24
PARTISAN REVIEW
small nucleus of employers who are strongly internationalized, by their
alliances and in their interests. I would do no more than underscore
the incredible ignorance which this document lays bare with regard to
the real motives of social action on the part of those engaged in it. Such
ignorance is the most faborable soil there is for the growth of Fascism.
This same incredible ignorance is shared by those qualified writers
who made public reply to me. M. Thierry Maulnier (I think
l
may
say
that I have studied his ideas with more attention than he has given
to
mine), in the
Action Franfaise
and in the
Revue Universelle,
applies the
adjectives "low" and "ignoble" to that "egalitarian humanitarianism" with
which, along with the Marxists it seems, I am tarred. How easy all that
is! As to egalitarianism, I shall let Stalin do the speaking: "Bourgeois
writers are fond of describing Marxian socialism as something resemblin&
an old Czarist barracks, where everything is subordinated to the 'prin–
ciple of leveling'! But Marxists are hardly to be held responsible for the
ignorance and stupidity of bourgeois writers."
As for "humanitarianism," M. Maulnier and his kind are so extremely
refined as to be shocked by the foul odor arising from the suffering and
the wretchedness of mankind. They have been so corrupted by the
sophistry of their schoolmasters that they look upon the task of causin&
humanity as a whole to benef-it from human wealth and human production
as a breakdown of Christianity (
?)
and of humanism (
!).
Whatever
happens, they cannot endure being shown crudely what the debate is abouL
They will not tolerate being told to their faces that it is a question of
fighting for those that are hungry. No, indeed! Among inteHectuals,
that's not playing the game; and the Christian, M. Mauriac, hastens
to
stigmatize as election literature those lines in which I announce that I
have chosen the side of the empty pocket-books.
I must confess that I knew very well what I was doing, when I thus
put foot in the fire. My opponents may go on piling up big words; 1
now know, without any doubt, just where it is the shoe pinches them. It
will not take them long to find out for themselves, if they will only prac·
tice that examination of conscience which their religion teaches them, or
which their Nietzschean pride ought to teach them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you heartily. After having been waver·
ing friends, you have become for me the most dependable of teachers.
You have knocked from my eyes, one after another, the scales that hid
1DJ
sight. You have made me a Communist, or the next thing to it. At
any
rate, you have made me a revolutionist. I now know that your values are
