LETTERS
contributor to a magazine (particu–
larly to a polemic within its pages) is
not held liable for the content or the
advertising policy of that journal?
I have a nagging suspicion that
Wieseltier is simply lost in this dis–
cussion. After all, his substantive
objections to Sontag' s speech are
twofold: first , he can't understand
why in condemning communism
Sontag asserted that it had "a
human face ," and second, Wieseltier
is unpersuaded by Sontag's asser–
tion that " communism is in itself a
variant, the most successful variant,
of fascism ." The objection to the
famous equation, which has been
repeated by all of Sontag's crit–
ics, has at least some force to it.
The proposition is
debatable;
but
Wieseltier' s unfamiliarity with the
Left seems to have led him astray
during the writing of this essay.
How else is one to account for his
refusal to concede the "human
face " of communism?
"Where , exactly, is this human
face," he asks , and goes on to refer
to various texts that he grudgingly
admits are " suffused with human
ideals." The human face of commu–
nism, according to Wieseltier, is, if
it exists at all , "only a part, and not
a very large part, of communist the–
ory, and no part at all of communist
practice." Wieseltier instead offers
his own formulation. "Commu–
nism," he asserts, "is a fantasy of
power disguised as a fantasy of jus–
tice." And Sontag is faulted for not
having "ripped the disguise com–
pletely away."
But Wieseltier's definition is
not really distinguishable in any
serious way from Sontag' s own for–
mulation. And whether you go with
Wieseltier or Sontag, it is surely of
some importance that this "fantasy
of justice" has exercised a signifi–
cant hold on a large and impressive
group of people. This is not to insist
315
that these people were right to think
as they did; rather this appeal to
demographics is an indication that
Sontag is not alone in having been
taken in , and that Wieseltier is
ill–
considered in his denial that the
human ideals of communism have
been central in attracting and hold–
ing the allegiance of generation
after generation of intellectuals. We
are not talking here of the truth or
falsity of the communist world view.
What Wieseltier calls the fantasy of
justice and what Sontag calls the
human face is in fact communism's
carte d'entrce
into the minds of men.
If
this were not the case, things
really would be as incomprehensible
as Wieseltier appears to find them.
Where is this human face?
Wieseltier asks. Self-evidently, it
consists of the utopian claim and
hope for social justice and equality
alive in Western thought at least
since the advent of Christianity,
which began, we recall, as the reli–
gion of women and slaves. In the
modern age, it has fired the imagi–
nation first as Jacobinism, then as
socialism, and finally as commu–
nism. Simone Weil put the matter
well when she said that "ever since
1789, there has been one magic
word which contains within itself all
imaginable futures, and is never so
full of hope as in desperate situa–
tions-that word is revolution."
Where is the human face? It
lives in the hatred of injustice, so
moving and extraordinary, that
shouts from the final, noble sen–
tences of the Communist Mani–
festo. It is to be found in the words
of
The Internationale
and in the writ–
ings and deeds of many of the
noblest human beings of the last
century-Rosa Luxemburg, Walter
Benjamin, Adorno, Sartre. This
hatred of oppression and, despite
every horror of communism, faith
in the communist idea as the
