406
GEORGE LlCHTHEIM
no desire to sound alarmist. I merely observe that barbarization is a
real and present danger. The road from Maoism to Mau-Mauism
is not as long as M . Sartre would like us to believe.
It is indeed a question whether the West still has the assimilative
power it once possessed: whether, in other words, it
is
capable of
revolutionizing not merely the economies of the premodern peoples,
.but also their cultures. Certainly Europe is no longer equal to the task.
The burden must now be shouldered by America and Russia: jointly
if possible, in a carefully controlled posture of rivalry, even enmity
(by all means short of major war) if they cannot or will not act
together.
If
one wants to be cynical, one may say that it is perhaps
an advantage for them to maintain their current mutual animosity:
on condition that it does not get out of hand. Who knows, if the
Big Two were seen to act in conjunction, the poorer people of the
world (most of them colored as well as starving) might begin to
lend credence to the litany coming from Peking. Whereas if Washing–
ton and Moscow go on affirming by all the gods that they are and
will remain mortal enemies. . . . But one must not carry cynicism
too far. Let me simply conclude this part of my discourse by sug–
gesting that the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. are beginning to look
somewhat similar, and that it is desirable (as well as probable) for
them to become more alike still; though doubtless this will not elimi–
nate the built-in differences between East European and genuinely
Western attitudes. One hardly expects the Soviet regime to carry its
so-called "liberalization" to the point of actually permitting genuine
individual freedom. Yet if in this generation the rule of law is
installed, that alone will represent a cultural advance sufficient to
reintegrate Russia within the fabric of European civilization. And
this, in the short as well as in the long run, is vastly more important
than any economic changes. All of which, incidentally, corresponds
to the traditional Marxian view of Russia's relation to Europe: a
relationship defined very precisely in terms of civilization, not of
class. It cannot be called Marx's fault that his Russian followers
(or those of them who came to power in 1917) lost sight of these
distinctions.
III
When one ascends from the level of our current political pre-
