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PARTISAN REVIEW
our country was capable of doing a lot of killing while granting
those of us who opposed the war considerable freedom. Our opposi–
tion wasn't all that important and that may be one of the reasons it
was tolerated. That is a situation in the world that has got to be
looked at. It may be a new one. It's a lot easier
to
take a simple moral
stand when something develops a fairly clear cut evil and only that,
or maybe clear cut good... but when you get that combination of
freedom and destructiveness, that may be a whole new situation
to evaluate and analyze. That plus situations of holocaust may
not reduce themselves to the central Stalinist imagery and I won–
der whether one might address that as a difficulty created by an
ach ievemen t.
HOWE: Mr. Lifton's question requires a fairly complicated answer. Do
I think that the achievements in exposing Stalinism immobilized the
intellectual? There aren't any "intellectuals" in this anymore than I
think there are
the
intellectuals who are undermining the family. I
mean, some of us have done a fair share of undermining the family
and others have done a fair share in defending it. But I don't know
that we need be terribly specific on that. But it's true that to be
caught up with a major idea can cause some people, for understand–
able psychological and moral reasons, can be the determining fact of
their life. And if you have some historical imagination of how hard it
was to be an anti-Stalinist in America and indeed that the liberals
whom Hilton is praising without qualification, that a great many of
them were pro-Stalinist in the 30s as against the Marxists and
radicals...
KRAMER: Who got praised?
HOWE: Well, you say that the left-and you're right in a way-the left
has done damage or has...
KRAMER: I wasn't aware that I praised anyone!
HOWE: Well...wait a moment. .. I assume that if you attack a great
deal, there must be the tacit possibility of praise, Hilton. Now, you
attack the language of contempt for liberal democracy. Well, and I
think that's a valid charge against many of the people on the left in
the intellectual world; insofar as we were guilty of that, I think, fair
enough. You have the right to attack us for that. But I think that it's
also important to point out that the people who were supposedly the
defenders of liberal values in America, a good many of them-not all
by any means-a good many of them were pro-Stalinist. And if you
want to point to moral confusions on the part of the Left, you have
to a lso recognize parallel moral confusion in the liberal community.
