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PARTISAN REVIEW
even minor objects of waste - threatens everything. I say everything
has become overtly political in our system, so much so that even to
consider nonviolence as politically useful assails the left and the right.
And does not mark a center.
But every time we are goaded to violence by the violence or chi–
canery and idealism and pretensions of others, any time a situation
ri'ses to a degree of real emergency, whenever we attempt to impose
an ideal in its completeness on others, when any of us attempt to sur–
vive at all costs, we raise questions of the survival of the world and of
the possibility of any kind of peace.
This is not to suggest an ideal society of equalitarian humilities
but only to suggest the extreme fragility of structures of peace.
We may be able to simplify our weaponry so that life can con–
tinue. We may be able to bring some kind of order to society, un–
ideal but widespread, and to groups of societies that will partly work
peaceably, but that order represents a very broad assault on society
as it is now constituted.
Socialism would seem to be part of what would result but not as
a coercive ideal. It is more likely to arise from our system of pragmatic
lurches and whatevers than from an idea-ridden system. I believe this
very strongly. What we would have would not be like any religion
heretofore existent, but it would have religious and pious aspects
and aspects of belief and of faith. This kind of movement is much
assailed and hated - hated in return because for many of us, without
perhaps permitting ourselves hatred, we yet hate this or that quality
of this society and of the other ones we know of, and we may hate
violence as lovers hate a love they wish would stop and a dependence
they wish would end.
Is it worthwhile to hold to such a troubling and unpeaceful
course in pursuit of an unideal and fragile and merely human peace?
In dealing with what does not exist now you can make pronounce–
ments but you cannot really
know.
An individual can attempt to move society by personal example
- one aspect of which is called
style-
and by direct political action,
by direct economic action, by emotional action, by personal ties, by
the propagation of ideas and the defense or extension of culture and
sometimes of beliefs, by supporting people and institutions through
whose agency things are done or thought or argued and other things
are not done so that you applaud, or only half-applaud, their pro–
gram; but through the agency of that program and those people, their
existence and actions- and arguments- in the real world, your hope
