A COMMUNIST AN'D HIS IDEALS
437
God gone, whose power we could suppose was benevolent, the best we
seem able to do is to put good where there is at least no power of bad;
in other words, where there is no power-in the oppressed. With the
end of the depression, when power was restored to the proletariat,
idealism forsook it in droves-is there anything more striking in present–
day progressive life than how little regard there is for what was once the
noblest of all causes, the cause of labor ? L abor is strong, like ourselves; so
it is probably no better than we are, and no more worthy of our support.
Instead, idealism has turned to the cause of the racially and religiously
oppressed, the J ews, the Negroes, the Chinese. Behind our idealistic
diplomacy in this last decade in the East, obviously there has lain the
assumption that Communism among the poor, backward Chinese could
not possibly be real Communism, the kind we had to fear. It could not be
Communist power. The Chinese were so different from ourselves. They
were so weak and childlike, we were so mature in industrialism and
evil. We must help them to whatever they needed-at whatever risk
to ourselves.
Idealism did not
think
about the Chinese Communist problem, any
more than it really thinks about the Negro problem or the J ewish prob–
lem.
It
sentimentalized about the Chinese and called sentimentality the
new practicality; it called sentimentality a realism
more
real than the
reality which stared us in the face. And when people who did think
tried to make themselves heard, idealism didn't listen. For dissident
opinion was the opinion of a little group of sour intellectuals. The
opinion of a little group of dissident intellectuals is indeed always sour.
And thus we come to another feature in our composite portrait. The
idealist finds virtue only where he is not-in the nation which is not his
nation,
in
the class which is not his class, in the races and religions which
are not his race and religion. Also in the occupations which are not his
occupation.
Last week, in discussing the responsibility of the intellectual, Mr.
Elliot Cohen made the point of the intellectual's responsibility as a
person trained to think. The point needs to be made even more strongly,
for what we see today, all around us, is the intellectual's almost con–
scious abdication of his powers of mind. In the 'thirties the idealist
feared selling out, economically. Today, he makes the choice against the
life of mind, not only for economic advantage, but in the strange belief
that the choice against the life of mind somehow represents a greater
fulfillment of his human possibilities. At best, the idealist is uneasy about
his intellectual occupation. At worst, he is filled with self-contempt, even
self-hatred. And the results, in our culture, are everywhere to be seen.
