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PARTISAN REVIEW
plished, that the means are at hand, that history awaits the concreti–
zation of the vision. The ideologue's error is always that he imagines
the vision will be realized exactly as he dreams it. Marx was satisfied
with his
Republic.
It wa5 not necessary for him to write a
Laws,
only
a manual of political action.
In our day, at this moment, our world is in reaction to the vi–
sionary ideology of Marxism. Let us leave aside the menacing pres–
ence of Soviet Communism. The differences between Marxism and
Communism have been endlessly charted. Communism is not the
ideology, it is the penultimate achievement of its ends. One has ideol–
ogy only where the mind functions among alternatives, constantly
closing out the opposition, endlessly proving the same truths. Com–
munism is an ideology orily in those countries where Communism
has not triumphed, where Communism must still argue, make con–
verts, and openly defend itself. At least an ideology involves thought.
Unless one seriously believes that there is thought, authentic dialectic
in Russia today, one must discountenance talk of Soviet ideology.
There is policy and the dialectic of policy, but discussion of theory
and ends is over. Thought and ideology have been depassed.
If
the United States is not to end in a comparable state of
de–
passement,
we must examine the trends of ideology that are forming
in our midst at present. It is so often argued that if we wish to com–
bat Communism we must talk up the truths of democracy, announce
our domestic vision with repetitive force and concision. It is equally
argued that those attendant visions of the democratic society, God
and nation, must be reaffirmed. It is this which I wish to challenge.
I, for one, do not believe that any statement of the American message
ought to be made as long as we continue to refer to it by such terms
as
message, vision, heritage,
or
ancestry.
Such terms precipitate the
Arctic flow of ideology. The effort to define the American ideology,
to fix it for our time, to make use of it as a criterion of discriminating
the docile sheep from the wolves, is dangerous and inimical to our
freedom.
The complex factors contributing to the formation of what we
shall term,
faute de mieux,
the "American ideology" cannot be satis–
factorily presented here. VVe can explore, however, the central sources
of the ideology, the abundant larder from which the nutriment of
ideology
is
being drawn.
