| | Fred, you quote selectively from The Long Telegram of George F. Kennan. Allow me the same privilege.
Part 1: Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine
Are as Follows:
(g) Among negative elements of bourgeois-capitalist society, most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to seine interests of reactionary capital.
So, the Ivy Leaguers whom you condemn were not the actual red pawns but only independent thinkers, distrusted and hated by Moscow.
So much for premises. To what deductions do they lead from standpoint of Soviet policy? To following
(d) Relentless battle must be waged against socialist and social-democratic leaders abroad.
Part 2: Background of Outlook
Finally, no sane person has reason to doubt sincerity of moderate socialist leaders in Western countries. Nor is it fair to deny success of their efforts to improve conditions for working population whenever, as in Scandinavia, they have been given chance to show what they could do.
In short, if we the people democratically and republicanly enact social welfare, then that is to the good. You (and I) can complain. We can even cite good theory and recorded practice to warn against the inevitable consequences, but in damning them, you place yourself in the camp of the Stalinists, oddly enough... or (see below)perrhaps not so oddly...
This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world's greatest peoples and resources of world's richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism. In addition, it has an elaborate and far flung apparatus for exertion of its influence in other countries, an apparatus of amazing flexibility and versatility, managed by people whose experience and skill in underground methods are presumably without parallel in history. Finally, it is seemingly inaccessible to considerations of reality in its basic reactions. For it, the vast fund of objective fact about human society is not, as with us, the measure against which outlook is constantly being tested and re-formed, but a grab bag from which individual items are selected arbitrarily and tendenciously to bolster an outlook already preconceived. In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer explains how the fundamentalist Christian becomes a Nazi who becomes a Communist who becomes Whatever is Next. We have examples here on RoR of reformed and saved fundamentalists who once erred but now are saved.
... the vast fund of objective fact about human society is not, as with us, the measure against which outlook is constantly being tested and re-formed, but a grab bag from which individual items are selected arbitrarily and tendenciously to bolster an outlook already preconceived.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 10/27, 7:25pm)
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