172
PARTISAN REVIEW
But he must be on guard: if he breathes, already he has lost his
purity, for the very air which penetrates his bronchi is contaminated.
Is this not the sermon of a Cathar?
If
Celine was able to uphold the
socialist theses of the Nazis,
it
was because he was paid to do so. Deep
down in his heart, he did not believe in them: as far as he is con–
cerned, there is no solution except collective suicide, non-procreation,
death. Others-Maurras or the Parti Populaire Franc;aise-are less
discouraging: they foresee a long and often doubtful struggle with the
final triumph of good. It is Ormuzd against Ahriman. The reader has
understood that antisemitism does not have recourse to Manicheanism
as to a secondary principle of explanation. But it is the original
choice of Manicheanism which explains and conditions antisemitism.
Therefore we must
ask
ourselves what this original choice can mean
for a man of today.
Let us compare for a moment the revolutionary idea of the class
struggle with antisemitic Manicheanism. In the eyes of the Marxist,
class struggle is in no sense the struggle between good and evil:
it
is a
conflict of interests between human groups. The revolutionary adopts
the proletariat's point of view firstly because it is
his
class and secondly
because it is oppressed, because it is by far the largest class and its
fate consequently tends to become fused with that of humanity, and
lastly because the consequences of his victory will necessarily involve
the suppression of classes. The
aim
of the revolutionary is to change
the organization of society. And in order to do this he must of necessity
destroy the old regime. But this is not enough. First and foremost a
new order must be set up.
If,
assuming the impossible, the privileged
class consented to cooperate with the socialist scheme and
if
one had
manifest proof of its good will, there would be no valid reason to
reject its co-operation. And if it remains highly improbable that the
privileged class would willingly offer its assistance to the socialists, it
is because its very position as a privileged class prevents it from doing
so and not because of any internal demon which would force it in
spite of itself to do evil. In any case, if fractions of this class detach
themselves from
it
and become part of the oppressed class, they will
be judged by their actions, not by their essence. "To hell with your
eternal essence," Politzer once said to me.
The very contrary is the case with the antisemitic Manichean.
His emphasis is on destruction. It is not a question of a conflict of
interests but of the damage that an evil power causes to society.
Behind the bitterness of the antisemite is concealed the belief that
harmony will be reestablished of itself once evil has been ejected. His
