294
IRVING HOWE
(Interchange the words "involvement" and "decision," and then look
nearer home.)
In
his approach to Africa and Asia, Mr. Howe seems
oblivious to the economic, social and tribal realities of these continents.
It
is not necessary to endorse automatically every form of leftist elitism
and dictatorship in the name of local realities, but it does seem im–
portant to scratch below the surface, to discard an absolute fetishism of
parties and nominal pluralities and to put in cold storage the conceptual
equipment which permits Mr. Howe to describe India as a country with
"a solid democratic tradition."
Mr. Howe's humanitarian mind and imagination travel more easily
in some directions than in others. One can only sympathize with his
strictures against those "left authoritarians" who justify Soviet socialism
by reference to the victory of 1945 over Germany, or glibly explain
away the cruel sufferings of millions in the name of industrial expansion.
But his credentials as an advocate for the Ivans of Stalin's camps would
appear more solidly based did he not describe the English industrial
revolution-in the course of which not one but three or four generations
sweated their guts out in conditions of appalling poverty and degrada–
tion-as a process "accompanied by a rich social history in which a vast
growth of human awareness took place." But rich
for whom?
Mr. Howe's
answer is perfectly clear. "Imagine," he writes, "what a Dickens could
do for and to present-day Russia."
Irving Howe
"Rich
for whom?"
asks Mr. Caute in response to my remark
that the industrial revolution in England was "accompanied by a rich
social history in which a vast growth of human awareness took place."
I rub my eyes: is this man serious? But in any case, the answer is,
"Rich for the English working class and eventually the whole culture."
