THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
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mode of thought in which its own future is a central problem. To
have this "position" does not, alas, provide one with automatic
answers to problems of the cold war, disarmament, stopping Com–
munism, nationalizing industry etc., any more than an acceptance
of the Sermon on the Mount necessarily provides answers to specific
moral problems. Unfortunately, democratic socialism is today weak
in regard to the problems of the moment, first because it is caught
up in a deep and absorbing crisis of intellectual "position," second
because in many countries it has declined into little more than an
agency of liberal reform, and third because some of our immediate
problems do not permit quick or complete solutions by anyone.
On a world scale the socialist movement may have exhausted
its option during the early years of the century, so that its unfinished
tasks will now have to be taken up by some new agency. It is possible
that no great historical movement gets a second chance, and if so,
that may explain the loss of elan, the decline of charisma, from which
the socialist parties suffer, and which severely limit their capacity
to affect the course of the cold war.
The right wing of socialism displays intelligence and skill, in
some countries, at working out limited social improvements, but it
has virtually ceased to pretend that it speaks in the name of a
major historical transformation. The left wing wishes to recapture
the spirit of transcendence which characterized socialism in its early
days, yet cannot find specific political proposals toward that end
which would also be relevant to the conditions of mid-twentieth
century society. Behind these difficulties lies a deeper and more
pervasive intellectual crisis. Serious partisans of democratic socialism
are troubled by the fact that there seems to be a dissociation, or at
least there is no longer an assured connection, between their ani–
mating sentiments and their formulated program. They can no longer
take it for granted that the one presupposes the other, and in such
a crisis it is hard to step forward with a voice of certainty. Never–
theless, the perspective of democratic socialism remains a central hope
in the increasingly collectivist world in which we live, the one way
of escaping the insufferable choice between capitalism and Com–
munism. In that fundamental sense, it
is;
sure to be profoundly
important during the years ahead, as a permanent possibility of escape
from the dilemmas of the cold war; but at any given moment,
