CORRESPONDENCE
A Premature Obituary
SIRS,
One of the weaknesses of Norman
Birnbaum's ''The Coming End of Anti–
Communism" (PR, Summer, 1962) lies
in the excessive abstractness of his
argument. Though some of his formu–
lations are shrewd and pertinent, I
had a little trouble identifying his
target-an anti-Communist doctrine al–
legedly so concerned with the ideo–
logical and psychological attributes of
the Communist movement as to con–
sider "constraint, compulsion, force
and terror" relatively unimportant
"epiphenomena." Mr. Birnbaum's care–
ful avoidance of names and specific
instances makes one wonder whose
demise he so confidently predicts.
Nonetheless Mr. Birnbaum's principal
thesis is clear enough. I believe
it
to
be largely and perhaps dangerously
wrong. This is not to deny the validity
of some of his assumptions. I have no
quarrel with his view that anti-Com–
munism is no substitute for a positive
social program or vision ... It is a
truism that single-minded preoccupa–
tion with an external threat, however
real and ominous, is conducive to mini–
mizing . . . "the discrepancy between
Western theory and Western practice."
More importantly, one can readily
agree that the recent crisis in Com–
munism and the "development of poly–
centrism in the Communist movement"
has
weakened if not altogether
in–
validated some generalizations about
the nature of Soviet totalitarianism
which until recently carried much
weight with anti-Communist intellec–
tuals. The Communist system has prov–
ed somewhat more flexible and has
become somewhat less monolithic than
many of us had deemed possible in
1950.•••
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