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IRVING HOWE
unfortunately, this will not assure it of adequate power to shape
the actual course of events.
6) There are three attitudes toward the cold war that I would
reject:
the uncompromising "anti-Communist crusade" which would
subordinate every social interest and intellectual divergence to West–
ern power and which,
if
pushed to its logical conclusion, may well
lead to nuclear war;
the campaign for unilateral disarmament which bases itself on
moral absolutes and barely troubles to estimate the power conse–
quences that might follow from an adoption of its proposals;
the sociological analysis which foresees a convergence between
East and West in the direction of a highly bureaucratic and authori–
tarian society, so that, in the name of an historical possibility that is
admittedly a real one, it fails to take into account, or act upon, the
life-and-death differences between the Communist dictatorships, soft–
ened as they may be, and the Western democracies, marred as they
may be.
My sense of it is that radical intellectuals must try to maintain
a point of view which acknowledges the stake they have in preserving
Western democracy while exercising a maximum of political inde–
pendence. This means that one cannot pretend to be neutral or
indifferent in regard to the world struggle. I want, for example, to
see a policy which prevents Berlin from succumbing to Communist
encirclement while yet avoiding nuclear war. Between the West and
"ourselves" there is, not a full identity of interest, but a sharing of
certain limited goals, the realization of which requires us to depend
upon Western power and also to put forward a variety of radical.
proposals. Thus, within this complex perspective, I would propose
that, no matter what other nations do, the United States refrain
from a resumption of nuclear testing- that seems to me both a moral
obligation and a way of regaining the political initiative from the
Communists. I would also be inclined to support proposals for
"phased" disarmament by the West as a means of trying to break
the arms deadlock.
The conflict between East and West is almost certain to con–
tinue for a long time. What we can try to do is to affect Western
policy toward a stress upon progressive economic and political ends,
