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PAR.TISAN REVIEW
ancient philosophers. What was important was to avoid a
summllm
malum,
or civil war, tyranny, poverty, internal chaos. It was felt that it
might be better to forget about high ceilings when what we wanted was
a solid floor under our feet. The American founders didn't promise a
higher life. What they promised us was a society that would offer free–
dom from starvation, from internecine religious wars, from slavery, from
the horrors of the state of nature as Hobbes described it. The founders
were thinking of a secure existence, free from the sicknesses and cruelties
shown us by the past, protection from the worst that we knew man and
nature to be capable of. The founders gave us a picture of man as a lim–
ited creature, a creature living in what Marx was later to call "the
nightmare of history," filling us with horror, the horror of a nasty, short,
and brutish existence, of a war of all against alL They promised us
immunity if we would give up our natural rights and consent to more
limited rights prescribed by a social contract. I apologize for all of these
elementary lessons, but I think it is necessary to say something about
them.
As for the higher things, man's ideas as
to
what he would do in the
realm of the spirit, in his relations to the mystery of his being, his reli–
gion, his origin, his metaphysics - that was no part of the arrangement.
These were to be private concerns, things for men to work out on their
own. There was no commitment to these higher things in this delTlOc–
racy based on reason and justice. In considering these matters, it is advis–
able for us to limit ourselves to the West, where these notions took
practical, political form, and for us as Americans it is important to un–
derstand the American experience as a prolonged , practical effort to sub–
due nature,
to
conquer hunger, disease, and fear, and
to
provide ourselves
with the abundance, peace, balance, and rule of law foreseen by the
founders. This is the objective this country has set itself, and it attained a
degree of completeness and success probably undreamed of by its
founders. America made a seriou effort to become the fulfillment of
certain perennial dreams of a virtual utopia, where mankind at last found
relief from the oppressive conditions which had controlled existence . This
country was the realization of the dream of millennium. This is the
project that has become associated with capitalism, which Marx described
as a stage of human development en route to a fulfillment of even higher
human aspirations, a release from greed, exploitation, wars, and darkness
of the soul. So when the Revolution of 1917 took place, after years of
monstrous war produced by imperialist rivalry, the West also was inspired
with hopes of the new era represented by the Russian Revolution.
But after seventy-odd years of indescribable torment and despotism,
this hope collapsed and left America and the West as the only successful
