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emphasized in these versions of anti-Communism, treated as epiphe–
nomena derived from Communism's underlying psychic structure--if
inevitable results of it. The ideology of anti-Communism, indeed, in–
sists on the pathologically exaggerated role of ideology in Communism
itself (as if the anti-Communists alone were super-sober).
It may be objected, not without reason, that anti-Communism
as a political system has no essence, that there are as many anti–
Communisms as there are anti-Communist groupings, and that Com–
munism has something in it (or something which can be plausibly
ascribed to it) for every man's aversions. The American Right does not
object to Soviet Communism because of its manifest failure to have
developed democratic socialism but because of the absurd belief that
it may well have succeeded. Less primitively, and rather more intel–
ligently, an American intellectual some months ago said that for him
the worst thing about Communism was that it
did
effect a measure
of social reform, making it more difficult to combat its more negative
features. The many sources and types of practical anti-Communism,
however, do utilize an ideology of anti-Communism fashioned by the
intellectuals. When and if the intellectuals cease to provide it, they
will be subject to reprisals by those who need it-but they will have
deprived the latter of something of value. It is, therefore, with the
intellectuals' response to Communism and with the forces shaping it,
that this essay is chiefly concerned.
First things first: the most important single recent contribution to
the end of anti-Communism has been the crisis in Communism itself.
While some object to Communist ideology, and others to Communist
practice, some to Communist movements and others to Communist
societies-no anti-Communist has been unaffected by the conflicts and
controversies now dividing Communism itself. The increase in heresies
and schisms, the obvious pressures of differing material and ideological
interest groups in Communist societies upon the Communist states, the
acknowledgement of a part of the truth by accomplished official liars,
and the subsequent incorporation of the discrepancy between Com–
munist ideology and Communist practice in the official consciousness
of Communism (and, therewith, the legitimation of those tendencies
in public opinion in Communist countries which were always pre–
occupied with the discrepancy)-these have forcibly altered mono–
lithic conceptions of Communism. Those, indeed, who sought to in–
terpret Communism as an instance of some larger historical category
-totalitarianism-have been forced to revise their earlier judgments
on the irreversibility of totalitarian processes.
