TRIALS OF THE MIND
5
violent death at the hands of fascism, but they are perfectly willing
to let it expire peacefully in the bed of bourgeois democracy.
The Moscow trials dramatized the agony of the Russian revolu–
tion. What was the response of the intellectuals?
As
a group they
permitted themselves to be taken in by the professional illusionists of
the Comintern. Some became outright defenders of the official ver–
sions; others are silent, not ashamed to be spiritually terrorized; only
a small minority, mostly of the older generation of intellectuals, dared
to speak out. The attitude the liberal journals have taken to the
trials, despite occasional retractions, can be summarized in the fol–
lowing formula: "Some people will believe the trials are frame-ups;
some people will believe the trials are not frame-ups. However, both
sides are partisan.
As
for ourselves, we prefer to view them
sub specie
aeternitatis.
Perhaps in a hundred years we shall know the truth."
All other issues they measure with the inch-ruler of reformist em–
piricism; but for their editorials on the trials they hold in reserve a
philosophical world-outlook. The truth or falsity of the evidence they
consider irrelevant-they refuse to examine it. Besides, they argue,
the matter doesn't really concern us. It's a factional question. To these
people the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution within
the labor movement is just a
factional
question!
Given such logic, even the term "liberal" becomes a liability.
Recently the editors of
The New Republic
purged themselves pub–
licly of liberalism by declaring that only the designation "progressive"
suits them, as indeed it does. For in its peculiarly modern sense, a
"progressive"
is
a person who will successively or simultaneously
adopt every point of view, every alternative--except one. By thus ex–
pelling the revolutionary method of fighting fascism from the area of
choice, the "progressive" conceives of himself as the only genuine
realist. Actually, however, bourgeois anti-fascism is merely another
quixotic attempt of the middle-class ego to surmount historic finalities.
To the drastic solutions of the crisis which fascism and communism
offer to society, the "progressive" anti-fascist replies by exhibiting his
miserable assortment of plagiarisms from the ideologies of the two
principal classes. His "realism" thus turns out to be nothing else
than the sublimation of his inability ever to be original.
The masters of property, on the other hand, arrive at their im–
mutable decisions on the basis of economic necessity. They know that
the "intellectual" of the family has no talent for practical affairs. He is
outraged because the firm no longer treats its employees with the decen–
cy and kindliness that prevailed when business was flourishing. He has
failed to understand that in order to avoid bankruptcy serious
measures must be taken. But they are quite sure that in the end he
