PA~TISAN
REVIEW
Like the religious man, he lives by self-judgment. And similarly,
his self-judgment involves a maximum of standard-and a minimum of
pride. In fact, there is but a single pride the political idealist is per–
mitted-a pride in his political idealism.
Living for virtue and without pride, the idealist is forced always
to keep his eye elsewhere than on himself. Himself is, by assumption, a
weak and faulty vessel, and he can find good only where he is not-in
the country which is not his country, in the class which is not his class,
in the races and religions which are not his race and religion, in the oc–
cupations which are not his occupations, in the advantages which are
not to his advantage, even (sometimes) in the sex which is not his sex.
The fascist lives on the principle of self-appreciation? The idealist lives
on the opposite principle-the principle of self-depreciation.
The part played by the Russian Revolution in the forming of the
idealistic mentality of our time is, of course, immeasurable.
It
was the
Russian Revolution that gave middle-class idealism its solid foundation
in guilt. Capitalism tried to abort the birth of the proletarian revolution;
idealism has never done expiating this sin against the holy ghost.
But the existence of a successful Communist state also gave us
the knowledge of an absolute of social good toward which we might
bend our efforts of growth and dignity and our hopes of salvation.
Well before the Russian Revolution the philosophy of social materialism
had brought the hope of heaven down to earth.
It
took the Russian
Revolution to make real this heaven on earth for the modem imagina–
tion-to put it on the map with a name and address to which we could
direct our energy of aspiration.
Of course, even before the Russian Revolution we had been taught
that the map was something bigger than merely our own country.
Internationalism-the belief that the interest of the community of na–
tions transcends the interest of any single nation-was, of course, one of
the earlier tenets of the idealistic faith. But unfortunately, the interna–
tional sentiment not only started
before
the establishment of the Soviet
Union; it seems also to have ended
with
the establishment of the Soviet
Union. Perhaps nothing, in fact, is more striking in the evolution of
modern political feeling than the change that has taken place in the
international sentiment since Russia has become our absolute of good.
For the founding fathers of modern liberalism-for such people as Shaw
and Wells and Bertrand Russell-the international preference was truly
a preference. It was not a choice against; it was not, what it has now
become, a choice against one's own nation. Only since the Russian
