verdict that will result in the death penalty for accused Negroes, that mob consists of the vilest scoundrels in the world. But if, while Soviet engineers are on trial in a Moscow court on charges of sabotage, masses of workers parade before the courthouse loudly demanding the death penalty for the accused, those masses are performing a heroic duty. If an American university expels a professor for voicing radical opinions, it commits a heinous offense. But if a Soviet university expels a professor whose interpretation of his subject is not sufficiently Marxian, it is performing an honorable act and is a credit to the new society. Thus it goes. The new Russian seems incapable of detaching himself from his own immediate cause and purpose. All of his liberalism in the realm of sex and race avails him nothing in his appraisal of political values. It is as if passion for the idea had burned out of him compassion for the human being. That is why he has grown so indifferent to the sacrifice that accompanies his continued class war. Especially is this true if he is a member of the "Party." Then he is like a soldier on a battle field, bent on only one task, the defeat of his enemy.

⁵ From Maurice Hindus, The Great Offensive, 1933, pp. 318–20. By permission of Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, publishers.