204
PARTISAN REVIEW
centration of interest either on an end to be achieved, or on ideas as
working hypotheses for its achievement." In the
Liberator
for November
1920, I wrote: "While there may be debate as to whether the Marxian
hypothesis in its general outlines has yet been proven or not-anyone who
says it has been disproven by the events of the last five years is either
ignorant of the hypothesis, or ignorant of the last five years." In the
recent article on
Socialism and Human Nature,
I asserted that by the
events of the last twenty years the hypothesis has been disproven.
"To honest men with courage to face facts it is clear that
Lenin's experiment, like Robert Owen's failed.... An honest,
bold, noble, and within its limits extremely high-brow attempt to
produce through common ownership a Society of the Free and
Equal, produced a tyrant and a totaltarian state; there sprung
up in its wake, borrowing its name and imitating its political
procedures, other tyrants and totalitarian states; the whole world
was plunged into war. I think any wise socialist, viewing this
sequence in the light of what we know that Lenin did not about
human nature, little though it is, will be inclined to reconsider
his assumptions. In his further efforts toward a world in which
science shall ha'!'e conquered poverty and superstition, and made
a rich life possible to all, he will be cautious about the scheme
of common ownership and state control. He will be cautious
about the
extent
to which it may be carried. The more 'radical'
he is-in the sense of intelligently caring about liberty and jus·
tice and a chance at life for the wage workers-the more cautious
he will be."
Where is the change of values?
Nobody in his right mind, from Marx down, ever denied that hour·
geois democracy has values. To expand those values, and make them
more genuine and more universal, has been the aim of all socialists, both
revolutionary and reformist. We who have our eyes open today, see that
those values are not going to be expanded, hut destroyed, by a transfer of
all power and industry to a revolutionary state, whether it calls itself pro·
letarian or fascist. We see that in this period those values are on the
defensive. Civilization itself is on the defensive. In proceeding toward
new values we must guard the positions already won. That is what is in
our minds. It is a confrontation of facts, not a change of values.
The real difference between us and you, in my opinion, is this: In a
period when certain means we had all agreed upon for emancipating the
working class and therewith all society, have proven to lead in the opposite
direction, we have remained loyal to the aim, you to the means. We care
enough, and objectively enough, about the cause of the workers and
about human freedom, to reorganize our emotions, readjust our concep·
tions, sacrifice what we must of our prestige, sacrifice the glamour even
of our self-esteem, in order in the new conditions, and in the light of the
new knowledge gained, still to defend them. You do not care that much
about the workers or about human ·freedom. You care more about your
