ANTI-COMMUNISM
393
ficulties; it is now clear that it may well constitute a hindrance to the
development of an effective radicalism in the West. Recent political
style
in
the Western countries has been, at best, hard and technical–
as if all ideological questions had been settled. (At worst, it has been
brittle and manipulative--as
if
these had
not
been settled.) The
tendency to a defensive affirmation of Western democratic society's
theoretical values and to a diminution (Communist fashion) of aware–
ness of the discrepancy between these values and the society's institu–
tions is especially evident in the rhetorical status of the New Frontier.
It is true that in America any hint of a modification in the ideology and
practice of a certain type of capitalism evokes a systematic counter-re–
action of great ferocity, which can exploit the anxieties of a public
ignorant of any possibilities other than those before its nose. Everywhere,
however, systematic anti-Communism is accompanied by a fear of
change and experimentation half cultivated by those who know how
to profit by it, half simply the psychological consequence of the diversion
of moral energy into anti-Communism. The recent scepticism about
anti-Communism among the intellectuals is also due to a renewed radic–
alism, or rather their search for a new radical politics.
The demand for a new radical politics in the West has been
encouraged by the crisis in Communism itself. Those who thought
minimal the capacity of the human spirit to resist continuing indoctrina–
tion, intimidation and terror were astonished by the events of 1956-–
and encouraged to reconsider their pessimism about the possibility of
change within Western societies. The political apathy and material–
ism of Western populations now appeared less immutable than they
had thought. (That apathy and materialism, incidentally, also im–
munized western European populations to some extent against anti–
Communism-if only by heightening their sense that they had a great
deal to lose in a war, the reasons for which seemed increasingly
gratuitous.) Questions about the quality of life in Western societies
were not new; they have been taken up, however, by those whose
experiences did not predispose them to the standardized sorts of Western
ideological defense. The role of the new generation, whose members
were themselves never deceived by Stalinism, is clear; the contribution to
the new political temper made by Christian political thinkers has been
overlooked. Precisely the Christians, however, were attracted by the
spiritual elements in a Communist ideology undergoing internal revision
by Communist dissenters-and were, therefore, reluctant to endorse a
spiritualized anti-Communism.
A new social criticism in the West has led, almost inevitably, to a
