SECTARIAN CAN YOU GET?
Freudians. interested in the rather rare phenomenon of a recurrent nightmare suffered by an entire group collectively might well investigate a case reported in. the October 1 issue of The Newsletter, the weekly organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League, a British ultraleft formation that imagines itself to be Trotskyist. In an article bearing the signature of Michael Best, dealing with the problem of "hooliganism" in the Soviet Union, the author comes ‘to the following remarkable conclusion: oe :
"Our only, fear —~ _ and many a Trotskyist has been awakened at night in a cold sweat by this nightmare -- is that the bureaucracy, wishing to court popywlarity among the workers, might one day ¢ declare. themselves to be the real Trotskyists. :
"Then, indeed, our name would become mud.
"I only hope that no Stalinist bureaucrat reads these lines -- as, of course, no well brought up bureaucrat ought to -- and get this idea about the way really to discredit us. ; ;
"But so long as. they attack us, distort our views so that they sound. absurd, we shall be safe and will increasingly gain more workers to our cause." .
Since the author is obviously not a Freudian, perhaps it would help him to learn that his anxiety dream -- a common enough infantile disorder -- really is nothing but the expression in negative form of a deep-seated wish that has been excluded, from. consciousness because of its moral inadmissibility and which must thus, take this strange way of signaling its existence. The deep-seated wish, of course, is. to believe. in the utopian fantasy that the Soviet bureaucracy might
over “the horror of it all.
“By way of medical advice, we suggest to the ‘author that it may not be neces-. sary to resort to the psychoanalytic couch to overcome this agonizing inner conflict.- Serious. study of the material available in Lenin's works. on the subject of ultraleftism could prove to be just what: the doctor ordered.
"DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT"
[The following interview with Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, the director of the Cuban film, "