PARTISAN RI!VIEW
As a political thinker, Matthiessen is sentimental and befuddled, but
not naive. This distinction, I shall try to show, is of some importance.
Matthiessen is not at all uncritical of Stalinist Russia. He recognizes
the "dictator's corruptions of the communist ideal," admits that "the
Soviet State takes the position .... that thought can be dangerous" and
grants that "much of its practice may have been brutalized." Gently,
he warns the Stalin regime that censorship is "bad for morale." Yet
"it
knows what it wants''
and "still points towards a goal that gives the
dispossessed their only hope." For "the Russians ... . have not been
deflected from the right of all to share in the common wealth." (my
emphasis-
I.
H .)
One may perhaps wonder:
If
Russian society
is
brutal and corrupt,
how can it offer hope to the dispossessed? Is not brutality and corruption
always directed, by definition, against the dispossessed? Why, again,
should a radical intellectual worry about the morale of a state which
considers th<;mght dangerous? I should think that the worse the morale
in that sort of state, the happier we should be, for low morale is often
the only possible form of rebellion in a totalitarian society.
Matthiessen's praise of the Russians for recognizing "the right of all
to share in the common wealth" is a priceless instance of how the
progressivist mind can entangle itself in a semantic coil. Any freshman
could inform Matthiessen that this "right" must, of necessity, be recog–
nized by all societies if they are not to be depopulated; what distinguishes
one kind of society from another is the way in which "common wealth"
is produced and shared. Unless Matthiessen thinks he is saying that the
"common wealth" is shared more equitably in Russia than elsewhere, in
which case he would have to say at least a few words about its wage
differentials and t:igid social castes, he is really saying nothing at all.
Which, in fact, is usually true of progressivist rhetoric.
In any case, these quotations should indicate that, no matter what
he believes, or imagines himself saying, Matthiessen cares little for demo–
cratic values or the libertarian bias of democratic socialism. Like Henry
Wallace, he acquiesces in the absurd distinction between "political
democracy" and "economic democracy"-as if there could be any sort
of economic freedom in a police state. He is impressed by the statification
of industry in Russia, by comparison with which its dictatorship and
brutality seem secondary to him.
Here is a crucial difference between a fellow-traveler like Mat–
thiessen and the fellow-travelers of, say, a decade ago. The Stalinst
sympathizers of the thirties were often naive and idealistic; they be–
lieved there was democracy of a sort in Russia ; they would have been
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