THE LAST CHANCE
Joseph & Alsop, Stewart
THE LAST CHANCE By Joseph and Stewart Alsop "/T^HE millionaires in all countries," wrote Lenin, I "are behaving on an international scale in a way that deserves our heartiest thanks." It now...
...It is not too much to say that the whole future of the world is bound up in whether or not "the American conserve* lives are willing to recognize this truth...
...If they fail to* face it, if they complain angrily about "socialistic* regimes, if they sneer at the necessary measures ol world rehabilitation, which this country alone is in a position to understand, as mere "globaloney," then nothing is more certain than Soviet victory in this contest over two ways of life...
...Stewart, the younger psrtner In the team, fought aa a rifleman In the British Army after being rejected by alF branches of our Army and Nary...
...If the rich giant of the West again, in the next few...
...It means that the conservatives, if they are to have any hope at all of t successfully meeting the Russian challenge, must take measures, and must support regimes, which are hardly consistent with the mouthings about "free enterprise" and "regimentation" to which American conservatives arc so addicted...
...person's...
...The conservatives paid the price of their failures in domestic policy (hen by sixteen years of political impotence...
...There is thus no good reason why the challenge cannot be met, and the test surmounted, by American conservatism...
...But so, unhappily, are the doctrines of Senator Bricker and even the more moderate Senator Taft...
...In the contest with the Soviet Union, this country and the nations of the West of which it is the leader have one enormous advantage: namely, that the Russians are attempting to export their political system without essential change, when in fact it is highly inappropriate to the economy and cultural pattern of almost any other nation...
...In every other major nation on earth the capitalists and businessmen have cither been reduced to a condition of badgered political impotence, or they are dead...
...The conservatives must realize the absolute necessity of taking those .measures, however costly ami however, apparently inimical to immediate business interests, which will prevent the recurrence of another 1929...
...Lenin and Stalin are sheer nonsense, when applied to most nations outside the Soviet grip...
...As there are many able men of good will on the American left, so there are also on the American right...
...Ho earned his commission In tho OSS and wan parachuted to join tho Maquis In Franco...
...ears, presents the sorry spectacle of mass uucmploy* ment and mass misery, there will be two results...
...It is a contest of two kinds...
...It* is a cardinal point of Soviet doctrine that the United SlalRMvill surely have n desperate depression in tho near suture, Stain himself has preached the Inevitability of the coming American depressionfirst to Eric JoIkinIoii during the war, and on many subsequent occasions This conviction has a corollary i that the United States, thrown into domestic upheaval by the collapse of the capitalist system, will withdraw from Europe and the world, leaving the field free for unlimited expansion of the new Russian Empire...
...To .understand tho quality of this responsibility, it is necessary to consider ttic United States through Soviet eyes...
...For American conservatives are all too apt to assume that anyone— either at home or abroad—who spends a great deal of time shouting about the Red Menace is sure to be on their side...
...Second, the American ideals of democracy and personal liberty will become meaningless, not only in the eyes of the people of other nations, but in our own ryes...
...The doctrines of Messrs...
...Both contests, political and ideological, will have been won by the Russians by default...
...The basic issue with which these conservatives will have to deal is the world-wide challenge of the Soviet Union...
...Lenin once wrote of Arthur Henderson, the British Socialist, that if he were a British Communist he would "support Henderson in the same way that a rope supports a hanged man...
...For the Social Democrats promise the advantages of economic and social security through planning, and add to that the boon of political and personal freedom...
...And the plain fact is that if (his businessman's government is not a great deal wiser and more imaginative than its predecessors, this country and the world 'face a bleak future indeed...
...FlNALLY, if the Soviet anticipations of an American depression are fulfilled, the Soviets will also win...
...The Soviets and their allies, the Communist parties of the world, have consistently followed that doctrine...
...they know that the desire for personal liberty is still strong in men's hearts...
...Otherwise we shall find ourselves burdened with' more governments like those in Spain and Greece, And the simple fact is that such regimes are a poor, investment...
...These enormous, issues, with which we have been confronted by the new expansionist policy of the Soviet Union, constitute both a challenge and a test...
...They cannot last That is the fact which' American conservatives must face...
...SeCOND—and more fundamentally—it is a con-""^ test between two ways of life.' And nothing is more certain than Soviet victory in this contest, if tho Western way of life obviously fails, if the Western conception of Freedom comes to mean the freedom to starve in your own way...
...It is possible to judge the price of failure by the disaster which overtook the conservative interests in this country after 1929...
...T ' HE plain fact is that the choice outside the United Slates is no longer one between Socialism on the one hand and capitalismon the other...
...It now seems likely that the millionaires of the United States will have an opportunity to deserve the heartiest thanks of Lenin's successor...
...For a great effort of the imagination will be required of the conservatives who seem likely to take over the direction of our affairs...
...In the peculiar jabberwocky of the Communist jargon, the phrase "Social Democrat" is spat out with more anger and contempt than any other...
...First, it is a political contest, of the sort which the world has known since the concept of nationality first began to arise around the borders of the Mediterranean...
...But the sad fact is that "free enterprise" is as dead in Europe today, and throughout the world except in the United States, as the Holy Roman Empire...
...Our wealth, our power, and our geographical position have together conspired to force the United Slates to take the lead in this struggle, to the end that further Russian expansion may be halted, and a total upset of the world power balance may be prevented...
...Yet the United States is in a fair way to have what it has not had since Franklin Roosevelt stepped jauntily into the White House in 1932: a businessman's government...
...They believe, and rightly, that such regimes cannot last, and that when the pendulum swings, it will swing right over to the Communists...
...only be the end of American conservatism...
...Talk to a European, amid the devastation of the European economy, about free enterprise, and he will stare at you blankly and uncomprehendingly...
...That is the measure of the responsibility which will rest on the conservatives who will now take power in the United States, i ' It is s curious responsibility...
...Yet there are jtoo many conservatives, I ?•?th in business and politics, who still happily mouth the sort of nonsense which led to disaster in the early thirties...
...There are too many conservatives who cannot bring themselves to believe that the world outside the United States in fact exists, and who believe all too readily that it is really possible to return to our provincial and ungoverned past...
...freedoms of man are protected, and Coa> munism, which is the negation of all freedom, In Great Britain, China, France, Austria, Italy, indeed throughout the world, the United States, whether under conservative or other leadership, must in its own interest support regimes of the non-Communist left...
...Joseph served during tho wsr as an aide to General Chennsult and wan a prisoner of the Japanese In Hong Kong...
...That is one promise the Communists cannot top, and they know it...
...First, the economies of our Western allies will bo dragged down into chaos with ours...
...But this advantage will be thrown away if the American conservatives also attempt to export the American political and economic system without essential change...
...Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that they are capable of making this effort...
...If they fail again, not only at home but also abroad, it will not...
...In Italy, he was the commander of a machine-gun platoon...
...And with good reason...
...And on the other hand, anyone at home or abroad who does not go down the line for "free enterprise" seems to many conservatives "socialistic" and practically the same thing as a Communist...
...TilF Soviets thus do not welcome a contest with the non-Cominunist left...
...The second cardinal point of Soviet, and hence Communist, doctrine is that the greatest threat to the Soviet way of life comes from the Social Democrats—the non-Communist left- The most abusive epithets in the extensive Soviet vocabulary of invective are reserved for the Social Democrats...
...It is rather.tie .choice) between Socialism In which the fundaments...
...Joseph and Stewart Alsop are the authors of a ref alar, provocative column on world personalities and events In the AVw York Htreld Tribune...
...This article first appeared In tho Atlantic Monthly and Is reprinted hero with tho permission of the authors...
...If it is to such men that the responsibility of American government is given, then it is certain that the challenge will not be met...
...This challenge has resulted in the enormous contest between the Soviet Union and the West which is now everywhere being waged...
...It is this which calls for the great effort of imagination which the American conservatives must m^e if they are to meet the Soviet challenge...
...It will be ihe end of the whole Western wav of life...
...But they eagerly welcome a contest with ,such sterile and reactionary regimes as those which exist today in Greece and Spain...
Vol. 30 • February 1947 • No. 6
