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PARTISAN REVIEW
ciples, for him, are of course all merely mythological items, are and
ought to be.
Politics is therefore reduced by Arnold to demagogy: and,
again, not merely is politics as now practised demagogy, but
it should be
so-any other than demagogic politics is bad politics. This is accom-
panied by a really vicious attack on democracy, under the pretense that
democracy is no longer a "creed" but has become "accepted as a political
fact." "Thus has democracy changed ...
to a recognition that every
institution must keep the faith and loyalty of its members ... the art of
government consists in the technique of achieving willing popular ac-
ceptance ....
" According to this conception, as Arnold himself suggests,
the plebiscitary methods of the authoritarian dictatorships are the apo-
theosis of realistic democracy. Not surprisingly, therefore, Hitler and
Stalin (almost always coupled) are menti'oncd invariably in favorable
contexts. For Professor Arnold, the victory of the Russian Revolution
is the triumph of a sound man of common sense over the foolish dreamers
who led October: "The seeds of the Russian Revolution were sown by
learned theoretical idealists. . . . These men, during the dark days of
the Czar, were occupied in writing dull and complicated books....
In
the first part of the revolution men who had not written learned treatises
had difficulty in getting high positions in the new regime. In the course
of time the learning which had occupied the revolutionists finally gave
way to the dictatorship ·of a practical politician."
Still more. Only once does Arnold suggest the historical basis for
the rise of a new mythology: "Probably the only way in which mytho-
logies actually change is through the rise to power of a new class whose
traditional heroes are of a different mold." And what class is now
rising? "Today we can observe the rise of a class of engineers, salesmen,
minor executives, and social workers. . . ." How will this class assert
dominance? "A new creed ... is about to be born ....
It is represented
vaguely by the personality of Roosevelt who has become the symbol for
a political attitude. . . . In Europe the rise of personalities to express
national aspirations which older institutions could not fulfil has taken
the same course. . . . "
In summation, then, of what lurks beneath the stone of this New
Dealism: Against science; for myths and the religion of the blood;
against democracy; for demagogy and "efficiency"; power for the
middle classes, achieved through a Leader. Yes, to recall the words of
The
New Republic:
"miles ahead of Marx."*
After lifting such skirts, it is refreshing to turn to
America's Sixty
Families.
Nine-tenths of Lundberg's book consists of the statement, co-
ordination, and documentation of facts: the facts about twentieth cen-
*
I am not crying wolf. Arnold is not a Fascist. But his ideological ten-
dencies, transferred against a background of deeper social crisis, are the material
for exploitation by the harsher and more single-minded "realists" of Fascism.
With sufficient space, I could match every one of Arnold's positive statements,
phrase for phrase and often word for word, with selections from the Fascist
ideologists or from Sorel, Bergson, Spengler, and their ·other cultural forebears.
