476
PARTISAN REVIEW
asserted that the truths of socialist
theory are not scientifically valid
or that their class character lies
simply in the unwillingness of a
certain group to adopt them. I
made it clear that most social sci·
entists are also unlikely to accept
the scientific findings of the
Marxian analysis of capitalist so–
ciety. They are class truths
he–
cause they are formulated from
the viewpoint of a class interest;
they are designed to bring out the
hidden relations of capitalist eco·
nomy and politics in order to
make possible their overthrow;
they also help to define goals
which are the goals of the work·
ers rather
than
their exploiters.
In abandoning the concept, after
likening it to the "racial truth" of
Nazism, Hook blunts the revolu–
tionary edge of the truths of so–
cialism.
If
conservative investi–
gators are more likely to accept
Marxist ideas when their class
character is concealed or mini·
mized, that will
be
because those
ideas have been stripped of their
effectiveness and m:ade the grounds
for policies of collaboration.
His defense of Dewey's position
on force and intelligence shows
how far he will go in accomodat–
ing himself to an anti-revolution·
ary thinker. Obviously, force
and intelligence are not opposed
methods; intelligent analysis of a
situation may show that force is
one of its components and that a
counter-force is the best means of
overcoming it. The support of
the present war by the old sworn
enemies of violence makes it nee·
essary for them to admit this. But
Dewey is less consistent and clear
on this point than Hook would
have us believe. In
Liberalism
and Social Action
(1936), which
Hook called the "high-water mark
of an
indi~enous .Anteric~m
radi·
calism" and which he likened to
a Comm'Unist Manifesto of the
20th century, Dewey takes another
stand: "the question is whether
force or intelligence is to
be
the
method upon which we consist·
ently rely and to whose promotion
we devote our energies". Here he
opposes class struggle as unscien–
tific and appeals fallaciously to
physics for an argument against
the use of force: violence is bound
to provoke counter-violence, the
"Newtonian law of action and re·
action still holds in physics, and
violence is physical" (although
elsewhere he condemns the "·as·
similation of human science to
physical science" as "only another
form of absolutistic logic"). I
leave
it
to Hook to reconcile this
critique of the "method of force"
with support of the war.
DAVID MERIAN.
Faith, Hope, and Dialectic:
Merian in Wonderland
Having failed to meet straight–
forward argument, Merian is now
reduced to complaint about my al–
leged inconsistencies, and to out–
right invention about my beliefs.
Even for a Bolshevik-Leninist he
goes to surprising lengths. First
on the. score of inconsistency.
Were his complaint justified, this
would still be mere
argumentum
ad
hominem,
for my past position
might have been false and IDlY
present one sound. But his com·
plaint is not justified, for it ig·
nores the tremendous difference
between conditions before the war
and conditions in 1940, when Hit–
ler gained the mastery of Europe.
l.
Precisely what were the
changes in my position and why
did I make them? Before the war
I opposed labor and socialist par·
tipication in
Popular Front
sov·
