498
PARTISAN REVIEW
it has no substance. We who are spiritually a partofthe West have
to go through the gestures of conforming to the idea of an
ideological state.
In this sense I see the significance of the dissidents as a
reawakening of European conscience-of a Europe that had long
been divided and uncertain of itself, a Europe prey to nihilism.
Czechoslovakia and Poland are serving notice that the very basis
of world peace today is extremely precarious; ever since World
War II, such peace as we have had has been based on the idea of a
divided Europe. What is becoming obvious is that the division of
Europe can be perpetuated only by a very heavily armed presence,
and this is the driving force behind the arms race.
So this reawakening of conscience is significant for the
unoccupied parts of Europe and for America also, because, after
all, we face a devil's bargain. In the East it is survival in exchange
for conscience. In the West, the leading theoreticians speak of
technological affluence at the cost of conscience. Here in Boston a
leading theoretician is teaching us that freedom and dignity are
obsolete and should be replaced by social engineering, which will
ensure a far greater degree of affluence.
The phenomenon of dissidence movements is significant
wherever people are asked to give up conscience for the sake
of comfort, convenience, or security. In America, the counter–
parts of the Czechoslovak dissidents are not those who propose
to substitute an orthodoxy-an American or Western orthodoxy
-for the Marxist orthodoxy of the East. For me their counter–
parts are people like the great American dissident, Martin
Luther King. He is to me a fellow dissident in America, as are
those in the ecological movement-the people who are not
willing to exchange ever-increasing affluence for an ever more
regimented, devastated environment.
What we are witnessing is even more than a return to
normality; it is a return to our moral humanity.
VICTOR ERLICH: Our next and last speaker is Leszek Kolakow–
ski, who is one of the most seminal and wide-ranging philos–
ophers living today. Since his departure from Poland in 1968 he
has taught at Berkeley, at Yale, and at Oxford. He is now
associated with the Committee on Social Thought at the Uni–
versity of Chicago.
LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI: Since my colleagues Boris Shragin,
