MYTH AND HISTORY
3i
crises) but its falling into extremes (overproduction, unemployment)
would not negate the process itself nor conceivably lead to its being
superseded by some other.
It was in pre-war Germany that the theory of the "adaptation
of capitalism" and the gradual, peaceful realization of socialism
through moral and spiritual means gaiQed wide credence. Since that
time, peaceful progress has been notably violated on several occasions.
And it is precisely against the violence of the present epoch of Ger–
man "progress" that Mann is speaking. Yet this hypothesis of the
transformation of the old relations without inner struggle is the basis
of Mann's disapproval not only of Nazism but of revolutionary
so–
cialism as well. It is this peaceful culture-dominated perspective that
shows political mass action as the opponent of revolutionary process,
cultural creation by individuals as opposed to class struggle, and
socialist ideals as violatell by Marxist materialism.
The words which Rosa Luxemburg used in
18~9
to _characterise
Eduard Bernstein, theoretical father of socialist conservatism, apply
in full force to- the position of Thomas Mann in 1939:
"When he wars against 'raising the material factors to the rank
of an all-powerful force of development,' when he protests against
the so-called 'contempt for the ideal' that is supposed to rule the
Social-Democracy, when he presumes to talk for idealism, for morals,
pronouncing himself at the same time against the only source of the
moral rebirth of the proletariat, a revolutionary class struggle--he
does no more than the following: preach to the working class the
quintessence of the morality of the
bourgeo~e,
that is, reconciliation
with the existing social order and the transfer of the hopes of the pro–
letariat to the limbo of ethical simulacra."
At the tum of the century Bernstein prognosticated the dis–
appearance of crises, the growing strength of the middle layers of the
population, the amelioration of the economic and political situation
of the proletariat. All these material hopes of capitalism's conservative
revolution have since been destroyed. Yet humanist socialism urges
humanity to retrace this barren ground. But will the ruling class pass
over voluntarily to socialism in the name of Culture? Why not to the
Brotherhood of Man in the name of Christ?
As
a basis of appeal for
the moral conversion of capitalism into socialism, humanist socialism
today
is
but a pale shadow of the ghost of Christian socialism.
It is not in his assertion of the interplay of individual and mass
and of cultural and political forces, that Mann opposes himself to his–
torical analysis, but in repeating his old assumption that art itself pos–
ICSSeS
a specific, independent tempo of development which can
be
imposed on social change. It was from the point of view of a revolu–
tion
above history that, a few years ago, he condemned expressionist
