THE HISS CASE
499
system, we can have no objection to his presence in government-and
no need to prove that he is anything but what he is. We can even have
no objection to his functioning in office
as
a Communist, even though
this might lead to his legislating
us
into Communism.
This is the responsibility that the liberal must take for his ideas,
including his ideas about Communism. This is the outcome any liberal
not afraid of Communism must be willing to confront.
Hiss, of course, has been found guilty not only of being a Com–
munist but of being a Communist spy. The difference between the
two seems to me to be important only in terms of personal morality
and psychology, not
in
terms of idea. We must keep it
in
mind that, to
the committed Communist, personal morality as we conceive it is bour–
geois morality or no morality at all. The only morality to a Communist
is revolutionary morality, and according to revolutionary morality, Hiss
performed a moral act because he was furthering the revolutionary goal.
It
is interesting to study why someone like Hiss who was bred by
standards of bourgeois morality should have switched to so different a
moral code; but such a study has only a coincidental pertinence to his
objective acts. What is immediately pertinent to his acts is his ideas. In
lying and stealing Hiss took the fullest responsibility for his political
ideas. H e contemplated where his ideas might lead, and he was never–
theless willing to have these ideas and perform his acts. He really under–
stood the reality of politics.
Which is precisely why so many liberals cannot bear to think
Hiss guilty: his guilt confronts them with a reality of politics which is
at such odds with their own ideality. But this is also why the Hiss case
may be useful-because it can help teach liberals that political ideas
are political acts, and acts of political power. The espionage to which
Hiss's Communist commitment led him is the awful evidence that
ideas are not the innocent little things we think them, that they have a
commanding life of their own, that they can look both ideal and legal
but turn out to be neither. The Hiss case faces the liberal with the
most cogent representation he has yet had of the kind of responsibility he
must take for his thoughts.
As I write, the conviction of Hiss has already had one of the un–
happy consequences that was predicted for it. The discovery of a Soviet
agent in American office was bound to encourage the search for others,
and the McCarthy investigations are in progress. Hiss's defenders warned
us that his conviction would be a signal for a grand-scale witchhunt
for Communists in government, and one in which innocent liberals would
