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PARTISAN REVIEW
simple common sense embedded in this widespread scepticism should
not be underestimated-the common man is not merely understandably
reluctant to contemplate the possible dissolution of his familiar world;
he is also sufficiently toughminded to discount some of the more ex–
travagant fears of his guilt-ridden intellectual betters. It is nonetheless
apparent that we are nearing the close of the transitional period between
the Second World War and the attainment of a new technological level
unperceived in 1939 or even
in
1945. Whether new wars can and will
be fought on this level, before mankind achieves an adequate degree
of control over the new means of destruction, is a question so much
debated now that it becomes difficult to think of anything new to
say. When heads of government take to writing letters to the press, in
an effort to persuade the uncommitted that they stand for disarmament
(unlike the opposing side, which presumably favors all-round suicide),
the political scientist is driven back upon higher ground.
If
he cannot
find a fresh vantage point, his occupation vanishes, as does confidence
in his ability to discern those elements in the situation that are hidden
from statesmen and diplomatists. The question, in short, is whether
in
all this welter of public and private comment on the world situation,
there is still room for what used to be known as theoretical thinking.
Fortunately the answer is yes. This is not to say that such think–
ing will necessarily yield results not available to common sense. What
is intended here is not a refutation of commonsensical reflection, but
a grounding of such reflection in something more systematic and less
subject to constant revision under pressure of events. Such revision is
prompted by failure to relate political events to structural conditions.
One such failure, to take an instance out of many, occurred in 1956-
57, in connection with certain misjudgments of the situation in China,
after Mao Tse-tung had delighted the unwary with his "Hundred Flow–
ers" speech. It could then have been foreseen-and was in fact fore–
seen by the Yugoslav Communists-that despite such superficial symp–
toms of liberalization, China would turn out to be the last great bul–
wark of unreconstructed Stalinism: a circumstance which today hardly
needs emphasis. Yet
in
19'56 and 1957 there were those who, on the
evidence of what they saw in the newspapers, were ready to cast theo–
retical thinking to the winds and take their stand (as they supposed)
on the plain evidence of their senses and the concurrent judgment of
the well-informed.
At the moment such excessive reliance on political expertise, and
the related indifference to the kind of thinking that concerns itself
with
long-term processes, is more in evidence where Europe is concerned.
