It is not often that a critic is so determined to be fair and rational, both in substance and in tone; I am grateful to Arthur McGovern. His article reveals the same high qualities I admire in his Marxism: An American Christian Perspective.
Fr. McGovern finds the language of my original article “apocalyptic”; certain sentences in it seem to him “emotionally- charged” in a way that angers him; and at least two important substantive claims, which he attributes to me, seem to him false. The first false claim he takes me to be making is that the actions of the Soviet Union are best to be explained by Communist “doctrine” (rather than by Russian nationalism, the self-aggrandizement and pragmatic needs of the current ruling class, etc.). Secondly, Fr. McGovern fears (without being certain) that I reject “peaceful coexistence” and call for “victory.”
After reading Fr. McGovern’s critique, while not remembering my own words very well, I thought that perhaps his criticisms had merit; perhaps my own tone had unconsciously gotten out of hand. On rereading my essay twice, I think he has seriously misread it.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is clearly apocalyptic about the impending last great struggle between Good and Evil. Although I admire Solzhenitsyn greatly, I avoided that approach. The first two words in the title of my article, for example, and its final two words are “Not yet.” The piece is thoroughly anti-apocalyptic: “The hardest two words for Jews and Christians to swallow are: Not yet.” I carefully argued that “without internal contradiction, liberal societies can genuinely practice laissez-faire … no liberal must obey an injunction from history (or any other source) commanding the destruction of socialism.”
Further, the essay has two parts: the first about biblical realism, the second, about power politics and the USSR. The paragraph, near the beginning, in which Fr. McGovern found the largest number of objectionable quotes, is a highly general description of “Jewish and Christian realism.” Fr. McGovern reads the USSR into this passage but, as it stands, in context and in intention, the paragraph is timeless in its reference. I think it must be repeated here intact:
Consider, from a Christian point of view, the fate willed for His Son by the Father of all. Christians do not conclude from the crucifixion of Jesus, for reasons of the power politics of the Roman Empire, that our Father in heaven will remove Christians from the necessity to confront power politics. Nor are Christians enjoined to collaborate with their executioners. When unjust aggressors assault the innocent, Christians cannot with Pilate wash their hands of responsibility, thus assuring that Christ be crucified again. The lesson of the bold-meek submission of Jesus to the will of His Father is not that evil must always be consented to without struggle. It is that God will no more exempt His other children from the evils of history than He exempted His only Son. Those who love Christ will not willingly let others suffer his fate. To aid the innocent, on the contrary, they will move as one, lest Christ be again crucified with their complicity. Christ showed that even when injustice does its worst, the Father accepts its victims into His hands. He did not instruct us to join the executioners, as if Pilate were to become our model. Against organized evil, Christians must struggle with every energy they possess.
Many visitors to the U.S. have observed the self-hatred of Americans, on the right as well as on the left, in denouncing their own society. I do not think the clause, “a culture which so vigorously hates itself,” is contrary to fact. Moreover, Communist writers themselves — in the Monthly Review and elsewhere — have celebrated the drift of the Catholic Church, as they see it, into the orbit of Marxist doctrine and praxis. Trying to look at the world as such Marxists do, I merely repeat opinions that they themselves have voiced: that the process of translating Catholic doctrine into fundamentally Marxist categories is already far advanced. It is not clear to me whether Fr. McGovern denies totally that this is so, whether he deplores it to the extent that it is so, or whether he believes that even to look at Catholic trends and events from the Soviet point of view is too emotionally disturbing to be considered.
That point of view has, however, recently been advanced, both by Christians (in Nicaragua, e.g.) and by Marxists. There are Christians who applaud a transmutation of Catholic doctrine into Marxist doctrine; and there are Marxists who so applaud it. Moreover, Soviet propaganda has, in fact, advanced its “peace offensive” under the shrewdly chosen phrase “the Right to Life.” It is hard to believe that Soviet Americanologists during 1979-83 were ignorant of the role to be played by U.S. bishops in the nuclear debate of 1982-84. This does not mean the bishops were wrong in their analysis and choice of language. But they must at least be aware of the uses being made by determined propagandists of what they say. One may do this coolly and objectively; but it must be done.
In short, I don’t think Fr. McGovern was objecting to the “tone” of my article, which is on the whole cool and descriptive, but to the substantive way of looking at the world it represents. And so to the substantive points.
(1) The role of Communism as a doctrine. There are two meanings of “doctrine.” Fr. McGovern interprets it to mean a “script” written out in advance. That is its doctrinaire meaning. The Leninist (and operative) meaning is non – doctrinaire; it means constant attention to the correlation of forces, to military and police power, and to the pragmatic triumph of the vehicle of Communist power in any and all circumstances. I wrote:
The non-doctrinal peoples of the West, of course, are loathe to ascribe power to doctrine. More exactly, they find the attribution of internal power to mere doctrine incomprehensible. They themselves are permissive, experimental, pragmatic. They “hang loose” and abhor doctrinal rigidity of any sort. Furthermore, they fail to grasp the precise power of a doctrine of praxis. For that power lies in putting the supremely practical goal of the advance of Communist power first, so that that doctrine can appear to be, in tactical movement and detail, quite pragmatic and non-doctrinaire. The doctrine of Communism is not “doctrinaire.” Its very substance is the pragmatism of power.
By this definition, my own analysis is not so different from the one Fr. McGovern cites from Rostow or the other which he cites from Luttwak. In fact, as Leszek Kolakowski has argued, the decline in the prestige of Marxism-Leninism as a science — its clear lack of predictive power, its practical status as a quasi-religious myth — has led Communist leaders to appeal increasingly to nationalism (Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, Nicaraguan, etc.) rather than to international Communism for the psychic energy to maintain fierce military buildups and an atmosphere of threat. There are, indeed, many thinkers who argue that there are three theories for explaining Soviet behavior: Communist doctrine; classic Russian imperialism; and the bureaucratic self-interests of the entrenched ruling elite. Characteristically, most such scholars (I speak as a non-expert) tend to minimize the first. For several reasons, I believe that this is a mistake.
First, this interpretation is too comfortably Western, pragmatic, and non-ideological. That does not make it wrong, but it does make a skeptic suspicious.
Second, it does not explain the international prestige of Marxist doctrine, especially among intellectuals in the Third World and the West. If all the USSR stands for is the aggrandizement of Russia (or the Communist Party ruling elite), who could morally admire it? But great international prestige does accrue to the USSR precisely for its alleged doctrinal commitment to international justice, equality, and socialist brotherhood. Its appeal lies in its doctrine, not in its practice.
Third, in closely questioning the Soviets I met in Geneva, and also Third-World Marxists, I came to understand their faith in their ultimate triumph. They do believe that they are history’s darlings, that history is on their side. This belief, too, lies behind the “Brershnev doctrine,” that once a nation enters the socialist sphere it is awarded the Good History Seal of Approval and can never be allowed to relapse into an earlier stage of retrogression. Fr. McGovern cites Indonesia, the Sudan, Egypt, Somalia and Ghana as examples of Communist failure. Yet none of these countries disconfirms the Brershnev doctrine. The one nation which comes closest to disconcerting the Soviet faith in inevitable triumph is Chile, which was (as they see it) almost in their grasp before being stolen away. Their rage against Chile is unique and palpable. As for the others, Lenin himself was accustomed to many setbacks and predicted many others. Communist theory provides for “premature” revolutions, before history is ripe; it counsels vigorous and sustained experimental probes whose value in the long run compensates for any temporary setbacks.
Fourth, one does not understand Marxism unless one grasps its metaphysical, trans-historical dimension. Marxism makes those who embrace it feel right. They act not solely for themselves but for something greater than themselves. That is why they have contempt for people who “sell out,” or who are “bought off”; such villains, in Communist eyes, exemplify the decadence of the bourgeois ethic. Communists can safely be pragmatic, make deals, enter into negotiations, sign treaties, respect superior power (“an unfavorable correlation of forces”), and in other ways seem to be non-doctrinaire, pragmatic, and utilitarian; and they can do so without “losing their souls,” precisely because Leninism, in particular, teaches a fanatical respect for superior power and for cold realism about the stages of history. One must “read the signs of the times,” retreat whenever necessary, advance whenever possible, remaining strong in the belief of final vindication in victory.
According to many observers, many Soviet citizens and officials smile wanly when “Marxism-Leninism” is mentioned, as some Catholics sometimes smile about the Baltimore Catechism. But they will never lose faith in their final vindication until it becomes plain to them that defeat after defeat has disproved their blind faith. Then many will indeed grow restless. For now, there is still a powerful residual belief in the immense strength the Soviet Union has acquired in just over sixty years. There are many positive fruits of power to which their leaders can point in vindicating the legitimacy of the Marxist-Leninist experiment. This reality-defining metaphysic also makes it possible for Soviet leaders to declare dissidents “insane,” for refusing to see reality plain. What stronger proof of fanatical adherence to doctrine can Fr. McGovern imagine?
In short, I agree with Fr. McGovern that “a complex set of attitudes and priorities govern” the policies of the USSR — “nationalism fears for its own security, the need to maintain internal domination, and an ideology which seeks to overthrow capitalism. These all work on various occasions, making the Soviet Union sometimes cautious and conservative and at other times aggressive and expansionistic.” For the reasons stated, I hold (as many learned experts do not) that the most fundamental, pervasive, and powerful of these elements is ideology. May I say that this is because I believe in the primacy of the spiritual? The decay of Communism as an ideology does more to weaken the USSR internally and in international prestige, alliances, and support than any other factor. If once the USSR comes to be perceived as a self-aggrandizing imperial power, rooted in Russian nationalism, led by a privileged and corrupt ruling class, it will earn the universal disdain that National Socialism earned under Hitler. Its moral record of imprisonment, annihilation, and unscrupulous conquest already exceeds Hitler’s. Since its ideology has higher prestige than Hitler’s, many otherwise intelligent persons accord the USSR a moral indulgence not shown to Hitler after the ruthless blitzkriegs of 1939-40.
(2) “Victory.” I do not, in fact, argue in my essay for a policy of victory. I stopped short of that. But, at Fr. McGovern’s invitation, let me spell out my thinking. My view is not apocalyptic. We may well be involved, for several generations, in a “long, twilight struggle” of steady, determined, intelligent resistance. Yet I do see several serious problems ahead.
First, I take as my text Abraham Lincoln: “The world cannot long endure, half slave and half free.” How many generations of Poles, Ukrainians, and even Russians themselves must be sacrificed on the altars of the Communist Party ruling elite? How long can the world tolerate the Gulag Archipelago — about which there is a curious reluctance to learn? Perhaps, the awful reality of worldwide war forces us to be patient — to swallow the hardest saying: Not yet. Yet it is difficult for me to believe (here my own metaphysical, transhistorical beliefs come into play) that the human spirit in Eastern Europe can be forever suppressed, that an empire built upon the Lie can forever endure, that justice, imperfect as it may be, will never be done in history, among those obliged to live the half-life of slaves. Perhaps, we must await God’s time, learn patience, and pray. I often recall, from Dostoevsky, that charity engirdles the world like an invisible filament, and that every prayer from the pillow of a lost child weeping at night circles the world in an instant, strengthening the force of love. We Catholics used to say three Hail Marys after every Mass “for the conversion of Russia” and, within the dark prisons of the Gulag, God then rose up Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Orlov, Scharansky, and so many other noble souls of uncommon bravery. What is yet to come? What legions are even now in spiritual formation?
Second, the hardest problem for democracies and free societies is maintaining armed vigilance. There are so many other good things to choose to do. Free societies intensely dislike high defense budgets. Arms seem to be such a waste. There are immense psychic pressures, admirable in their way and easy to understand, to believe that all this cannot be necessary, that the USSR is like other nations, that anti- Communism is a disorder of the intellect, that we should build trust, negotiate, and live in peace, etc. Who is so bold that he has not felt the soft whisper of such temptations? The USSR itself has, since Lenin’s day, conducted massive “peace offensives,” one after another, based upon this precise vulnerability of decent societies.
Third, not only do liberal societies find a “long, twilight struggle” of deterrence and armed resistance onerous and morally offensive; they also cannot help trying to “understand” their foe, walk in his moccasins, hold that he is almost exactly like themselves, and wish to believe that he shares their realism and their pragmatism. The truly heroic efforts of Westerners to “understand” the USSR are a crucial fulcrum in Leninist calculation. The will of the West to be self-deceived is palpable. How many Potemkin villages there have been! How many millions of refugees from the Gulag have tried to give voice to “the cry of the oppressed” and then been politely listened to and set aside as too emotionally charged. How many in Western Europe, weary, are willing to think carelessly that “both superpowers” are morally equivalent.
Fourth, the very effort to describe the Soviet Union in non-moral, pragmatic terms easily blinds Westerners to the fundamental moral issue and the mortal struggle in which we are engaged. President Reagan has been roundly abused for saying once that the Soviet Union is “an evil empire.” Fr. McGovern himself agrees that it is an empire. That it is so is his rejoinder to my stress upon doctrine. He also agrees that “evil” properly describes many of its deeds. I judge that the evil of the USSR, expressed simply in the numbers of those of its own citizens killed by the orders of its own successive regimes since 1921, 65 million by Solzhenitsyn’s count, exceeds the evil of Adolf Hitler’s regime. Does its evil exceed that of any regime in recorded history? The question is empirical.
It is crucial to recognize a moral struggle when it lies before one’s eyes. To deny the moral stakes in the contest between the Soviet Alliance and the Western world would be willful, culpable blindness. Yet many in the West wish to sterilize the discussion of moral reference. One understands their desire to avoid a crusading spirit, to tamp down too much moral indignation, to keep the public cool. I share the practical wisdom of such a course, as a matter of daily practice. Yet it would be folly so to silence our moral outrage that we would beat ourselves into perpetual indifference. The fate of those who are slaves depends upon our moral alertness to their fate. Those who have been rotting in the prisons of the Gulag for seven, eleven, thirty, forty, even fifty years or more depend upon the vitality of our moral imagination.
Perhaps presidents of the United States should speak moderately and in euphemism about the Soviet Union, to preserve the shell of propriety, as polite persons often do in dealing with those whom, however unsavory, they must from time to time deal. There is a place in diplomacy — a large place — for euphemism, for what is called “tact,” and for a discreet bridling of personal judgment. But theologians do not need always to speak in euphemism. We, at least, should certainly call moral evils by their names. To hold that the people are a warlike beast, before whom frankness is dangerous, is to show the people disrespect. The tactic of anti-anti-communism, showing more fear of anti-communism than of communism, is a curious tactic for those who say ideology is unimportant. I do not think that Fr. McGovern is anti-anti-communist in this sense.
In any case, a democratic people will certainly not endure decade after decade after decade of armed resistance to aggression if no moral issue is at stake. Such a people needs, every so often, to have the issue defined in moral terms. For the natural democratic impulse is to make a deal, to negotiate, to compromise. So one must always ask oneself: In the light of history, would I wish to be one of those who urged a deal, negotiations, and compromise with Adolf Hitler? Maybe, and in some circumstances. But moral integrity demands in such cases a most intense and rigorous honesty, caution, and moral clarity. So also with “peaceful coexistence” with the USSR.
Finally, I believe we must also recognize that “peaceful coexistence” is, for the USSR, a tactic; it is, as Lenin said, war by other means. For a democracy, peaceful coexistence — laissez-faire — is a way of life. Fr. McGovern may deny this difference. He is not clear upon this point. It may be, or may not be, a fundamental point of disagreement. But I believe he would judge that in those cases in which the U.S. has violated laissez-faire and intervened in other countries, this was, at least, a violation of proper order and our own ideals.
To disagree upon this general point, then, is not necessarily to disagree about some particular deal, negotiation, or compromise. One must at times, to employ Metternich’s metaphor, compromise even with the devil (that is, even with enemies whose amorality is clearly recognized).* But, if present, such a disagreement is of fundamental importance.
What places the Soviet Union in a special circle of moral evil, in my judgment, is not exactly its Leninist ideology, or the character of its ruling elite, or the nature of its regime, but, more precisely, its deeds: injecting horribly painful drugs into prisoners; psychiatric detention; striking Sakharov in the face and tormenting him without mercy; imprisoning Orlov; and the rest, by millions of individual cases. What is evil, secondarily so to speak, is the ideology by which these deeds are morally justified. Were the ideology held in some disembodied, unrealized way, one could dismiss it as philosophical idiosyncrasy, in the general pluralism of human cultures and ways of life. By its fruits Marxism is judged, not by its books. Seeing those fruits, one does read Marxist- Leninist books according to a realistic hermeneutic.
(3) Hidden Motives. “I suspect that underneath Novak’s assumptions,” Fr. McGovern writes, “lies the conviction that if all Americans viewed the Soviet Union in appropriate apocalyptic terms, they would be unified in sup-porting Reagan’s policies on nuclear arms and on Central America.” But this is to confuse principle with prudential judgment. My essay is about a principle — the exact nature of the Soviet threat — not about particular policies for meeting that threat. One could agree with me on every point of principle, while disagreeing with Fr. McGovern’s rival analysis of the same principles, and, nonetheless, agree with his prudential recommendations about nuclear arms and Central America. For in prudential policy matters, many estimates about matters of fact and probable consequences of proposed schemes of action, necessarily enter into the debate. One may be sure that even President Reagan’s advisors — in the White House, at the State Department and Defense Department, in the Congress, in the larger political culture, in consultation with private citizens, etc. — disagree vigorously about all such estimates. Even when a President, any president, makes a concrete decision among alternative possibilities, he himself may feel intense inner conflict and, as it were, many disagreements within himself. Events are contingent and unpredictable. Sand in a single helicopter engine may abort a long and complex operation which, if it had worked, may have seemed of surpassing brilliance. A single terrorist truck may turn a calculated gamble, which might have worked, into a human and political disaster.
But it is quite fair of Fr. McGovern to “suspect” that there are implications of my analysis which may well, although not necessarily, condition our different recommendations about nuclear arms and Central America. Persons like myself are accused of overestimating Soviet realities in these two particular matters. Naturally enough, I think that Fr. McGovern underestimates them. Some of this disagreement is factual and can be resolved by honest discussion. Typically, each of us has foremost in mind a set of facts uniquely arranged, not quite parallel to the facts foremost in the minds of our friends. Also, we tend to imagine and to perceive differently. Finally, ours acts of judgment tend to spring from quite different — or differently weighted — criteria, based upon past experiences of trial and error. Sometimes we fear opposite abuses: one fears appeasement, the other jingoism.
When Fr. McGovern writes of long and protracted resistance against the Soviet Union, even in remote places, it sounds as if he and I embrace the same principles. But when he approvingly cites Jonathon Kwitny and Walter LaFeber, he reminds me of the serious deficiencies of those books, both in their descriptions of fact and in their underlying appeal for the United States to put up even less resistance than it now does. It is not so easy to judge when and where to offer open resistance and even less easy to decide how to do so. Most countries in the world do seem to require revolution, hopefully a liberal, democratic, and capitalist revolution, since these are the only ones that seem to work. But if one believes that revolutions will be inevitable, it is not necessary to believe that most of them must be socialist and at least partly Marxist.
It seems fair also to observe that those, like Fr. McGovern, who have socialist sympathies tend to give relatively quick credence to accusations about abuses by U.S. corporations, foreign policy elites, etc.; and they try to be unusually sympathetic to socialist points of view. It is equally fair to observe that those, like myself, who are, or who have become, anti-socialist, tend to hold the U.S. innocent until proven guilty, while tending to give quick credence to allegations about Communist leaders. Yet, even in such circumstances, argument among the fair-minded is profitable. For each of us, our own horizons, to choose a more neutral word of somewhat wider range than ideology, are subject to change and transformation, although usually only slowly and by small increments. That is why I especially value Fr. McGovern’s willingness to explore areas in which both of us might be led to correct, modify, and even alter our fundamental outlooks. Such willingness is rare; his reasonable execution of the task is more rare still.