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PARTISAN REVIEW
analyses to the considering of particular cases. But the method is not
really a satisfactory one. Each such explanation by itself is perhaps true,
but has little to teach us beyond the individual instance. A religion
propagates itself by individual conversion. But the number of con–
versions is itself a historical fact and requires an ideological and
sociological explanation. Why does Communism attract so many French
intellectuals? Why do so many French intellectuals at this juncture feel
themselves so much in revolt against France or the world that they call
with their votes for the complete destruction of the existing social order,
a destruction in which they themselves would not be spared?
The myths that give Stalinism its seductive force are the very
same that Marx, with the prescience of genius, brought together in his
system. There is the myth of universal plenty based on technological
progress; the myth of the rational reconstruction of the social order, the
necessary prelude to which is a series of unexampled conflicts and
catastrophes; the myth of humanity's salvation through the rebellion
and triumph of the unfortunate, that is the proletariat, who are living
witnesses to the existing inhumanity and the ruling class of the future.
These myths, none of which Marx himself created, complement and
reinforce each other. Mere faith in technology, without a concomitant
exaltation of the humble, would have too materialist an accent and
could not move the hearts of Christians. The rational reconstruction
of society, envisaged as a long and gradual process, would merely
diffuse a restless and beneficent spirit of inquiry; it is the belief in the
necessity of catastrophe that causes rationalist presumption to degenerate
into a rage for destruction.
Even today it is possible to distinguish without great difficulty two
types of Communists: the technical-scientific and the Christian. Every–
where in Western Europe there are a certain number of scientists,
physicists and biologists for the most part, who publicly proclaim
Communist convictions of the most astonishing naivety. Some of them,
feeling the need to justify their faith, even try to demonstrate the
harmony between science and dialectical materialism. On the intellectual
lrvel there are two reasons, I think, to explain their attitude : a superior
knowledge of physics or biology does not exclude a lack of inward
cultivation, moral, historical, and spiritual; and the specialization of
knowledge, together with the prevailing religious indifference, creates
a type of technician unaware of the origins of his own spiritual dis–
satisfactions. Marxism, however mediocre in its current versions, gives
them what they lack-a system and a doctrine. Thanks to it they are
able to bring science and life, the accumulation of positive truths and
