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"ARTISAN
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bearings, continuing to denounce the evils of Communism with
deadly sameness and in apparent obliviousness of the fact that
in
the
past few years anti-Stalinism has virtually become the official creed
of our entire society. What is needed is not more and more demon–
strations of the badness of Stalinism but some workable ideas as to
how to go about preparing its defeat. The locus of political action
has shifted to the sphere of foreign policy, and it is precisely in
the formulation and discussion of foreign policy that the decon–
verted radicals, with very few exceptions, have displayed no special
aptitude or initiative or grasp of the immensely perplexing problems
that will have to be solved before American leadership of the free
world can be made to yield positive results.*
"It is difficult to change gods," says Shatov to Stavrogin in
The
Possessed.
Shatov, who turns from 'nihilism' to orthodoxy and na–
tional messianism, knows whereof he is speaking. One wishes that
more people among us confessed to the difficulty, instead of engaging
themselves with unseemly haste to positions so safe-and-sound as to
be devoid of all moral or intellectual content. There is the emergent
group of parvenu conservatives, for instance, who, having but
lately discovered the pleasures of conformity, are now aggressively
*
Characteristic of the petrified anti-Stalinists is their inability to distinguish
between Communism as an external and as an internal danger. For Com–
munism, though surely a grave danger
to
America-perhaps the gravest that the
nation has had to cope with since the Civil War-is hardly so grave a danger
in
America. The local Party has lost its power in the trade unions, it has been
deserted by nearly half its membership, and it has only a residual hold on
some sections of liberal opinion. The Kremlin's post-war strategy has all but
destroyed the influence of the American Communists, an influence almost
wholly due to their success in deceiving people as to their real allegiance and
intention. In the period of the People's Front and later of the war-alliance
with Russia, conditions were extremely favorable to the Stalinist strategy of
deception and infiltration. These conditions no longer exist in this country,
and the nation as a whole has now been able to take the measure of the
party-liners and their assorted dupes and stooges. No doubt they still have a
nuisance-value to the Kremlin, but to regard them on that account as the
main danger
inside
the U.S. is to escape from actualities into the shadow-world
of political sectarianism and sheer obsession. Of course, so long as the Soviet
power exists its propagandists and spies will circulate among us, and it is up to
the intelligence-agencies of the government to deal with them. It is scarcely
the function of political-minded intellectuals, however, to serve as an adjunct
to the F.B.I. The necessity of continuing and widening the ideological struggle
against Communism on a world scale goes without saying; but in order to
succeed that struggle must be conducted with more enlightened assumptions
and with positive ends in view.
