A Free Man's Choice
HOOK, SIDNEY
A Free Man's Choice By Sidney Hook It is a debater's stratagem, unworthy of Bertrand Russell's great gifts, to assert that I called his personal courage into question in criticizing the policy he...
...He no more favors Communism than the democratic Western statesmen who appeased Hitler out of fear of war favored Fascism...
...Among my goals are freedom and peace...
...In that case, even if the Kremlin forces a war on the West, it may be repelled without the destruction of all human life or even the whole of Western Europe...
...There is an air of unreality about this phase of the discussion...
...That 1= why...
...For, to the extent that they influence human action, they influence future events...
...If the triumph of Hitler were a necessary condition for a new renaissance, what anti-Fascist would be willing to pay the price...
...Human life may be destroyed by accident or by the maniacal whim of a dictator, against which there is no safeguard—even by surrender...
...This is the crucial point which Russell has completely ignored...
...Cosmic optimism, however, seems no more credible to me than historical optimism...
...The first Russell wholly avoids, even though it is my main point and by far of greater political weight...
...Russell's position today constitutes positive encouragement to the Communist leaders to be unreasonable and thus inherit the world without a struggle...
...It may be that today, if the scientists of the free world rally to the cause of freedom's defense and not to the cause of Russell and unilateral Western disarmament, discoveries will be made which will counteract some of the lethal after-effects of weapons...
...Some of my reasons are: 1. In the past, the triumphs of barbarism were local, not universal...
...To me, the splendor and glory of the Court of Kublai Khan were not worth even one of the many pyramids of human skulls his grandfather, Genghis Khan, heaped up in carving out his empire...
...The discussion seems fanciful, almost bizarre, because only if we accept Russell's position or one similar to it will the enemies of freedom be emboldened to confront us with the momentous choice of total surrender or total war...
...I go further...
...We live in a contingent world...
...But, if it is destroyed by war, it will be because our foolishness will tempt the enemy to forget his mortality...
...The possession today of refined scientific techniques increases immeasurably the extent and intensity of terror ruthless men can impose on those they rule...
...At present, I cannot, like Russell, find grounds in history for reconciling myself to the first of the above alternatives...
...2. In the past, tyrants ruled with a primitive technology...
...Unpreparedness also may lead to war...
...Let us not deceive ourselves: It is obvious that the leaders of the Soviet Union are keeping a sensitive watch on the pulse of public opinion in Western countries...
...Throughout the world, Communists are infiltrating into the pacifist movement whose non-pacific demonstrations they often spark...
...Many A-bombs could have the effect of a few H-bombs...
...It was his political judgment I criticized, not his character...
...I shall not follow him...
...If they did, the United States and Canada would still remain staunchly opposed to Communist tyranny...
...It is improbable that Englishmen who refused to knuckle under to Hitler and his V-2 bombs will seriously consider doing so to Khrushchev and his more powerful bombs...
...Morally, those who are unborn cannot reproach us for denying them the bliss of birth in a Communist world but those who already exist, our children and grandchildren, may curse us for turning them over to the jailors of a Communist 1984 in which, brainwashed and degraded, they are not even free to die until their masters give them leave...
...There were some who regarded this position as "fanatical, defeatist and pusillanimous," since such a war if prolonged might have had a disastrous effect oil the human race...
...If the West follows the foreign policy I have advocated, it will not have to choose between capitulation to Communism or war...
...He was wrong then in urging that the Soviet Union be forced, by atomic bombs if necessary, to yield to a world government...
...They flatly contradict it...
...The first principle he recommends to govern negotiations between East and West is: "Any agreement arrived at should as a whole be not advantageous to either party...
...On the contrary, assuming belief to be a habit of action, a person who is tolerant of a show of intolerance does not really believe in tolerance...
...5. It is no arrogance on my part to propose to the generation of the free that they follow a policy of resistance rather than of surrender, any more than it is arrogant for Russell to propose surrender rather than resistance...
...The problem is where to draw the limit...
...I criticized this view as helping to produce the very situation in which we may have to choose between capitulation to Communist tyranny or war...
...What we do, even sometimes what we say, counts...
...That is why I believe that all nations should freely choose their economic and political systems...
...Then he broadcasts to the world: If the Kremlin refuses to make such an agreement, the West should disarm unilaterally...
...Excellent...
...If there are such souls, they may perhaps become embodied elsewhere...
...Even if in my heart I agreed with Russell (as I do not) that in the ultimate event, capitulation to Communism was a lesser evil than the risks of war, I should regard it as a piece of unmitigated political foolishness to proclaim it...
...Russell has declared to the entire world that, if the Soviet Union refuses to accept reasonable proposals for international disarmament, the West should disarm unilaterally—even at the cost of the universal reign of Communist terror...
...But this is precisely what Russell's policy prevents us from doing...
...I find bewildering Russell's claim that the four paragraphs he cites in his rejoinder are "very similar" to the first part of my article...
...its recent UN veto of the proposal for Arctic inspection...
...When the stakes are human freedom, it is irresponsible to play a game which invites the Kremlin to bluff us into submission with threats of atomic blackmail...
...These paragraphs are worth precisely nothing when coupled with his present advice...
...He went too far in one direction...
...After all, just a few short years ago, Russell declared that the destruction of the whole of Europe was not too great a price to pay in order that "Communism be wiped out...
...And a few years ago I believe Bertrand Russell would have agreed with me...
...A Free Man's Choice By Sidney Hook It is a debater's stratagem, unworthy of Bertrand Russell's great gifts, to assert that I called his personal courage into question in criticizing the policy he advocates as one of surrender to Communism...
...Suppose now we were confronted with the limiting case: choice between the horror of Communism for some hundreds of years and the end of human life...
...For them, survival is an even more important value than for many in the West...
...One cannot be sure that at the decisive moment the situation will look the same...
...He is wrong now in urging capitulation on the West because the Soviet Union has the hydrogen bomb...
...A Communist world could easily become a scientific Gehenna—something incomparably worse than the destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians...
...It is an error to assume that a balance of armaments or even an armaments race inevitably makes for war...
...The important thing, therefore, is to see to it that the potential aggressor never is certain that he can win...
...This is the choice Russell's proposal forces us into...
...I am convinced that the growth of pacifist and neutralist sentiment in the West was at least partly responsible for the Soviet Union's withdrawal from the sessions of the UN Disarmament Commission, where reasonable proposals along the lines of Russell's paragraphs could be considered...
...Indeed, despite his praiseworthy declaration that arguments in the impersonal mode will best clarify our disagreements, it is he who descends to the use of personal epithets...
...he now goes too far in the other, as if he were atoning for his early extremism...
...It is not for nothing that the man whom they called "the running dog of imperialism," and who still despises their tyranny, is now built up in their controlled press as the "true friend of peace...
...4. It is not at all unlikely that factional struggle will break out again either at the Communist center or periphery among the political gangsters who rule the Communist world...
...But perhaps he means it is arrogant for any generation of men to make a decision which will prevent the future generations of the yet unborn to have their chance and make their choice...
...Arguments from history are rarely decisive, but I think it is fairly well established that the appeasement of Hitler—not only Munich but the mood that nothing could be worse than war—encouraged Hitler in his aggression...
...The Soviet leaders belong to the human race, too...
...I impugn only his political intelligence in this grave crisis of human freedom...
...its hardening attitude along the political front...
...Else we would never be at peace...
...Today, a Communist world would be a tightly knit despotism of fear without sanctuaries, without interstices to hide, without possibilities for anonymity...
...I do not share this theology...
...Nonetheless they were the assisting architects of the ruin of millions...
...Yet every compassionate person, including Russell, feels that there is a limit in suffering and ignominy beyond which the whole human enterprise comes into moral question...
...I do not see why a policy which seeks to confine the fanaticism of Bolshevism by taming it with the fear of failure should be called fanatical...
...its repudiation of the Geneva agreement on Germany...
...There are more horrors in the Communist heaven or hell than Russell seems aware of...
...Russell's proposal is tantamount to playing with all cards face up against a shrewd and ruthless gambler with a hidden hand...
...I lament the fact that he has capped a lifetime of gallant opposition to despotism with the unsound recommendation that we unconditionally surrender to the cruelest tyranny in human history...
...In such an event, thermonuclear weapons of even more destructive power than those we know may be used to end men's miserable lives, and all the additional agony and terror would have been in vain...
...I ask only that he stop pretending that anyone is charging him with cowardice or that any politically literate person believes he favors Communism...
...The Soviets are just as vulnerable to us as we are to them...
...In both cases, he underestimated the political and psychological elements in the situation and overestimated the technological ones...
...Especially important are the policies we advocate...
...The issues between us are two...
...Here every lover of freedom and of life is on uncertain and tragic ground...
...Such actions may also be based on the hope that a position like Russell's will undermine the West's resolution to resist aggression...
...I must confess that I have some difficulty with this notion of obligation, as if it implied there were millions of souls extending into eternity waiting to be born...
...I have never advocated a preventive war for the sake of peace, as Russell did in 1948, when the West had a monopoly of atomic power...
...Communists have always argued that it is justified to bury several generations, if necessary, in order to fertilize the soil of history for a glorious future to be enjoyed by the still unborn...
...In conclusion, I wish to repeat that nothing I have written is intended in any way as a personal reflection on Bertrand Russell, a man and philosopher whom I have usually admired even when I have strongly disagreed with him...
...In some respects, Russell's argument is similar except that, as an opponent of Communism, he puts the glory much further into the future...
...3. I cannot regard the achievement which in the past has sometimes followed the triumph of cruel tyrants as worth the price in torture and agony that.preceded it...
...That is why I am convinced that ultimately they are more likely to consent to reasonable proposals for a peaceful settlement once they are persuaded that we will fight rather than surrender, than if they are persuaded by Russell and others that we will surrender rather than fight...
...Santayana somewhere defines a fanatic as one who, having forgotten his goal, redoubles his efforts...
...It seems to me today that the probability of Communism destroying human liberty everywhere is considerably greater than the probability, if it comes to war, of human life being destroyed everywhere— particularly if we keep up scientific inquiry into defense...
...As well say that a man who believes in tolerance and is therefore intolerant of those who manifest intolerance is himself intolerant...
...There is a risk, of course...
...Why, then, should the Kremlin enter into any such agreement or abide by it if it does...
Vol. 41 • May 1958 • No. 21
