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natives; either pure Christianity (i.e., the Church) or some form
of atheism, implicit or overt. Just as the Stalinists were wont to
regard all intermediate groupings between Fascism and Stalinism
as forms of Fascism, so Catholics in a frank mood, and M. Mari–
tain in a less explicit one, lump Luther, Kant, Hegel, Croce, Dewey,
Marx and Stalin together as phases of an inevitable transition of
decline from the true faith. In these days when the mystical law
of the unity of opposites seems to be translated into the practjcal
co-operation between totalitarians with opposite ideologies, we
must not take too seriously M. Maritain's sharp disjunction be–
tween Catholicism and Stalinism. As will be shown subsequently,
he has built more than one bridge for possible use between the
two. Mter all, the politicalliason between Fascism and Catholicism
in some countries is a fact; and a Concordat between the Pope and
Stalin is no more improbable today than the Hitler-Stalin Pact was
some years ago.
This may sound shocking to those readers who recall M.
Maritain's passages in criticism of Stalinism. But what does he
criticize? Not so much Stalin's cultural
terror
but its spiritual
error-the
same spiritual error which presumably is found in
democratic countries that are free from cultural terror. He does
not criticize in any fundamental way, the structure of the Com–
munist Party hierarchy; the absence of political democracy
in
Russia; the censorship of the mind; the thousand and one evils
which flow from a minority party dictatorship. He does criticize
the principles by which these practices are regulated, not in the
light of their empirical effects but in the light of Catholic princi–
ples which are equally exempt from check by any empirical
effects. The Stalinist stewards are unworthy of their leadership!
Insofar as their practices are sinful, it flows from their false re–
ligion-their atheism which is nothing else, according to M. Mari–
tain, than the
ne plus ultra
of bourgeois humanism. He voices his
distrust of this religion even as he accepts-gingerly to be sure–
the outstretched hand of the Communist Party in its Popular Front
disguise. "It is in the logic of things that one day or another a
hatred, a religious vindictiveness will be awakened against the
faithful of other religions, as generally happens in the case of all
political non-conformists, if only in the last degree they refuse to
conform." (p. 32)
