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were not merely, or even in the first place, the legal relations of pro–
duction but encompas;;ing
ways of life-a
complex of social institu–
tions, values and practices which defines the culture of France, Eng–
land and the United States, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union
and its satellites on the other.
That economic organization was not the issue was apparent
in the fact that originally the report condemned both "capitalism"
and "communism," and that nowhere in heaven or earth can a
"laissez-faire" economy be found. But to draw an explicit equation
between the regime of total cultural terror in the Soviet Union and
the imperfect democracies of the West was too preposterous, even
though Niebuhrian theology- we are all infected with imperialist
pride and sinful absolutism !--seemed to justify it to careless minds
devoid of Niebuhr's own political realism. That is why at the in·
sistence of some American delegates the words of the original formu–
lation were altered. The substance, however, remained the same.
Fearful of condemning Stalinist terrorism and of speaking out
openly
against the greatest menace to freedom of conscience in the world,
something equally reprehensible had to be found to give the im–
pression of even-handed balance, of being above partisanship in the
current death-struggle of the free mind in Europe. And so the
mis–
erable evasion was adopted of in:;erting the word "laissez-faire"
before capitalism in the hope that no one would notice that Adam
Smith believed in other freedoms besides the freedom to invest,
among them freedom of conscience, and freedom to criticize and
abridge the I:lnlimited freedom of investment.
The evils of capitalism are indeed many and great. And there
is no reason to be silent about them because other evils are at the
moment greater and more numerous. But to conclude from this that
Truman and what he represents is as bad as Stalin, or that the
Marshall Plan is on all fours with the Cominform-which is the
actual political import of this resolution-is just as much the mark
of political cretinism as to conclude that Roosevelt's America was as
bad as Hitler's Germany. This is precisely the line of strategy worked
out by Communists to immobilize those apprehensive European in–
tellectuals who are waiting to see which way the Kremlin will move.
It obscures the elementary truth that what divides the world today
is not the issue of capitalism or socialism but the issue of political
