PARTISAN REVIEW
Hence we share Malraux's belief that the situation is so far gone
that only bold and decisive action can save Europe from the grasp
of Stalin. And we are prepared to support,
if
necessary, any force
opposed not only to Stalinism but to all forms of totalitarianism.
As
we have pointed out before, this position in no way violates any
socialist or democratic tradition: it is merely
in
contradiction with
some impulse to self-destruction posing as political rectitude in the
Trotskyist sect and as moral rectitude in the anarchist sect. The
alternatives of the third political camp and the third moral camp,
which have been dangled before us
all
these years while Stalin kept
adding to his collection of both the living and dead, can be regarded
at this point only as political or moral rituals of self-deception. (Why
the magical number 3? Why not the fourth, fifth, or sixth camp?)
And if these slogans have any objective effect at
all,
they probably
do less to stop Stalinism than to keep anti-Stalinist opinion in a state
of hopeless division.
Let us face the unpleasant fact that the political situation is a
truly desperate one, .and that
all
the old liberal and socialist panaceas
are nothing more than face-saving gestures now. Those of us who
complain about the conservative forces that have emerged in oppo–
sition to Stalinism in France, Italy, and the United States, and self–
righteously disavow both sides, should recognize that this is precisely
the extreme situation in which Europe has been placed. The truth is
that the radical organizations on their own have shown themselves.
incapable of coping with either the Communist Party, the MVD, or
the Red Army. For it is the very power of the Communists that para–
lyzes the middle groupings as well as the anti-Stalinist left, and creates
its qpposite in the form of some new conservative force. Obviously,
were it not for the Stalinist threat, clericalism
in
Italy would have to
restrict itself mostly to considerations of immortality while De Gaulle's
political career would probably have ended with the Resistance.
Such, it seems to me, is the background against which we must
see the rise of De Gaulle and the flocking to his banner of such figures
as Malraux. For, as Malraux argues, the support of De Gaulle may
become the only alternative to Stalinism in France, since the "Third
Force," as represented by the Schuman government, is powerless to
resist the attacks of the Communists. Whether this is true or not,
we .are frankly not in a position to say. Perhaps some other antitotal-
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