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PARTISAN REVIEW
Yet it seems to me that the dance has been preserved, but what
happened is that it has evolved. And more, I think it could even
be reborn with all that it possessed in other epochs, but enriched.
Humanity never abandons what it has once conquered.
AM:
Nevertheless, it has abandoned at least eight hundred years of
ancient values, and I am persuaded that for man of the year 700,
it would have been impossible to understand Pericles, just as it
would have been impossible for Pericles to comprehend man in
the year 700. Also, the spiritual life of ancient Egypt was scarcely
accessible to Pericles.
LT:
Egypt.
Trotsky shoves it aside. It is evident that he knows little of
Egypt. "But referring to Christianity," he continues, "look, I am sus–
picious. I think that we have idealized too much the early years of
Christianity. Undoubtedly there existed an immense majority who
understood hardly anything, mystics who were ascetics and agile
mercenary people who made up the majority of the Church."
Is it possible that Trotsky is reconstructing primitive Chris–
tianity through the eyes of the Russia of his youth?
He continues, "You are aware of the fact that when the Pope
fell ill he went to the physicians and not to those who prayed. Yes,
the ancient values disappeared; but they have returned."
AM:
You tell me that humanity does not abandon what it once has
acquired. Well then, would it therefore not be possible to admit
the persistence of individualism in communism: a communist in–
dividualism as distinct from, for example, bourgeois individual–
ism, as the latter is from the individualism of Christianity?
L
T:
Let us see - here, as in everything, we must start with the
economic basis. The Christians lived in terms of eternity and con–
ceded little importance to individualism because they were poor.
The communists of the five year plan are in a way in the same
situation, for different reasons. The periods of plans in Russia are
necessarily unfavorable to any individualism, even communist.
The periods of war are likewise unfavorable for bourgeois in–
dividualism. But beyond the plans or between the plans, com–
munism will apply to itself the energy which today it applies to
construction. I believe that the spirit of primitive Christianity is
inseparable from extreme poverty.
Trotsky is tired. His French, more rapid now, becomes less
pure. He uses more frequently an unexpected vocabulary, giving it a
singular inflection: "A purely collective ideology, an ideology ex-
