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precisely their conformism, their transparent sanctimoniousness, that ex–
asperated Zhivago. Men who were not free, he thought, always idealize
their bondage. So it was in the Middle Ages, and later the Jesuits
exploited this same human trait. Zhivago could not bear the political
mysticism of the Soviet intelligentsia....
Or is the following a "parable of a vanished generation" or a voice
anticipating the democratic aspirations of tomorrow?
To conceal the failure [of forced collectivization] people had to be cured,
by every means of terrorism, of the habit of thinking and judging for
themselves, and forced to see what did not exist ... This accounts for
the unexampled cruelty of the Yezhov period, the promulgation of a
constitution that was never meant to
be
applied, and the introduction
of elections that violated the very principle of free choice.
If
this be "archaism," let every man who believes in freedom de–
clare himself archaic.
V
Finally, putting aside Mr. Deutscher's unfortunate venture into
li–
terary criticism, let me try to summarize what seems to me the political
meaning of our disagreements. Since I have very little space left, what
follows will necessarily be overly condensed, schematic and lacking
in qualification.
When a modern state exerts total control over the economy, poli–
tical power becomes indistinguishable from social and economic power.
If,
as in Russia, the Party has a monopoly of political power, it also tends
to have a monopoly of social and economic power. Democracy then
becomes not a "luxury" which may be gradually expected to make its
appearance, parcelled out decades after the totalitarian party has
seized power. It is a
sine qua non
for any socialist or "progressive" de–
velopment, and its absence signifies that the people have been rendered
helpless.
Hegel wrote that
«The lower classes have been left more or less
unorganized. And yet it is of the
u~most
importance that they shouM
be organized, for only in this way can they become powerful. Without
organization, they are nothing but a heap, an aggregate of atoms."
This
brilliant observation applies exactly to Soviet Russia: the one major in–
dustrial country in the world where the working class has never so
much as known the experience of a legal strike, an elementary right
won in the bourgeois world over a century ago.
The political outlook I have called "left authoritarianism" remains
committed, with all sorts of qualifications, to what it regards as an "es-
