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PARTISAN REVIEW
climate of opinion of the time. This is particularly true of some of his
Hegelian terminology which appears in the literature of orthodox
Marxism with different connotations. For example, in Hegel the con–
trast between the terms, "formal" and "real," so familiar to us in
current Marxist writing, does not mean the same thing as the contrast
between the terms, "abstract" and "concrete," with which they
are often used interchangeably. The abstract has no existence with–
out the concrete, and in modern usage it suggests a vague promise
for which we would gladly trade something more tangible and reliable.
In Hegel, however, the distinction between "formal" and "real" is a
distinction between "partial" and "complete." Consequently the rela–
tion between the two is one of fulfillment rather than of opposition,
and it would make no sense to speak of exchanging one for another
or making a choice between them. Political democracy can be consid–
ered "partial" whenever the social and economic conditions in which
it operates limit the scope of its effectiveness. Or it can be considered
"partial" whenever its underlying moral values are absent from other
realms of experience. But one doesn't surrender the "partial" when
one reaches out for the "whole"-and it is downright absurd to
imagine that by surrendering political democracy one can get any
other kind of democracy. And yet this was the illusion of many who
thought of themselves as Marxists- particularly Lenin. This illusion
has become the chief theoretical capital of the totalitarian liberals. It
has blinded even otherwise clear-minded individuals who can see
through the hollow pretensions of Franco, Salazar, Mussolini, and
Hitler,
all
of whom at one time or another professed to be abandoning
formal political democracy for the sake of its real substance.
The plain truth is that of all values of social life today, those
embodied in the institutional practices and attitudes of political de–
mocracy are the most strategic. For without them no other values of a
freedom-loving society can prosper. That profound thinker, Henry
Wallace, darling of the totalitarian liberals, is wont to contrast politi–
cal democracy in the United States with the "economic democracy" of
the Soviet Union. But in what possible sense can we speak of economic
democracy, which involves uncoerced participation in determining the
conditions, goals, and rewards of work, without freedom of speech,
criticism, and opposition so basic to political democracy? How can
ethnic democracy exist
if
every national group is compelled to follow
the same political line and can use its national tongue to express only
what is permitted? In the absence of strategic political freedoms, the
moral quality of
all
basic values is transformed. Deny a people the
