WORLD OF NECESSITY
359
The writers who were not killed physically were at any rate
killed as creative writers, because there was no way in which they
could fit their talents into the movement, the line, the party program.
This has been the experience of the writers who have sympathized
with proletarian revolution all over the world, in England, in Russia,
in China, and in America. It is possible that socialism has defeated its
own ends, because, in attaching enormous importance to the attain–
ment of economic liberty of the workers it has lacked respect for the
highest freedom of all- the freedom to explore the truth of the phi–
losopher and the artist without any predetermined conclusions. The
insistence on philosophic materialism, the myth of the superiority of
the proletariat, the obsession with the idea that every other cause
must subserve the revolution, create a mental prison of socialist ideas,
precisely because the revolution does not point to the release of any
ideas greater than materialism, the revolution and the proletariat.
Socialism is afraid of ideas, of a conception of humanity which in–
cludes the rich as well as the poor, of the unfettered imagination.
One has only to think of past causes, such as the French Revolution,
Nineteenth Century Liberalism, even, for that matter, the Spanish
Republic, to remember that they have inspired men because they have
stood for things greater than themselves, greater than politics and
politicians: liberty, beauty, genius and ideals.
In the partly managerial, partly socialistic society, dominated by
necessity, of the immediate future, the intelligentsia will be in a posi–
tion in which, whether they like it or not, their work will have an un–
precedented influence, because it will be almost the only outlet of
free self-expression in a world where most commodities and employ–
ment are rigidly controlled. There are two directions in which their
thought may develop, and I suggest that this is one of the turning
points in history in which the ideas of the intelligentsia may really
alter the lives of future generations.
One direction, which would be consistent with the tendencies
of the literary movements of the past two generations, is already
adumbrated in the vague movement called "personali:>m." The theme
of this and similar tendencies is that society has nothing to offer which
can satisfy any individual: the scale of power politics, planning, con–
trols, etc., is quite unrelated to the human scale of separate indivi–
duals: the only reality to which we can cling is that of personal
values. Views such as this, which are to be found in English literary
magazines, could probably only flourish today in England and in
America, where a good many people have learned nothing from the
war except to hate control and conscription.
