Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR FETISH GOD OF REVOLUTION Daniel Bell, in his comment on my essay, "The Coming End of Anti-Communism" (Partisan Review, Summer 1962), presents a highly idiosyncratic reading of what...
...Oxford, England Norman BIRNBAUM Daniel Bell replies: Since, as I tried to show by citations...
...Carl Landauer We have been around Partisan Review for some time and we hear a lot of big words used, some foreign and some unitalicized...
...But do these facts offer any good reason to deny, as Bell does at least by implication, that the changes in the Soviet Union, in several satellite countries and in Yugoslavia are gains for the cause of liberty...
...Do they still hear kitsch, alienation and Angst around Partisan Review these days...
...The program of peasant resettlement in South Vietnam, for instance, strikes me as despicable as anything being done by the Vietnamese Communists...
...Daniel Bell replies: 1. Professor Carl Landauer has simply misread me, and in consequence, as the Russian proverb has it, he is knocking down an open door...
...Supreme Court are the best indicator of the concern for liberty in this country...
...The challenge is-like the rest of his piece-rather shrill, but an answer is relevant...
...But is it not worth recording that there has been a move in that direction...
...CUBAN REVOLUTION The "balance of forces" was, without any doubt, the overriding issue when you published your editorial, "The Cuban Quarantine" (NL, October 29...
...attitude can do much to help inspire internal forces to mobilize against the present regime in Havana...
...It will be enjoyed by anyone who does not wear his erudition or morals on his sleeve...
...Castro and Nkrumah) that I use the category of "world historical process" as both explanation and justification of Communist tyranny...
...His phrase, as vague as the many impr?©cisions with which he taxes me, ignores the evidence that millions (perhaps a majority) of Americans have no attachment to liberty as defined in the values of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that these values interest few political leaders, and that a number of American intellectuals (whether in despair at this situation or because they themselves lack these values) have placed themselves at the disposal of agencies which make the promise of American democracy less and not more realizable...
...Surely, Khrushchev, Gomulka, Kadar and even Tito have a long way to go toward a system of political freedom...
...More specifically, is it not worth asking what effects the attempts to introduce a sort of market in the countries of the Soviet bloc -as Yugoslavia had done more consistently years ago-will have on the political system...
...Newark, N. J. Sid Gutman...
...Finally, in an entirely gratuitious extrapolation from my remarks, Bell attributes to me an endorsement of the present regimes in Cuba and Ghana-as well as the desire to eradicate the historical memory of the '30s...
...Nowhere in the essay is there an endorsement of Castro or Nkrumah, and I think that any fair-minded reader would agree that my preference for democratic socialism is obvious...
...This is not enough, however...
...With some regret, therefore, I'm obliged to begin by suggesting that your readers might be surprised should they turn from Bell's animadversions upon my views to the original text...
...Despite their self-definition as democratic socialists, Birnbaum and the circle of the New Left were quick to hail any leader proclaiming himself a revolutionist-yes, Castro and Nkrumahand failed to ask any questions about the guarantee of liberty (other than to say, as Birnbaum has said in a previous essay, that liberty has to be redefined in order to understand revolutions...
...the reader who goes back to the original essay will have to be the judge...
...President Kennedy's speech was extraordinarily important because it assured the Cuban people that they can pursue their own goals, once they rid themselves of Castro's Communism...
...Like so much of this imprecise prose, again the question: Who, what, they, those...
...One of my points was, of course, that anti-Communism predicated on Western moral superiority is an ineffective doctrine in large parts of the worlds...
...Birnbaum's comment about liberty in the United States I can only attribute to his overwrought state: Of the many indices available, I think that the decisions of the U.S...
...This is not a real issue for democratic socialists in England or America...
...3. Also: Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion (Glencoe, Illinois, 1948) p. 19...
...the efforts by the regimes to find new social controls other than terror is another...
...Concerning "thermonuclear war," however, I do not believe that the way to avoid such a holocaust is to shout "no war," especially when the historical evidence from 1945 on shows the Soviet bloc is engaged in a consistent probing, pushing expansionist operation...
...I did say that Communism is "a r?©v?©lant issue in Africa, Asia and Latin America," and I had hoped that it was clear that I meant that these societies must choose between terroristic industrialization on the Stalinist model-or some other course...
...The assumption of moral pieties makes it difficult to reply to Birnbaum in less than kind...
...In this connection, the words addressed to the Cuban people by President Kennedy in his speech of October 22 are of the utmost importance, insofar as they reflect a new U.S...
...Chicago, III...
...The last paragraph is unworthy, tendentious moralizing...
...I, for one, should be unwilling to use Bell's essay as exemplary material in a hortatory lecture to African university students on the ethics of controversy...
...Occasionally a kitsch floats in to us, frequently alienation, once in a while an Angst, hardly ever a hip, and a nouvelle vague sometimes in a low voice...
...It is equally obvious, as Bell says, that "there is still a fundamental commitment to liberty in the United States," whereas "in the Soviet Union there is not," and that therefore no liberal can be neutral in mind as regards the two systems...
...Clearly this is the ancient Tendenz and the Zeitgeist may be leaving them behind...
...The idea that there is an alternative to Castro's Communism-an alternative which is not counter-revolutionary-must be passed on to the Cuban people by those of us who were in agreement with the original goals of the revolution...
...Norman Birnbaum's prose made little syntactical and semantic sense, there is always the risk that my reading was idiosyncratic...
...and I am glad to find, from their cipher, that I had "cracked" the code successfully...
...2. I am happy to learn from Jane Richmond and Erika Munk that when William Phillips talks to me he speaks in code...
...238-243...
...I envy him his complacency...
...See E. O. James, The Cult of the Mother Goddess (London, 1959), passim...
...attitude toward Cuba...
...Contrary to Daniel Bell, who says in "The Fetish God of Revolution," "tendenz-a favored term around Partisan Review these days," we have never heard anyone say Tendenz, and we hear everything...
...Richard E. Gosswiller 'UNIQUE' I never resubscribe to any magazine at the regular rate...
...In South Vietnam, the strategy of village deployment follows exactly the British tactic in Malaya, which successfully freed that country from Communist guerrillas, and made it independent...
...Where there are large Communist parties, however, it is the duty of democratic socialists to work with those Communists who are libertarians -as in Italy...
...if that happens, civilization will have suffered a setback...
...E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (Harper Torchbook Edition), Part II, pp...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...But that reader will note, too, Birnbaum's singular evasion of one of the major points of my article: the question of how one evaluates the course of de-Stalinization, and the necessity for distinguishing between the intellectual defections of Kolakowski, Harrich and others from the political revisionism of Tito et al...
...Of course I recognized that the argument against Communism was (and is) a moral argument...
...It was a wooden chest containing fetishes in which devine power was supposed to reside...
...Birnbaum should not play high-table gamesmanship with a weak suit...
...Incidentally, historians of religion customarily distinguish sharply between fetishism and the worship of the Gods: Bell must, next time, get his metaphors straight...
...The President's explicit recognition of the nationalist revolution, which has been betrayed by Castro and the Communists, and his very sympathetic reference to the Cuban's love for his fatherland, make a farce out of that image of "Yanqui Imperialism" the Castro regime is incessantly striving to foster...
...Bell, additionally, challenges me to say whether or not I would favor political regroupments that might entail collaboration with Communists...
...In my opinion, the new U.S...
...The point of my piece was that many changes are taking place in the "Soviet world," but these are of varying magnitude and significance: The disaffection of the young intellectuals is one kind of change...
...New York City Jane Richmond Erika Munk Editorial Assistants P.S...
...As to the relation of fetishism to God worship: 1. Figurine fetishes of Venus Mother-God worship have been discovered in diggings in the Aegean, Arpachiyah, Baluchistan, Crete, Cyclades, Cyprus, Egypt (Badrian Age), Elam, Grimes Graves, Halaf, Harappa, Hassana, Hissar, Iberia, Malta, Thessaly and Zhob Valley (Persia) areas...
...Bell has chosen to term his critical essay, "The Fetish God of Revolution" (NL, October 29), and he suggests (culminating in the intimation that it is all intended as a gigantic whitewash of Drs...
...The second major point of my essay remains equally unanswered...
...but it is the pledge of the free world to make it so...
...An America that shares the aspirations for liberty and justice which the Cuban people attempted to achieve through their revolution contrasts sharply with a Russia that has tried to make our island the first Latin American target for nuclear war...
...William Phillips has just confessed that he did indeed use Tendenz once, but only as a code word for Zeitgeist...
...Anti-Communism can only become obsolete when democracy has spread to the countries now under "proletarian dictatorships," "People's Republics" and "Socialist" one-party systems...
...Finally, a small point...
...One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding is a novel rich in humor and good sense...
...2. Among the ancient Hebrews, according to Salomon Reinach, "Another object of taboo was the Ark of the Covenant...
...But as long as the changes go on, let us welcome them, whether they are large or small...
...Orpheus: A History of Religion (New York, 1941), p. 90...
...Certainly, tomorrow the changes may be stopped or reversed...
...But the girls worry me...
...This, in itself, is no guarantee that Vietnam will once again become completely democratic...
...In his criticism of an article by Norman Birnbaum on the allegedly impending or desirable demise of anti-Communism, Daniel Bell accuses Birnbaum of wanting Americans to tell the West and the Soviet bloc: "A plague on both your houses...
...I am the last to deny the necessity of fighting the remnants of the illusions about Communism which have survived from the 1930s...
...The duty of progressive democrats, like Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt, is to provide the means with which we can reach our compatriots in Cuba...
...In this connection, I note that Bell believes that "there is still a fundamental commitment to liberty in the U.S...
...In the meantime, I trust that I may be permitted to make the following comments...
...A welcome to a Harrich is a gesture of intellectual solidarity, to a Tito a political negotiation...
...It is much simpler to paint dark pictures of sinister forces than to confront names, dates and reality...
...For the implicit point of Birnbaum's article was that some political regroupment was possible-and in the one instance in his letter where there is a quick brushover of the question, Birnbaum states that it is "the duty" of democratic socialists to work with "those Communists who are libertarian" (sic...
...Of course one welcomes such changes, and in different ways...
...Since that time, the Soviets have agreed to withdraw their rockets from my country and to remove their IL-28 bombers...
...DEAR EDITOR FETISH GOD OF REVOLUTION Daniel Bell, in his comment on my essay, "The Coming End of Anti-Communism" (Partisan Review, Summer 1962), presents a highly idiosyncratic reading of what I actually said...
...Thank you for bringing this word to our attention...
...I think the lesson of President Kennedy's action in Cuba demonstrates that firmness in drawing the line reduces the risk of general war, whereas appeasement simply encourages further pushing by one's opponent (as in the case of India) and only increases the possibility of an all-out-war when a country's back is to the wall...
...But your book is, I have discovered, unique: excellent writing, few ads, bold thinking, magnificent typography, no take-up-space fillers and the best book reviews around...
...I think, therefore, that the essential point remains: In this modish leftism, there is an almost self-immolating submission to a fetish, the idolatrous worship of the God of Revolution...
...Only later did they criticize the erosions of freedom in Cuba and Ghana, and then more as apologia than criticism...
...The incoherent note about "those who place themselves at the disposal of agencies," etc., I find as incomprehensible as Birnbaum's statement in his original essay that "when and if the intellectuals cease to provide [an antiCommunist ideology] they will be subject to reprisal by those who need it...
...And this moral imperative at a time when the Nenni Socialists have decided to make a clean political break with the Communists...
...This is our task...
...I simply said that a position, initially moral, had in the course of time been used to legitimate a number of social and political situations which (by the very moral criteria applied to Communism) are highly immoral...
...So . . . here's my check...
...But this necessary fight is compromised if we give ourselves the appearance of minimizing the importance of the changes in the Communist camp because we need a devil and cannot stand the thought that his black color is fading...
...Auguste Comte, The Primitive Philosophy (translated by Harriet Martineau, New York, 1856), Book VI, chapter 7; and Karl Marx, Capital (Chicago, 1906), Volume One, Part One, Chapter One, Section Four...
...I am strongly tempted to wish, though not exactly a plague, at least a mild curse on two other houses: those who stand for Bell's brand of antiCommunism as well as those who take Birnbaum's anti-anti-Communist position, as described by Bell...
...in the essay with a clear ironic meaning, and I do apologize for using irony where, apparently, less subtle techniques would have been appropriate...
...Those who, particularly in America, promulgate anti-Communism but make no serious effort to think about ways of averting thermonuclear war are in a dubious moral position...
...I wait for all the gimmicksuntil they come up with the real zinger again...
...My protest against the modish "New Left" was that for them, all signs of change were harbingers of a new Spring, and it was against this jumbling that my charge was leveled...
...This has again brought to the fore the questions of the freedom of the Cuban people and the persistence of a Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere...
...Bell has, furthermore, ignored my contention that antiCommunism has frequently been used to further policies which make more probable the ultimate moral abomination of thermonuclear war...
...In any event, I make neither a fetish nor a god of "revolution" (a phrase which appears seldom in the text and never unqualified), much less of "world historical process...
...Cambridge, England Javier Pazos SEX BOOKS I enjoyed Stanley Edgar Hyman's review of the sex books ("Sex and the Sinful Girl," NL, November 12), with one exception...
...Perhaps Bell has overlooked those passages in my essay in which I said, inter alia, that the USSR "may proclaim part of the price paid for its own industrialization as excessive and unnecessary," and my reference to the "manifest failure" of Soviet Communism to have developed democratic socialism...
...I thought that I used "world historical process" (once...
...To do this, we must develop our position within the context of the new circumstances in which the Cuban people live today...
...as in Italy...
Vol. 45 • December 1962 • No. 25
