LETTERS
ingly of "the final, noble sentences
of the Communist Manifesto." He
trots out a trite idea about the
unfalsifiability of utopian faiths. He
admits that communism is an error,
and then provides a kind of spiritual
extenuation of it. To me this is
moral mischief. Certainly commu–
nism deserves a place in the history
of religions. The death of its vic–
tims, however, is at least as interest–
ing as the disappointment of its
believers . About the death Rieff
says " well , obviously," and calls
any further attention to it "a num–
bers game ." Meanwhile I am "cal–
lous toward the poor and the
oppressed ."
Rieff has a rather sentimental
notion about intellectuals . They
should be "mocking power." They
should not want "to shape public
policy." It is their "duty to be sedi–
tious." And then he names Sartre
as among "the noblest human
beings of the last [sic
1
century."
(Presumably "it is no good moan–
ing" about Sartre's years of servil–
ity to Stalinism.) The fact is that no
intellectuals in history have more
thirsted for power, more ached to
shape public policy, than the com–
munist intellectuals.
This
is under–
standable; intellectuals in politics
must be sincere about change or
they are sincere about nothing.
Rieff would like something purer.
He adduces Simone Weil , who
responded to the events in Europe
in 1939 with an attack on French
colonial policy. "There must not be
a single genuine lover of freedom in
the whole world who can have a
valid reason for hating France.. ..
We think this is now the case, but
we are mistaken." Weil wrote this,
which is like Rieff's remarks about
America, when German troops
were already in Prague. There are
times, then, when the adversary
attitude may be a pose. Intellectuals
should mock power when power
319
deserves to be mocked. Sedition can
also be stupid. Communist intellec–
tuals were contemptible not because
they took sides, but because they
took the wrong side. For it is pre–
cisely "the truth or falsity of the
communist world view" that is the
mind's first mandate . To leave
questions of truth for questions of
meaning, to be more concerned
with the passion of an idea than
with its content, is to be a bad intel–
lectual .
You would think from what
Rieff has written that the renuncia–
tion of communism means the
renunciation of "the hatred of injus–
tice." Maybe that is what he fears .
But such hatred takes many forms.
The renunciation of communism
means only the renunciation of a
certain rhetoric about injustice, and
it is the rhetoric that Rieff refuses to
renounce . " The words of
The
Internationalc
n
still speak to him.
(This is one of the sorriest sentences
our generation has yet produced.)
In this respect Rieff is a poor stu–
dent of Sontag. She, in her own
way, took her leave . He is still lost in
last looks.
To the Editor:
Leon Wieseltier
Washington, D.C.
Overcoming his reluctance to
do so and his desire "to forgive and
forget," Professor Mordechai Gazit
reviews the" grave disappointments
Israel has encountered" in its rela–
tionship with the United States
("America and Israel ,"
Partisan
Review,
3, 1982).
Among the earliest of these dis–
appointments was the failure of the
U .S. to commit military forces to
the protection of Israel in 1948 :
"American passivity could not have
been based on intelligence estimates
that the poorly armed Jewish mili-
