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PARTISAN REVIEW
and Hiss have together been a part, and by impressing upon him a new
sense of the reality of political ideas.
Politics is power. Every nation is a power nation. This has been so
since the beginning of organized social life and will always be so.
Political idealism is a direction power may take; it is not a negation of
power. The liberal in politics is as directly involved with power as is
the reactionary, however much better the uses to which the liberal may
wish to put his power. And every political idea, no matter how liberal,
relates to power. This is the
real
reality of politics and of political ideas.
Only when the liberal recognizes that his political ideas are ideas
which relate to power can he recognize the kind of responsibility he
must take for his ideas. "Ideas are weapons" is a slogan of modern
American liberalism, but the slogan was raised, not
to
warn liberals or
their fierce responsibility as thinking people, but, rather, to encourage
them in what seemed the small improbable hope that they too could be
effectual. The liberal has deceived himself that because he is in a
minority his ideas have the strength of a slingshot compared to the can–
non of reaction.
It
is a dangerous deception, and has made the liberal
irresponsible. The Fuchs case dramatically demonstrates that the ideal–
ism of an idea does not necessarily diminish its power. The idealistic
idea of a single individual placed in the right circumstances can be as
strong as an atom bomb.
Ideas are not to be separated from the acts to which they might
lead; and whether or not, in any particular instance, they do actually
lead to acts is irrelevant. They might lead to acts; they often do lead
to acts; they must therefore be judged as if they were acts. The Com–
munist idea must be judged as a Communist act. And similarly, the
idea of tolerance of Communism must be judged as an ac t of tolerance
of Communism.
The liberal who refuses to separate his liberalism from tolerance of
Communism must thus ask himself how far he would be prepared to
act on this tolerance. Would he be willing to keep someone in high
government office who was stealing our documents for transmission to
Russia?
If
not, why not? Just because of his abhorrence of stealing? Very
well, then. Would he be willing for a Communist who was not a spy
to be in high government office? And
if
not, why not? What can possibly
be wrong with being governed by someone whose political philosophy is
tolerable?
Obviously it is only if one regards a Communist as the representa–
tive of totalitarianism that one has :l.lly ground for questioning his right
to hold office in a democracy.
If
someone represents a tolerable political
