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grasp the distinction between sectarian adolescence and political maturity.
Allied with this dislike of the outside world, which naturally takes
the form of neutralist pacifism, there is an equally total indifference to
European, or American, or Russian, or Asian,
thinking.
No reader of
this symposium would gather from it that there are Socialists outside
Britain, Socialist theories other than British Labourism, or indeed prob–
lems common to Socialists and non-Socialists: for example, the racial
problem (not in Kenya, but where it really matters-in America, in
South Africa, and in Britain itself). Nor is there any indication that
the authors have given a moment's thought to such questions as Euro–
pean union, British relations with the Continent, Commonwealth unity,
or Anglo-American orientation, as against Europeanism, etc. Is none of
this important? It is true that Mr. Paul Johnson, who contributes an
autobiographical essay, assigns to Paris (or rather to the Left Bank
cafes) a special place in his political education; but for him the problem
of France is epitomized by the brutality of the Paris police, and it
would seem that the only Frenchman he trusts is M. Claude Bourdet,
the editor of
France-Observateur,
a weekly much patronized by ex–
Communists and post-Existentialists on the fringe of the major groups.
Readers of the
New Statesman,
of which Mr. Johnson is assistant editor,
have in recent months been able to enjoy the spectacle of editorial be–
wilderment at de Gaulle's incomprehensible refusal to follow the road
(to Fascism) mapped out for him by MM. Johnson and Bourdet. With
such an outlook it is not surprising that the analysis of international
affairs remains the weakest spot in the intellectual armor of Britain's
Nouvelle Gauche.
Lastly there is Miss Iris Murdoch's essay entitled
A House of
Theory.
It
has won a great deal of praise, all of it deserved, for it is
unquestionably the most closely reasoned of the twelve contributions. In
her triple role of philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, Miss Murdoch
looks like becoming the Simone de Beauvoir of the British Left, except
that she is both more intelligent and less doctrinaire. '(She has, however,
a serious rival in Miss Kathleen Nott.) The trouble with her, as with
her co-Existentialists generally, is that she thinks of politics exclusively
in
terms of morality. Her essay is a vivid illustration of the, by now,
established fact that one cannot start from Kant, or even from Kant–
plus-Hume, and arrive at conclusions a:bout politics that touch upon the
actual structure of historical events. With half her mind- the half that
has been influenced
by
rumors of Hegel and Marx-Miss Murdoch
knows this and struggles bravely against the empty sophistry exemplified
by Mr. Weldon's fatuous book
The Vocabulary of Politics.
But she
