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PARTISAN REVIEW
Tha t is in pa rt because they do not wi sh to be counted in the
company of ce rta in kinds of anticommunists, though thi s has the
effect only of leaving them the fi eld ; and in pa rt because they
consider themsel ves more direc tl y implicated by the ac ti ons of their
own government , which is honorable, but a lso a variety of
isola tioni sm . The anticommunists of the Left may be cha rged , then ,
with a failure of emphas is. In politics, however , tha t is not a trifling
ma tter. It poses the ques ti on of the na ture of political conviction .
Political conviction is not precisely a form of knowl edge. It must
include heat as well as li ght. There is your conviction , and your
feelings about your conviction. It is poss ible to have a convicti on and
to have no feelings about it.
It
is imposs ible to have feelings about
eve rything. The convictions about which you have feelings a re those
by which you will be known . The anticommunism of the Le ft is not
the conviction a bout which it has feelings. The 1ight is there, but the
hea t is elsewhere. And where the heat is, there is little concern about
the company; few left -wing supporters of the Pales tini a ns, for
example, worry about sha ring a position with the o il compa nies, or
will leave them the field . The democ ra tic Left is since re in its
anticommunism , then , but it has reserved its greates t feelings for
evil of a lesse r magnitude . Of tha t much it is guilty.
Andrew Kopkind a rgued tha t there was nothing to have been
deceived about ; North Vietnam , he ma inta ined , is "proceeding
dialec tically according to the forces and furi es of the real world ," and
may "express more truth and justice" in the future than it does now.
Philip Pochoda and Daniel Singe r argued tha t they had been
deceived , but not exactl y by communism . Stalinism , ra ther , was all
tha t was wrong. Pochoda denied tha t "Communism , all Commun–
ism, is Stalinist," tha t "Communism , a ll C ommunism , all C ommun–
isms, a re 'utter villa iny.' "( For somebody who fu sses so much about
communism's deta ils, Pochoda is ra ther igno ra nt. H e lists H annah
Arendt in the tradition of Luxemburg and Gramsci, and he thinks
tha t Lenin made his famous rema rk about elec trification in
1919.)
These men are unreconstructed utopians. They believe that
utopia nism a fter the revolution is like utopianism before the revolu–
tion . They err. The revolution made a difference.
It
changed vision–
a ries into accomplices.
Pochoda and G reen a rgued that the deception was reason for
hope; theirs was the mos t incredible argument of all. Green put it
this way :
