PARTISAN REVIEW
to the semisocialist economies of western Europe.
It
must perforce
accept democratic socialism
if
it
is
to
repulse totalitarian Communism.
For many months the Stalinists and their liberal allies denounced the
Marshall Plan on the ground that it would be used to re-impose the
capitalist pattern on the European economy; but now that the Amer-
ican Foreign Assistance Program has been passed by Congress without
_,
discriminatory provisions against socialist governments or "experi–
ments" it has become clear that the cry of "imperialism" was nothing
but the propaganda of saboteurs.
In Europe capitalism
is
worn out, and in this country,
too,
it has
reached that stage of decline when it no longer has sufficient
elan
or self-confidence to engage in imperialist adventures or even to pursue
a truly independent class policy in foreign
affairs.
Its greed
is
do–
mestic; in foreign policy it blunders and wobbles, relying in the long
run on other forces to formulate its
aims
and lines of action. Thus
its resistance to Soviet expansion is just as much inspired by demo–
cratic and national interests as by class interests; hence nothing
is
so
wide of the mark, and pernicious in a political sense, as the attempt
of certain European leftists, such as Sartre and his friends in Paris,
to present the case for peace and socialism in such a way as to ignore
the essential distinctions between the American role and that of the
Russian expansionists. The truth
is
that, at present, American "im–
perialism"
is
the bogey of people who have not yet succeeded in
getting rid of their Stalinist hangover. That, in my opinion,
is
the
secret of Sartre's "Fourth Force."
Without American aid European socialism cannot hope to stop
the advance of the Communists, no more than it was able to stop
the advance of the Nazis. There is
this
fact to be considered, that
the United States, however reluctantly, is currently financing the
effort to convert Great Britain into a socialist commonwealth. (The
doctrinaires both of the left and right are of course embarrassed by
this paradox, so damaging to their dogmas.) No administration in
Washington, in the present predicament of the United States, can
afford to exclude democratic socialists from its circle of alliances.
This
gives rise to an opportunity which it is necessary to know how to
exploit, for there are always great risks involved in adopting a policy
of the lesser evil. Unfortunately, there is no alternative to this policy.
The irony of the situation is that the bourgeoisie too, if that is any
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