550
PARTISAN REVIEW
But how
could
you have believed this, or done that? Facts are easy.
It
is
the atmospheres that made them possible that are elusive. "You see, we
believed . . ." (You must have been pretty stupid then!) "No, you don't
understand, it was such a fevered time ... " (Fever you call it, do you!) "I
know it's hard to understand, without being immersed in the poisonous
air of then."
A subsidiary question , not without general relevance: how to account
for the fact that all my life I've been the child who says the Emperor is
naked, while my brother never, not once, doubted or criticized authority?
Mind you, a talent for seeing the Emperor's nakedness can mean his
other qualities are not noticed.
I am trying to write this book honestly. But were I to write it aged
eighty-five, how different would it be?
§
§
§
And what were we selling? What the
Guardian
and other Communist
or near-left newspapers said about the Soviet Union was untrue, though
some people bought the paper precisely because of the "political analy–
ses." But the articles and information about the situation of the Africans,
the Coloured people, the Indians, were true. No other newspaper in
Southern Africa had anything like it, for all were at best at the level of
"we must improve their conditions for the sake of our self-interest,"
"they don't appreciate what we do for them" or "they only understand a
good hiding." What most people found upsetting about the
Guardian
was
not the Soviet Union - after all our gallant ally under good old Uncle Joe
- it was the attitude about the Africans, still called "kaffirs" or "munts" -
"natives" if someone tried to be polite.
What did we believe, what were the ideas that fueled us? They were
the same as those of Communists or near-Communists everywhere, not
just the hectic fancies of a hotch-potch of young lunatics thrown together
by war in Africa.
First, that, within ten years, well fifteen then, the whole world would
be Communist, from choice, because of the manifest superiorities of
Communism. There would be no race prejudice, oppression of women,
exploitation of labor - no snobbishness or contempt for others. This par–
adise would follow a brief period of resistance by reactionaries, only a
mi–
nority, after all, because by then "the State would have withered away."
This phrase "the withering away of the State," together with "the con–
tradictions of capitalism," were by far the most common source of the
sardonic jokes with which the comrades everywhere indicated they were
not lost to sanity.
