"The attempt by Western intellectuals to defend Stalinism involved them in a process of self-corruption which transferred to them, and so to their countries, which their writings helped to shape, some of the moral decay inherent in totalitarianism itself, especially in denial of individual responsibility for good or ill. Lionel Trilling (himself a Leftist - noum) shrewdly observed of the Stalinists of the West that they repudiated politics, or at least the politics of 'vigilance and effort':"
In an imposed monolithic government they saw the promise of rest from the particular acts of will which are needed to meet the many, often clashing requirements of democratic society... they cherished the idea of revolution as the final, all-embracing act of will which would forever end the exertions of our individual wills.
"For America, the development was particularly serious because the Stalinists then formed the salient part of the new radical movement; and as Trilling also noted:"
In any view of the American cultural situation, the importance of the radical movement of the Thirties cannot be overestimated. It may be said to have created the American intellectual class as we now know it in its great size and influence. It fixed the character of this class as being, through all mutations of opinion, predominately of the Left.
"This was the class which shaped the thinking of the liberal-Democratic political establishment, which was to hold power in the most powerful nation on Earth until virtually the end of the 1970s."
Breathtaking, isn't it?