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virtues of love, courage and loyalty assume a different scope and
content according to the class and the moment. But a more embrac–
ing, although not absolute, morality is also envisaged, or the revo–
lutionist could not speak of the victory of the proletariat as a means
of freeing all mankind. By their contribution to this great end,
rather than by fixed moral rules, are judged the single acts of the
revolution: lies and force are permissible, if they are necessary to
advance the cause; but if lies and force obstruct the path, they are
thereby condemned. It may be, as Wilson charges, that the lies and
the severity of Lenin's dictatorship toward the class enemy are
responsible for the lies and severity of Stalin's toward the class
itself; but this doesn't alter the validity of the principle itself, that
acts are judged as good or bad according to the way in which they
affect the achievement of the democratic socialist society, which is
the main goal. Not to have foreseen the bad results of a lie is no
defect of principle; it is a weakness of judgment in applying the
guiding principle, a miscalculation.
If
it is true that one will not
promote the "basic rights," if one begins by violating them, never–
theless the "basic human rights" are not a sufficient guide to the
choice of means. They are much too general.
The critics of revolutionary "amoralism," once so vehement
in denouncing the Bolsheviks' disregard of elementary values of
truth and the sanctity of human life, recognize this when they in
turn call on us to defend capitalist democracy by force and keep
silent about its miseries and oppression. In every such choice, there
is involved a forecast of the results; future generations will be
better able to judge whether our acts have promoted the ends,
rooted in our wants and conditions of life, which they continue to
share. That is what Trotsky meant when he appealed to the judg–
ment of history; it is no more mystical than the retrospective his–
torical judgment of his critics who discern after him his mistakes.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
THE TRIUMPH OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM.
By
Louis M. Hacker.
Simon
&
Schuster.
$3.00.
At a time when Lewis Mumford, Archibald MacLeish, Dorothy
Thompson, Waldo Frank and all the university presidents are bleating for
the return of the lost Myths, Heroes and Ideals which were betrayed by
that most .sly of fifth columnists, critical intelligence, a book like this is an
agreeable prophylaxis. Louis Hacker is so old-fashioned that, in 1940, he
has written a history of the country wherein Washington continues to be a
