Volume 5, Number 3 · September 16, 1965
Marxmanship
By George Lichtheim
Socialis Humanism: An International Symposium
edited by Erich Fromm
Doubleday, 264 pp., $5.95
Marxism In The Modern World
edited by Milorad M. Drachkovitch
Stanford (for the Hoover Institution), 293 pp., $5.95
What happens to an idea when it takes on flesh and becomes a way of life? One may also ask: what happens to a movement with utopian aims when it comes to power and finds itself confronted with the ancient conundrums that have baffled political philosophers since the time of Aristotle? Does it renounce its ultimate goals, reformulate them, admit the necessity of compromise, or pretend that nothing has happened? The history of the great world religions supplies one answer, that of Western liberalism since the Renaissance another. We have all grown used to the notion that civilizations are founded upon utopian or messianic promises which are never fulfilled, but without which there would have been no progress. This is Hegelian skepticism, suitable to a post-revolutionary age. We have seen through every illusion, including the latest and most potent of all: that of communism.
Review, 2368 words
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