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which was a decisive historical stage in the process of secularization. At the
same time, the motives of the fellow travellers of both generations were
mixed: there were elements of both a romantic communitarianism combined
with longing for meaning, purpose and authenticity on the one hand and a
quest for greater rationality, material progress, and so on on the other.
Some of these problems in
The Fellow Travellers
were also noted by
critics of the first edition which in general was favorably reviewed on both
sides of the Atlantic. Thus Richard Crossman wrote (in
The Listener)
of
Caute's attempt "to fit
all
the fellow travellers into a single philosophical for–
mula.. .In fact [they] never belonged to a single philosophical species..." The
critic of
The Guardian
too noted "the treatment of some of the characters as
simple theoretical constructs" ; likewise the
Times Literary Supplement
found
the-postscript-to-Enlightenment thesis unsatisfactory, as did Lewis Feuer ob–
serving (in
Survey),
"The fellow travellers.. .were less children of the
Enlightenment than the heirs to the Platonic aspiration toward the status of
philosopher
kings."
It
is something of a mystery why Caute when preparing a new edition
resolved to overlook such comments and chose to avert his eyes from alter–
native theories which could supplement rather than replace his own. This is
all the more puzzling since he is also aware of a study produced by this re–
viewer
(Political Pilgrims,
1981) which pursues at some length the alterna–
tive argument outlined above. His fumiliarity with this work is demonstrated
by some ten references to the volume,
all
of them to source materials which
had been used in it. There are also many identical quotations and sources in–
cluded in the new edition of
The Fellow Travellers
without reference to
Po–
litical Pilgrims,
where they had also appeared earlier. (Approximately two–
thirds of
all
sources used for the new chapters on China, Cuba, and Vietnam
are identical to those used in
Political Pilgrims.)
Despite such awareness of a
book addressed to issues strikingly similar to those tackled by Caute, there is
not a single substantive reference to anything said or argued in
Political
Pilgrims,
although it was diligently mined for source materials.
(Political
Pilgrims
took note of all similar endeavors, as is the scholarly convention, in–
cluding the first edition of
Fellow Travellers,
commenting on its substantive
arguments, noting areas ofagreement and disagreement.)
The limitations of both editions may also have something to do with
Caute's affinity with the moral equivalence thesis (which stipulates that there
are no substantial moral distinctions to be made between Western capitalist
and Soviet-type socialist systems, or between the United States and the So–
viet Union). In the preface to the new edition, he takes notes ofa criticism he
received from the left and then goes on to make this telling point:
