Alternatives to the H-Bomb

...Prudence will suggest the retention of some armed strength as a bolster to the non-Soviet bargaining position...

...And if we elect to continue fighting, how are we to win...

...It is implied that, were our offering of aid comprehensive enough and our manner of giving adequate, we would have the free world on our side...

...The arid duty of those of us who believe that we know the truth about the Soviet regime and world Communism seems plain enough...

...If so, then the proper objective (the alternative to the H-bomb) is to bring this state of peaceful coexistence into being...

...The trouble with The New Leader's question is its unstated presupposition that we are now at peace, and that our problem is how to avoid getting into a war...

...Now, although the homelessness of the intellectual is more or less evident in all Western and Westernized societies, it is nowhere so pronounced as in our own business civilization...

...America runs its complex economy and governmental machinery, and satisfies most of its cultural needs, without the aid of the typical intellectual...

...In India, the uppermost caste of the Brahmins was also the cast of the educated...

...Thus far, our effort in this kind of battle has lacked some essential ingredient...

...It is not the quality of our policies which offends them but our very existence...

...He was usually elbowed out by fanatics and practical men of action...

...With the Soviet system extended over a large area and population, it must either go on to world domination or fall back to impotence...

...The intellectual was left out in the cold...

...Awkwardness or even tactlessness in our manner of giving cannot possibly explain this unexpected reaction...

...But it is almost equally certain that they will not deliberately start a hot war with the United States...

...In Asia, too, the wider diffusion of literacy, due largely to Western influence, gave rise to groups of unattached men of words...

...They were magistrates, administrators and officials of every kind...

...And they must be given a large share in the shaping and execution of policies which they will be called upon to expound and defend...

...One cannot escape the impression that there is a natural antagonism between these "men of words" and twentieth-century America...

...In ancient Egypt and in Imperial China, the literati were a privileged part of the population...

...Its sense is now to inquire whether there exists any method for defeating the Soviet regime and Soviet-based Communism that would be more effective and less dangerous than the H-bomb...

...The people who come over to us from the Communist regimes are mostly men of action—soldiers, diplomats, sportsmen, skilled workers and technicians...

...There is no reason to hope that the men of the Kremlin are going to settle down in the predictable future...

...Yet, the intellectual did not know how to retain a position of leadership in the movements and new regimes he did so much to initiate and promote...

...They are convinced, in the words of Stalin, that "no ruling class has managed without its own intelligentsia...

...Our task is to hold our own in a prolonged, indecisive contest, and yet preserve a more or less normal existence and a fairly healthy economy...

...This other method is political—the massive, dynamic pursuit of what we have called "a policy of liberation...

...It was this dependence on the Greek intellectual which eased the spread of Roman rule in the Hellenized part of the Mediterranean world...

...This group is made up of university teachers and students, writers, artists and intellectuals in general...

...We must surrender and accept the Bolshevization of the world, ourselves (or our descendants) included...

...We can approach the real problem by asking a somewhat different question which is now, and not for the first time, under active public discussion...

...Or do we mean to take "the H-bomb" as the symbol of total, unlimited war and ask: "What is the alternative to unlimited war...

...Such should be our policy if coexistence is possible and desirable...

...In the Roman Empire, there was an intimate alliance between the Greek intellectuals and the Roman men of action...

...In a Communist regime, writers, artists, scientists, professors and intellectuals in general are near the top of the social ladder and feel no doubts about their social usefulness...

...Whatever the hands that guide our policies, the voice that makes itself heard must be the voice of our foremost novelists, poets, dramatists, philosophers, scientists and professors...

...The catastrophic events of the fourteenth century—the Black Death, which killed off a large part of the population and nearly half of the clergy, and the divisions and disorders of the Papacy—weakened the hold of the Catholic Church on the European masses...

...In classical Greece, the philosophers, dramatists, historians, sculptors and poets were also soldiers, sailors, lawmakers, politicians and men of affairs...

...Accepting it, there is an easy answer...

...The C-bomb would be better and apparently can be made...

...There is no doubt that the intellectual has come into his own behind the Iron Curtain...

...But the fifteenth century, which saw the emergence of the modern Occident, also saw a fateful change in the status of the European intellectual...

...The lucidity of this work has been compared to that of Machiavelli and La Rochefoucauld...

...The response we hear does not originate in the people we try to help but in a group of self-appointed spokesmen and mediators who stand between us and the masses...

...At least one sure alternative to war, whether fought with H-bombs or with fists, is always available...

...Their leaders know it, even if ours don't...

...Czeslaw Milosz says of the intellectual in the Communist world that "never since the Middle Ages has he felt himself so necessary and recognized...

...For any policy (except surrender), the most advanced military weapons are a necessary reserve even though they may never be brought into action...

...Short of surrender, no conceivable policy could eliminate the possibility of the use of the H-bomb or its successor...

...James Burnham, of course, is author of The Managerial Revolution, The Coming Defeat of Communism and the recent Web of Subversion...

...Yet, the more one thinks on the subject the more one realizes that the attitude toward us is not mainly determined by the nature of our policies and our manner of giving...

...It follows that our choice is narrow...

...Eisenhower—and Lewis Mumford...

...This is the necessary consequence of its mode of rule, no less than of its ideology...

...In this article, an attempt is made to underline one aspect of the cold war...

...This question means: Can (and should) the Soviet and non-Soviet sections of the world achieve a relative equilibrium...

...It is these articulate people who are the source of the baffling anti-Americanism which has been manifesting itself in the free world since the end of the Second World War...

...We must fight without undue sanguineness and exuberance, lest in a fit of exasperation we pray for an end of it all and stumble into an atomic holocaust...

...Our generosity, diplomacy, propaganda and military might have not won for us a marked measure of wholehearted adherence...

...Recent events in Indo-China seem to indicate that, in a cold war, weapons and fighting men cannot be decisive if the people of a country threatened by the Communists are not wholly on our side...

...The Communists have always had an acute awareness of the fateful relation between the intellectual and the established order...

...The New Leader has asked in this symposium: "What are the alternatives to the H-bomb...

...But, whether desirable or not, coexistence is not possible...

...Our men of action, however able and well-intentioned, cannot be our spokesmen in the battle for souls...

...He was no better off in the national state than he was in the dynastic state...

...This, in conjunction with the introduction of paper and printing, made it possible for education to escape the control of an all-embracing church...

...The intellectual, even when he can travel outside the Iron Curtain, rarely takes advantage of the opportunity to escape...

...I have shared the belief of The New Leader that there is a more effective method, if the American Government and its principal allies were able to use it...

...More recently, the potential cost has been rising, while the net results become less sure...

...Certain gases and biological devices, also feasible, might also qualify...

...However, the American leadership can rightly be accused by the British and French, and even more rightly by Nehru, of inconsistency in following it...

...Our deeds could not prevent a gang of double-talking murderers and slanderers from posturing as saviors of humanity...

...Our chief handicap in the bidding for souls that is going on in Europe and Asia has been our lack of words...

...Churchill...

...Only by a masterly use of words could we have evoked a vivid awareness of the loathsomeness of Stalin and his work, and communicated it not only to friends and neutrals but to the Communists themselves...

...The generals, landowners, businessmen and industrialists, who are considered pillars of patriotism as a rule, kept shy of nationalist movements in their early stages, hut moved in and took over when the movements became going concerns, and the national states began to consolidate...

...From many indications, we are about to enter a new period of appeasement, retreat and illusion, under the banner of ''coexistence" that has so forehandedly been supplied by Stalin and Malenkov...

...Even when his excellence as a writer, artist, scientist or educator is generally recognized and rewarded, he does not feel himself part of the elite...

...Even a policy of liberation, carried out to the maximum, is not a guaranteed alternative to the H-bomb...

...Mendes-France, Stevenson...

...But the bias will be toward conference, compromise, relaxation of barriers, courteous concessions on current "misunderstandings" concerning trade, politics and armaments...

...In truth, however, we are already at war...

...Just what is being said...

...Just as in time of a hot war there is an automatic rise in our appreciation of men in uniform, so in time of a cold war there must be a general awareness of the vital role the intellectuals have to play in our struggle for survival...

...The Romans needed the Greek intellectual—needed him to satisfy their craving for beauty, which they could not do by their own creativeness, and needed him also for the management of affairs at home and in the provinces...

...Here are the ninth and tenth articles in the series launched by Lewis Mumford in our June 28 issue...

...It is not unreasonable to assume that the cold war is likely to stay cold if we let it...

...They are the ideal of the rising generation...

...He usually ekes out a living by teaching, journalism or some white-collar job...

...These movements were usually pioneered by poets, writers, historians, scholars and philosophers, who hoped to find in the corporate warmth of a national state their rightful place as bearers of culture, legislators, statesmen, dignitaries and men of affairs...

...The real problem, therefore, is whether to surrender or to fight: If we think victory impossible or prohibitive in price, we must surrender...

...There is no certain alternative to the H-bomb except surrender...

...Only they can get around the roadblock which bars our way to the dispirited millions in Europe and Asia...

...That alternative is surrender...

...To the Kremlin, a cold war is the nearest thing to "peaceful means...

...Particularly baffling has been the petulant and often sneering response to our unprecedented outpouring of money, food, raw materials, machines, technical and military aid...

...Can (and should) the non-Soviet nations maintain normal or near-normal relations over a considerable period of time with the Soviet bloc...

...It is natural, therefore, that the European intellectual and his counterpart in Asia should see in the spread of Americanism a threat not only to their influence but to their very existence...

...In both Europe and Asia, the cold war is to a considerable extent a battle for souls...

...There were fewer during the days of Teheran and Yalta, and fewer still in the twilight of the Moscow Trials...

...This interpretation seems to be implicit in the early contributions to the symposium...

...But only our gifted men of words can convince the world that we are taking a broad road into the future while our antagonists follow a road that curves backward and leads to retrogression and stagnation...

...For in a cold war words count at least as much as deeds...

...If so, our search will probably be successful...

...Is peaceful coexistence possible...

...A few years ago, a policy of liberation promised fairly certain and probably decisive results...

...It is strange that, when we consider the differences between our social order and that of a Communist regime, we rarely refer to the striking difference in their attitude toward the intellectual...

...And if we set ourselves to comprehend and master every factor involved, and keep on learning as we go on, we might find this unfamiliar contest not only bearable but absorbing...

...As Molotov told Hitler in 1940, "It is vastly more expensive to attain a goal by military means than by peaceful means...

...Much has been written on our failure to gauge the temper and the real needs of the people in Europe and Asia...

...A Liberation Policy By James Burnham The answers we give are often determined by the questions we ask...

...and it takes two to coexist...

...In Europe, too, during the Middle Ages, most of the educated people were of the clergy and hence members of an elite...

...There emerged a large group of non-clerical teachers, students, scholars and writers who were not members of a clearly-marked privileged class, and whose social usefulness was not self-evident...

...If during this period few listen, well, that will not be a new experience...

...Nehru is correct in feeling that the refusal to recognize Communist China, the partial boycott of trade with the Soviet Union, and the encirclement of Soviet territory by air bases are sabotage of coexistence...

...The European intellectual and his counterpart in Asia see our business civilization as a threat...

...In the social orders evolved by the modern Occident, the positions of authority and influence were, and still are, occupied by men of action—landowners, soldiers, businessmen, industrialists and their hangers-on...

...Among the leaders of the non-Soviet nations, there are many who believe, or profess to believe, that "coexistence" in this sense is both desirable and possible...

...It is a fateful paradox that the intellectual, who played so crucial a role in the emergence and development of the modern Occident, should never have felt wholly at home in it...

...Nevertheless, today as in the past no other serious alternative to the H-bomb remains...

...He has pioneered every upheaval from the Reformation to the latest nationalist and socialist movements...

...In almost every civilization we know of, and in Europe, too, up to the end of the Middle Ages, the equivalent of the intellectual was either a member of a ruling elite or closely allied with it...

...For such an audience as the readers of The New Leader I do not propose to demonstrate this once again...

...Every opportunity for discussion and negotiation, with Malenkov and Mao and Ho and whomever, should be seized or made...

...Bevan...

...Whether or not this ability to win and hold the intellectuals can insure the endurance of the Communist regimes, there is little doubt that it is a considerable asset in a cold war...

...We must continue to repeat that truth, against Mehru...

...Or we must fight to defeat the Soviet regime and Soviet-based Communism...

...The intellectual's passionate search for an acknowledged status and a role of social usefulness has been a ferment in the Occident since the days of the Renaissance...

...Nowhere does the intellectual feel so superfluous...

...Within recent months, both the successful and the unsuccessful 1952 candidates for the Presidency have upheld this perspective of coexistence...

...That is why it is so important to ask the right questions...

...Are we looking for another and more destructive military weapon...

...The intellectual is treated as a poor relation and has to pick up the crumbs...

...We have much to offer and our good will is beyond question...

...This was particularly so in the case of the nationalist movements which have pullulated all over the Occident during the past hundred years...

...In this frame, let us return to the question of alternatives to the H-bomb...

...One has the feeling that the intellectual has since tried to counter this usurpation by shifting his espousal from the national to the socialist state...

...Their petulant fault-finding is the expression of an almost instinctive fear, and it is of vital importance that we should understand the nature of this fear...

...During two decades, the columns of The New Leader have furnished proof after incontrovertible proof of the impossibility of coexistence...

...Eric Hoffer, who makes his first contribution to The New Leader, is the almost legendary longshoreman and fruit-picker who in 1951 wrote The True Believer, a psychological and social analysis of fanaticism...

...Their search for a weighty and useful life led them, as it did their counterparts in Europe, to the promotion of nationalist and socialist movements...

...If there had been no New Leader, the events of these two decades would have had to invent one...

...Their system and ours are politically, economically, socially and metaphysically incompatible...