Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/14



It has been suggested that when one is confronted with that unlovely spectacle, the revolutionary turned cautious, one should be very chary of attributing unworthy motives to him in explanation of the change, as the case of the seeming apostate is really one that calls for pathological investigation. An obvious objection to this view is that if the perversion is due to the operation of some as yet undiscovered disease, the peculiar malady generally strikes its victim at a time when he has just been made the recipient of some signal favor by his (capitalist) government. However, in these days of disillusionments, One is sometimes tempted to believe that there may be some truth in the theory. The experience that Socialists had of seeing a number of men whom they had respected and looked up to as leaders coming out, one after another, in support of the late war, was calculated to damp considerably their faith in human nature. There is, to be sure, the consolation that the plague of Intellectuals that has for so many years afflicted the Socialist movement in Great Britain and other advanced capitalist countries, is likely to find its sphere of operations severely restricted in a time of future crisis. The shameful desertion of the principles professed during periods of comparative calm by the gentlemen who were kind enough to come down from their high estate and "lead" us, was too flagrant to escape the notice of even the least observant. (One of these champions of the proletariat, Mr. H. M. Hyndman, used to be very fond of telling us that the phenomenon of superior people like himself coming down to direct the movement of the workers, was one that was common throughout history.) The case of the literary Intellectuals—men who had, after years of effort, won a "public" they were determined to keep, no matter how great the sacrifice of