WHITTAKER CHAMBERS
extreme Left. It wanted to be and was duly sold on the theory of
Chinese Stalinism as a movement of agrarian reform; and it never
wanted to know the truth about Soviet Russia, even though for many
years now, certainly since the Great Purge in the mid-thirties, it has not
been very difficult to discover what that truth was. The Communist
mind, on the other hand, while Utopian in its faith in the "science of
history" and the materialist dogmas, is crassly realistic to the point of
cynicism in its grasping sense of power and in the choice of means to
attain it; its will is always armed and, whenever feasible, it prefers con–
straint to compromise in settling issues.
If
the New Dealers, insofar as
they can be identified with the Popular Front mind (and the identifica–
tion is by no means complete), failed to recognize the Communists in
their midst, it was not, as Chambers asserts, because they lived in the
same mental world with them but because at bottom they had almost
nothing in common with the agents of the police state.
The dynamism of the New Deal in its early years should not mis–
lead us as to its objectives, which were in reality very limited. Chambers
invests that indigenous reform movement with sinister qualities, thus
justifying his present allegiance to the far Right. I do not believe that
the explanation for his political behavior is to be sought in any love
he has of late acquired for laissez-faire economics and the division of
society into warring classes. It must be his dread and hatred of Com–
munism that impel him to reject precipitantly all ideas of social reform
and innovation. But if Communism is so overwhelming an issue, what
does the far Right actually offer by way of leadership in the struggle
against it? As I see it, it provides neither a fundamental understanding
of Communism nor the moral, intellectual, or political weapons with
which to conduct that struggle to a successful conclusion. That withered
conservatism, which invariably mistakes all social adjustments, however
necessary and belated, for wild plunges into the sinful economics of
"statism," and which looks to a reduction in taxes and a balanced bud–
get for salvation, has simply ceased to count in the world of today.
It
is
really another form of nihilism, by far the most mediocre and boring of
all. Whatever the material force which this withered conservatism may
still command in some countries, the Stalinist aggressors know well that
it presents no serious obstacle to their world-wide sweep. Chambers, who
can hardly be called an optimist, surely understands that this is the
case, as he virtually despairs of "the world outside Communism, which
lacks a faith and a vision." What, then, is the answer? His answer is
religion.
