402
PARTISAN REVIEW
justifying indefinitely Stalinist methods on the ground that all is well
because the latent purpose is anti-fascist and socialist. But the fact is, as
Koestler puts it, that "the Leftist contention that Soviet economy
(i.e.,
nationalization) is socialist is as spurious as the Rightist contention that
state-controls and planning are Fascism." We are now paying the price
for the fetishism of economy promoted by the Marxist movement, as it
is the myth-addicts who now base everything on the abolition of capi–
talist property in Russia. To this we should reply with Koestler that
"Russia may of course at some distant date go socialist-so may Portugal
and the United States. But all we can say at present is that the U.S.S.R.,
despite her nationalized economy, is no nearer to this aim than, for
instance, New Zealand or even Great Britain." The Stalinized liberals,
no less than the orthodox Trotskyites, prefer Russia to the Western
democracies. Actually there is no basis for this preference. For if it is
true that it will take nothing less than a revolution before the West
can go socialist, so it is true that it will take another revolution to bring
socialism to Russia. The Soviet bureaucracy will no more surrender
peacefully than the old ruling classes of the West. On the contrary, the
Soviet bureaucracy, greedy and brutal, freshly recruited from parvenu
types and devoid of all moral norms, will probably fight harder for its
privileges than the historically used up bourgeoisie of such countries as
Italy, France and England. Hence the conclusion is inescapable that the
democratic institutions of the West are just as much worth defending,
despite their subservience to bourgeois aims, as nationalized property in
Russia against a restoration of capitalism. The test of socialism is not
unilateral: it cannot be confined to economic arrangements; the social,
political and ethical conditions must be tested with equal seriousness.
On no account can we abandon the original definition of socialism.
Socialism is above all libertarian. Socialism is incompatible with an
hierarchical organization of society. Socialism is freedom, democracy
and equality.
PHILIP RAHV
INSPIRED, HALF-EDUCATED, PURITAN AND FEMININE
BoLTS OF
MELODY.
By Emily Dickinson. Harper
&
Bros.
$3.00.
T
HOUGH MOST
great poets write some bad poetry, few great poets have
written as much bad poetry as Emily Dickinson. This volume of
hitherto unpublished poems contains her characteristic mixture of wit,
insight, coyness, intolerable punning, and doggerel. From stanza to
stanza and from verse to verse, the only certainty is that genuine per-
