38
PARTISAN REVIEW
fighting a local engagement against fascism which could in no wise
prove decisive, became heroic without intending to be heroic, as a
simple consequence of the struggle. But in periods of reaction and
defeat, when the class whose historical obligation it is to struggle
and conquer is marking time or sunk in apathy-at
such times the
individual is severely limited; without personal resources of moral
integrity he must inevitably fall in line and support the oppressor.
Moral values, like truth and justice, are his inner-line defenses against
the servility that accompanies despair. Moral values are his contacts
with the great deeds of the past and impulsions towards the future-
his sensitivities to inspiration. A political party which destroys the
moral discrimination between values wants agents, automatons, not
men.
And it is surely better to be a man than to be an agent of even
a revolutionary party. But the question is whether it is possible to
reject politics and be a man. Even so cautious and conservative a
theorist as Thomas Mann has said that man's destiny presents itself
today in the form of politics. Is this another contradiction? I do not
think so. For I hold that a party which destroys the moral discrimina-
tion between values, which destroys the individual's personal source
of inspiration is that kind of party which will also have a disintegra-
ting effect on the spontaneous revolutionay enthusiasm of masses-in
short cannot be a revolutionary party. And as matter of fact, the
"Marxist" party which Spina was concerned to escape, the Commu-
nist International, has shown by its recent history that it is no longer
a revolutionary party. The party that Spina escaped to protect his
enthusiasm is today the jailer of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the
Spanish proletariat.
The grave defect in the position taken by Spina in
Bread and
Wine
is not to be located in his choice of the ethical against a
particular
political party, but in assuming a fundamental contradic-
tion between ethics and politics in general, in concluding that every
revolutionary party must, by virtue of the fact that it is a party, be-
come bureaucratic and opportunistic. And this failure to make the
necessary distinction between the degeneration of a specific party, and
the susceptibility to bureaucratization of parties in general, flows in-
evitably from Spina's attitude towards theory, which he says, bores
him.
'
THE COUNTRY.
Is this also the position of Silone, in whom Spina
merges? Is Silone also bored by theory and distrustful of all forms of
political organization? I cannot think so. We must be careful in clearly
distinguishing the author from his hero. Did not Silone in his Letter
to Moscow protesting the recent Moscow trials attack the justice
of the Soviet State and the policies of the Communist Party of the
