THE POLITICS OF DESPERATION
They constantly remind us that there are other reactionary forces in
the world today, and that we cannot take sides in the clash between
America, England, and perhaps France on one side, and Russia on
the other, because the capitalist imperialism of the Western nations
is just as bad as the Communist imperialism of the Soviet Union.
This seems to us pointless and disingenuous. One doesn't have to
be a profound theoretician to observe that
this
is simply not true:
in the United States and the Western democracies what we have to
cope with are the traditional forces of reaction that are not at the
moment any stronger than they have been in the past. In general,
the political situation on the anti-Stalinist side of the fence is fluid
and unpredictable. Stalinism, on the other hand, means absolute
terror and dictatorship, and confronts us with the question of sheer
survival of the most elementary freedoms and human values.
If
anyone
seriously believes that Stalinism and the status quo of democratic
capitalism are equally bad, then he must conclude the situation is
utterly hopeless and begin to investigate the various means of com–
mitting suicide.
Actually, no one believes
this.
And those liberals and radicals
who profess to do so are simply engaging in a form of moral self–
indulgence, for they are gambling on an American victory in a war
with Russia, which will preserve for them all the existing freedoms
including the freedom to remain politically uncontaminated. While
these utopians are waiting for the best society, Stalin forces upon the
world the worst society, the police state. Then there are those intel–
lectuals who claim exemption from the practical struggle against
Stalinism, on the ground that this is not their task, their task pre–
sumably being to brood about absolute moral and political values.
But this too is a luxury for American intellectuals, who have been
able to depend on the strength and prosperity of the United States
to keep intact their present way of life while they occupy themselves
with eternal questions.
As
for the form of political confusion that goes
by the name of liberalism today, its devotion to peace at all costs, its
harping on every injustice within the democratic orbit while ration–
alizing the aggressions of Russia, its chiding of the United States for
finding fault with and provoking the Stalinist regime-it is all either
a political perversion or a disguised and blundering form of Stalinism,
or
both.
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