LEON WIESELTIER
421
Stop . A huma n face? This is a curious way to condemn
communism . Where, exactl y, is thi s huma n face? Surely not in the
conduct of communi sm in the societies it ha controll ed . It must lie
elsewhere - in the
E conomic and Philosophic Manuscripts,
presumabl y,
and in
The Russian R evolution ,
a nd in the
Prison Notebooks.
These texts
a re indeed suffused with huma n ideal s. But there a re other texts, no
less criti cal to the communi st canon , tha t are suffused with ideals
considerabl y less huma n . From its very ori gins there has been
present in communi sm a cult of the impersona l forces o f hi story. The
entire intellec tu al traditi on o f Bolshevi sm , which is essenti ally a n
escha tological theo ry of di cta to rship , is based upon the belief that the
indi vidual is not the unit o f redemption . There is no huma n face to
Lenin . (He once concluded a letter to hi s mistress by reminding her
of "the obj ec tive logic o f class rela tions in a ffairs of love.") But Lenin
is not Marx, we a re freque ntl y told , usua lly by people who have
failed to prove tha t Sta lin is not Lenin . Sontag has wi sely lost
interes t in these di stincti ons; she call ed the whole damn thing
communism , which was a bit o f her offense . And ye t she insisted
upon this huma n face, which is only a pa rt , a nd no t a ve ry la rge
part , of communi st theory , a nd no part a t a ll of communist practi ce .
Communism is a fa ntasy of power disgui ed as a fa nta sy o f justi ce.
Sontag has not ripped the di sgui se compl etel y away.
Communi sm is fasc ism - tha t kind o f ta lk is not a contribution
to clarity .
It
is true tha t the coup in Pola nd posed a real problem of
political morphology, a problem tha t Sontag's crude fo rma tion was
supposed to solve. 1 he problem was the repl acement o f pa rty rule by
army rule . Poland looked like a new phe nome non within com–
muni sm - no t becau se the wo rkers we re put down by the workers'
sta te, but because the structure of the workers' sta te seemed to shift.
The worke rs' state became a military sta te; "socialism" was spread by
soldiers , not bureaucra ts . Sontag surveyed "the methods and .. .
the language" of ma rti a l law in Poland- "the dema nd for 'normal–
ization' a nd 'o rder ,' the re-legitimizing of a ntisemiti sm , milita ry rul e
presented in the gui se of a 'Committee fo r Na tional Salvation'"
- a nd saw "the sta nda rds of fa scist rule." The prese nce of these
standa rds were, fo r her , a surprise . They should not have bee n .
When was a nti semiti sm ever not legitima te in the history of
communism (or in the hi story of Pola nd)? And , mo re to the po int ,
when wa s communi sm ever unavailed of the milita ry a nd the police?
In every communi st system tha t ha s eve r exi sted , terror has been the
antistrophe of ideology. The noti on tha t communist regimes are not
