How to Coexist With Gromyko:

...As I said before, not all of Mayhew's conversations in Moscow were equally footling, and not all his colleagues spent as much time as he did on resolving the "logical contradictions" of Soviet philosophy...

...2. What has logical positivism got to do with democracy...

...Couldn't May-hew have dropped his anguished concern with epistemological subtleties just long enough to inquire of Gromyko (and Kuznetsov and Molotov) why there is no freedom of discussion in the Soviet Union...

...When good scientists find this kind of thing happening, they revise their hypothesis: you merely stretch your definitions.'"' From this moment onward, the conversation took the following fascinating course: " 'But you can see for yourself?Marxism works.' replied Mr...

...3. Granted that Marx (and, more particularly, Engels and Lenin) held to the view that reality is what it appears to be...

...Philosophy in Britain, I replied, seemed to be concerned mainly with the meaning of words...

...He did manage to ask some pertinent questions...

...Gromyko reflected...

...To quote an old English proverb, "You can't fight something with nothing...

...It is well to keep an open mind, but the open mind easily degenerates into an empty mind if it has no principles to sustain it...

...It is his account of what passed between himself and Gromyko that constitutes the most fascinating part of his narrative, although no one should despise the brilliant intellectual sword-play of his discussion with Molotov...

...But it is Mayhew with whom we are concerned and to whose report we must turn...

...Unperturbed, Mr...

...Is this glass I am holding real or not?' " 'My grandparents would have felt quite sure it was real,' I replied...

...Mayhew replied by suggesting that it was unreal...

...Gromyko, or any other Marxist I talked to, seriously considered or discussed whether the fundamentals of Marxism were true and valid...

...I am not so sure...

...Mayhew, like the other delegates, was received by Malenkov in his Kremlin office and treated to a short homily on coexistence...

...He talked to Molotov...

...On this point, much as it may surprise Mayhew and his fellow-skeptics, the verdict of history (to say nothing of philosophy) is likely to bear him out...

...The following is taken from his own published account: "'Isn't it a question of definition'?' I asked Mr...

...But that is neither here nor there...

...Of course, not all of Mayhew's interviews and conversations in Moscow were conducted on this puerile level...

...4. In any case, what has all this got to do with the issue of freedom in the practical sense...

...and was able to discuss the subject earnestly and at length with the latter's two deputies, Kuznetsov and Gromyko, who are, so to speak, Mayhew's opposite numbers in the Soviet hierarchy...

...He thought he could make his own attachment to democracy clearer if he nailed some logical flaws...

...Nonetheless, his baffled description of his attempt to familiarize the Soviet Foreign Office with the tenets of logical positivism does provoke some thoughts which are perhaps not as far removed from the substance of current politics as one might think...

...Several of its members were able to make unannounced visits to factories and housing projects, and two of them--both former officers--made their way into a Soviet Army training school whose ferociously Prussian drill and discipline impressed them greatly...

...One suspects, nonetheless, that Mayhew disclosed a major flaw in the West's intellectual armor when he tried to associate the cause of freedom with that of skepticism...

...Anyone who imagines that these are idle questions has not brought himself up to date on the current intellectual atmosphere in Britain...

...The basic assumptions were simply taken for granted...

...Nonetheless, it is the Parliamentary delegation whose search for truth is likely to have the more permanent effect on British public opinion...

...Modern science shows how much our minds and senses contribute to what we call the material world.' " 'That is interesting, the way in which the findings of modern science can lead to two totally different interpretations,' Mr...

...Of course, a trained philosopher could have told them both that this issue has nothing to do with "Marxism," let alone Stalinism...

...But what is your own philosophy?' he persisted...

...It appears that, when Mayhew had the chance to tackle Gromyko, he took the opportunity to challenge not merely his politics but his philosophy...

...Most of them, in fact, seem to have stuck to such observable aspects of Soviet reality as housing, transport, and food prices...

...He replied that they were not acting in the same way as the Soviet Union--the Soviet Government did not believe in the forcible imposition of its ideas...

...Or take the hypothesis that Russia is a peace-loving workers' state opposed by warmongering capitalist ones...

...Someone had, it seems, informed him (wrongly) that the Soviet rulers attach great importance to Marxist theory, especially in the field of philosophy...

...It is the mental attitude that counts...

...Gromyko asked...

...Their state of mind is adequately summed up by his refusal to pronounce upon the reality of the glass which Gromyko was triumphantly waving in front of him...

...It did not seem very constructive to me, but it helped to understand the errors of Marxism...

...no doubt, a humorist could make something of Mayhew's naive attempt to expound empiricism for Gromyko's benefit, and Gromyko's sturdy defense of the common-sense philosophy he had imbibed from Lenin...

...It has happened often in history before.'" "I did not get the impression," concludes Mayhew despondently, "that Mr...

...E.g., he asked a group of Soviet students, "What was Trotsky's role in the Revolution...

...For example: 1. Why should it be supposed that people are better off for doubting the reality of external objects, or that "modern science" has any bearing upon this ancient philosophical puzzle...

...This extension of skepticism from the intellectual parlor-games of Oxford and Cambridge (where it is, of course, legitimate as a form of mental training) to everyday affairs may strike one as comic...

...For the dreadful fact is that the liberals and Labor-liberals who constitute the great bulk of the British Left are well represented by Mayhew --who, incidentally, stands on the far right of the Labor party...

...I asked if he felt that the Americans were justified in this action...

...Who are the philosophers in Britain?' "Slightly taken aback, I apprehensively mentioned two names I could recall—Lord Russell and Mr...

...and was not greatly surprised when they told him, "without batting an eyelid," that Trotsky had been a traitor...

...Must we all take the trivialities of the Cambridge school seriously henceforth, on pain of being stigmatized as unreliable defenders of freedom...

...Are you a materialist...

...you manage to maintain this only by arbitrarily defining those who support Russia as "peace-lovers" and those who oppose her as "warmongers" and "capitalists...

...Marxist prophecies have been proved right...

...Mayhew went with a mixed Parliamentary delegation of Conservative and Labor MPs whose three-week tour of the Soviet Union was somewhat overshadowed by the Labor Party Executive's briefer and more spectacular visit to Moscow and Peking...

...Marxism has spread and is spreading throughout the world...

...And what philosophy are you putting against it...

...But there is a serious side to this absurd account of an absurd conversation: Gromyko, in substance, told his visitor that he believed the world to be real...

...The October 24 issue of the Observer carried a front-page account of a recent visit to Moscow by Christopher Mayhew, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Attlee Government...

...If anything is certain in this uncertain world, it is that the days of a "liberalism" which denies the possibility of truth are numbered...

...Molotov remarked that we should not forget on this subject of non-interference that the Americans were conducting subversive activities in Eastern Europe...

...Surely you manage to retain your faith in Marxism only by ignoring the logical problem of definition...

...What philosophy do they teach?' Mr...

...Gromyko robustly...

...HOW TO COEXIST WITH GROMYKO By G. L. Arnold Christopher Mayhem's talk with the Soviet diplomat illustrates how many Westerners think they can fight belief with doubt LONDON THE TRUTH and accuracy of what exclusive appearance in the Observer, one of Britain's two major Sunday papers, whose half million readers constitute a sort of elite and probably include the entire intelligentsia, except for the Tory remnant which prefers to read the Sunday Times...

...The Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister probably came out of the interview (1) relieved that he had not been asked any really embarrassing questions, and (2) unshaken in his dogmatic belief that things are precisely what they appear to be...

...On the whole, one puts Mayhew's report down with the feeling that Gromyko had the better of the argument...

...How do you define a "thesis," an "antithesis" and a "synthesis...

...Is not in fact the Catholic Church more or less committed to the same doctrine...

...What is one to make of it...

...Is the same not true of medieval scholastic realists from Thomas Aquinas onward...

...Gromyko...

...A. J. Ayer...

...Even this is not certain--one could argue that, on this point, the Russians have followed Engels rather than Marx...

...He was, as it were, searching for the metaphysical basis of coexistence...