870
PARTISAN REVIEW
future of Europe is thus
more
integrally at stake in the conflict than is
the future of the United States.
The fundamental nature of the present conflict is in reality not
obscure. On the one hand is a world movement, basing itself in the first
instance on Russia, but by no means confined to Russia, which has the
explicit objective of the reduction of mankind to a monolithic totalitarian
enslavement. Opposed is also a world movement-basing itself materially
in the first instance on the United States, but much less identifiable
with its primary base-which resists the totalitarian drive. The positive
nature and goals of the movement of resistance are less clear than are
those of its totalitarian opponent; but their implicit meaning becomes
known through what they negate. Not arbitrary choice but historical
fate links America today with the survival of European civilization,
as well as with the chances of the formerly colonial peoples of Asia and
Africa for free and more humane self-development.
If
the Communist
goal is achieved, human freedom, in all spheres- in science and art and
education and work as well as in political life-will be destroyed. And
therefore
the struggle against Communism belongs not to anyone nation
or class or group. It is the common struggle of all those who seek to
preserve or to gain freedom.
If
we who believe in freedom act at all
we must by the nature of the situation we confront act as allies. Our
world has been squeezed so tight by the pressures of this century that
there is no room left for the existence of a Third Force between freedom
and slavery.
We are told that all men, in our day, want peace. Perhaps so, very
likely so. But we, as responsible intellectuals, still free to speak the truth,
cannot leave it like that. We must state also the conditions of peace,
among which the wish for peace is not, alas, of much importance. We
must declare that it is also necessary to decide
whose
peace and peace
for
what.
Do we really want the peace of the prison, the concentration
camp, and the total police-society? That is
their
peace. Would it be in
reality peace, even at that cost? When we review the history of this last
generation, it does not seem likely. Just as the promised "security" of
the totalitarian economy is a fraud-for how could there be security when
workers have no freedom to protect theit persons and their jobs?-just
so is the promised "peace" of totalitarianism a sorry counterfeit. How
could a slave society ruled by terror find peace? Throughout history,
terror has always bred terror. The purgers are always in turn purged.
If
the helots do not in fact rebel, they must be massacred because they
logically might rebel.
So long as the Communist power threatens the world, genuine
