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PARTISAN REVIEW
and sophisticated individuals will "bracket" the reality-to use
Susan Sontag's phrase-to avoid the loss of reformist illusions. No
one seems to remember that brutality, slavery, starvation, greed, dis–
ease, injustice, and elitist tribal caste and monarchical systems
existed throughout most of the globe prior to colonialism. No one
seems to notice that the common worker has more political and eco–
nomic power here than in the Soviet Union, that the system that was
created to ensure the basic needs of the masses is failing to do so–
and precisely because, in its emphasis on providing purely material
needs, it deprived its citizens of those intangible qualities that distin–
guish humanity from brute beasts.
It is difficult
to
counter the pernicious effect of ideology without
constructing equally phony ideologies of one's own. Yet lacking the
vestures of ideology we are vulnerable and disarmed. Lacking strat–
egy, we jump too quickly into the fray, flaying wildly at evasive
forces. We defeat ourselves while our opponent calmly sits back and
the rest of the world watches. Following one of these verbal forays at
the U .N. this summer, a nonaligned delegate turned to me in exas–
peration. "You're supposed
to
be a super power," he said. "When
are you going to start acting like one?"
Coming
in
PARTISAN REVIEW
• An interview with Isaiah Berlin
• Fiction by Vassily Aksyonov and Yuz Aleshkovsky
• Elisabeth Young-Bruehl on writing biographies
• Glenway Wescott on Marianne Moore and other poets
• Michael Naumann on German identity and
neonationalism
• Sandra Gilbert on Rider Haggard
• Dan Jacobson on English Migratory Workers
