The Teacher of Social Science and the World Crisis

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

WHENEVER a totalitarian dictatorship comes to power, be it red, brown or black in hue, the socialscience teachers of the country in question are among the first groups to feel its iron fist. This is inevitable, because the dictatorship will include among its weapons of aggression an ideology whose core will necessarily consist of theories concerning the subject matter of the social sciences: history, government, economics, individual and group behavior. These theories may be wholly and intentionally false or distortions of truth; in every case to date the ideology cannot sustain critical analysis by objective scholarship.

After the establishment of the dictatorship the new masters of the country proclaim their ideology to be the only true faith and command all social scientists to teach it as such. The individual teacher then has certain choices. In order to save himself and those dear to him he may deny his convictions, betray his scholarship and become a propagandist for the dictatorship. He may or may not save his position; he has certainly lost his honesty. He may be courageous, or rash, enough to expose publicly the fallacies of the new ideology, in which case he will be purged. One choice he will not be allowed to make. He will most definitely not be allowed to take no stand at all. The social forces he studies have thundered down upon him and he can drift with them, swim against them or go under; he cannot isolate himself from them. For the teacher of social sciences in a dictatorship there can be no ivory tower.

American social-science teachers have thus far been spared the necessity, which their colleagues elsewhere in the world have had to face, of defining their attitude toward totalitarian dictatorship when the consequences may be deprivation or death. Events abroad reach our campuses as news reports or through survivors of some national shipwreck. We know that since 1945 the tide of dictatorship has inundated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and China. We are familiar with the grimly standardized process by which the postwar governments of these countries were infiltrated, subverted and overthrown. Thousands of refugees have explained to us the operations of the machinery of suppression, beginning with arrest by the secret police, continuing through interrogation and ultimate confession, and ending with prison, concentration camp or a bullet in the back of the head. The power which has done these things is still far away from our campuses and cannot yet compel us to make our choice in terms of action. Its existence is simply a phenomenon which we cannot ignore if we contemplate the international situation.

No social scientist, whatever his particular field, will deny that the present crisis is unique in the annals of mankind. There are only two great military powers in the world today, the United States and the Soviet Union, each associated with a group of secondary powers, like two heavy naval units with their smaller escorts. This dualism on a global scale becomes a matter of vital importance to every living being, owing to one fact: the Soviet Union is resolved to destroy the United States.

The Soviet Union does not behave like other states in its international relations because it is unlike any other contemporary state, except those created in its own image. In the first place, it is a sovereign great power, and as such its foreign policy is influenced by the same factors which condition or determine the foreign policies of other states: geography and economics. We should expect Russia, whether ruled by tsars or commissars, to pursue policies aiming at the subjection of the Baltic States, Poland and East Prussia, control of the straits of the Black Sea, and a dominant position in the eastern Balkans, Iran, Manchuria and probably Korea. Two centuries and a half of Russian history confirm our expectations.

But in addition to pursuing these goals, which are limited, though extensive, the Soviet Union is the headquarters of a conspiracy to overthrow by force all non-communist governments and establish a communist system throughout the world. One weapon in the arsenal of this conspiracy is an ideology which it calls Marxism-Leninism, or "Scientific Socialism." This curious set of doctrines, which the communists claim can be applied to everything from linguistics to nuclear physics, is concerned primarily and immediately with history, economics, government and other social sciences. When communism conquers a country this ideology is imposed as infallible truth and all opposition to it is suppressed.

The rulers of the Soviet Union have repeatedly announced that they will be satisfied with nothing less than conquest of the entire world. The late Marshal Stalin declared that "the revolution which has been victorious in one country must regard itself not as a self-sufficient entity, but as an aid, a means for hastening the victory of the proletariat in all countries. ... There can be no doubt that the development of world revolution ... will be quicker and more thorough, the more thoroughly Socialism fortifies itself in the first victorious country, the faster this country is transformed into a base for the further unfolding of the world revolution." Lenin himself wrote: "We are living not merely in a state, but in a system of states, and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states for a long time is unthinkable. One or the other must triumph in the end. And before that end supervenes a series of frightful clashes between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states will be inevitable."

In another remarkable passage referring to the disarmament movement Lenin stated: "The Communist Party emphatically rejects the reactionary illusions of petit-bourgeois democrats about achieving disarmament under capitalism. It sets against them ... the slogan of crushing the resistance of exploiters, of a fight to victory over the bourgeoisie of the whole world, both internal civil wars and international wars."

OUR country, today and during the foreseeable future, is the greatest force opposing the conquest of the world by imperial communism. We have been compelled to assume the historic roles of all the great powers which previously sought to contain Russia. We do not recognize the re-annexation of the Baltic States. In western Europe we stand guard as Germany used to do; in the Balkans we have taken over the defensive functions of Austria-Hungary and Britain. We are Turkey's chief ally in the defense of Constantinople and the Straits. In the Middle East, the United States, not Britain, must supply most of the force to deter open Soviet aggression against Iran. In the Far East our strength has replaced that of Japan.

In the domain of ideology we are also the Soviet Union's most hated enemy. We are the only great capitalistic state left. While we exist, while the example of our political freedom and high standard of living exists, in crushing contradiction to communist ideology and inspiring contrast to the slavery and economic misery of communist reality, the communist leaders know they are not safe from their own subjects. They must destroy us before they can dominate the world.

If imperial communism conquered the United States, teachers of the social sciences would soon be confronted with the choice of forswearing their intellectual heritage, oblivion, or a concentration camp. We are still free to teach and write as we please. What policies can the social scientist in America adopt in connection with the world crisis?

We must assume, to be realistic, that some teachers of the social sciences in America have accepted the doctrines of communism. This writer believes that such individuals are not qualified to teach in our schools. In the first place, a communist teacher must be intellectually dishonest. Since he will not admit openly his adherence to communism his teaching cannot be sincere and straightforward. He is not an independent thinker because he must follow a line prescribed by the Party and change his views, no matter how radically, every time the line changes. In the second place, his function is basically not that of a teacher at all. He is an enemy propagandist in our midst, the secret agent of a hostile power. If he is an American citizen, he is a traitor to his country.

Another response to the world crisis is the great luxury of which we would be so speedily deprived if a communist dictatorship were established here: refuge in an ivory tower. It is a capacious residence, roomy enough to contain many types of refugee. One is the instructor who loftily ignores the urgencies of the present situation in his preoccupation with the details of his particular discipline. The menace of communist aggression does not darken his classroom, nor does the tramp of communist armies echo within it. He apparently has no sense of clear and present danger. He teaches his subject, for itself alone. Another type is reasonably well-informed as to communist theory. He has read the classics of Marxism-Leninism and knows what the communists say they intend to do, but seems to draw no conclusions from his reading to guide his professional work. He is the same as he was in 1937, when, after studying Mein Kampf, he taught that Hitler didn't really mean it and that if everyone behaved with magnanimity all would yet be well. He does dictators the honor of imagining them to be men of good will, like himself.

There are other inhabitants of the ivory tower, some so near the door that one more cry of warning might bring them out into the world, others ensconced so deep within its innermost, sound-proof recesses that they could be roused only by the knocking of communist secret police. All of them, however, seem to be afflicted with the same lack of perception: they do not see that the United States and the Soviet Union are, in fact, at war. It is not the sort of war to which the world has been accustomed. By the criteria of international law the Soviet Union and the United States are friendly countries, maintaining diplomatic relations, and negotiating together through normal channels. Moreover, both are members of the United Nations Organization and thus pledged to friendship and mutual support against aggression. Nevertheless the United States and the Soviet Union, as a result of the latter's ambition to dominate the world, are, in fact, at war.

THUS far the Soviet Union has resorted to actual armed violence only in areas geographically remote from the United States. Its direct assault against the American people is waged in the realm of thought where it fights to win men's minds. In such a battle all men are soldiers. Since the main weight of the communist attack is concentrated in the fields of history, economics, government, sociology and psychology, the American teacher of social science is, or should be, in the front lines. His opponent, the Soviet teacher, has been in action against him for thirty-six years.

Soviet education at every level is an intellectual offensive against the non-communist world. The pedagogical authorities of the Soviet Union constantly repeat the proposition that all education must be directed toward a single goal: the victory of communism throughout the world. Hence the social sciences are never taught in a purely descriptive or analytical way but always as a comparison of Soviet institutions with those of the non-communist world. These comparisons, of course, are not made honestly. Soviet scholars in every field do not hesitate to resort to omissions, distortions of the truth, half-truths and downright lies. Presumably they allay any moral pangs by recalling Lenin's words:

"It is necessary that the entire matter of upbringing, education and study be the inculcation of communist morality. Communist morality is that which serves to destroy the old society." The Soviet peoples are taught to hate the free world, and most of all the United States. Communist propaganda endeavors to spread the same ideas in every country, including our own: the truth of dialectical and historical materialism, and the superiority of Soviet political, economic and social institutions to those of the United States, which is portrayed as a land of starving, illiterate slaves, exploited by a gang of fascist, war-mongering Wall Street billionaires.

It is dangerous to believe that we need not reply with a vigorous defense and counterattack at the scholarly level as well as at every other level. Such a belief recalls the declaration of a former Senator, now dead, when he was arguing against appropriations for the Voice of America, that the project was unnecessary because if the rest of the world did not know already that we are the kindest and best people on earth so much the worse for the rest of the world. It is better to overestimate the power of the enemy's attack in the world of thought than to underestimate it or let the battle go by default. The social scientists have the data to expose the Soviet claims of superiority for the monstrous lies that they are. Let them do so regularly, habitually, at every opportunity in their teaching and writing.

Does this mean that the American social scientist must be degraded to the level of his Soviet colleague and become a mere propagandist? Emphatically not. In the first place, any objective and dispassionate comparison of the United States with the Soviet Union demonstrates the superiority of our system so incontrovertibly that we have only to tell the truth to win our battle. The danger is that we may not bother even to make the effort to demolish the Soviet lies. In the second place, we must do what no Soviet teacher dare do. We must point to every evil existing in our country, such as the evil of racial discrimination, and show why it must be fought. When we do this we are acting as staff officers, pointing out national weaknesses which the enemy exploits to the full against us.

In addition to his own teaching and writing the social scientist should strive to acquaint as many Americans as possible with official Soviet publications. There the American citizen will find communist plans for world domination openly set forth; he can read Moscow's declaration of war against the United States. Those who want to burn books are simply helping our enemy in the war of ideas. They want to hide the enemy's intentions from us and thereby deprive us of our most convincing arguments against imperial communism: its own doctrines. The would-be bookburners either are unfamiliar with communist literature, or they consider us to be mental weaklings incapable of distinguishing truth from obvious error. All totalitarian rulers feel that way about their subjects. Regular reading of nothing more than the Cominform weekly, For aLasting Peace, will teach any American to know his enemy.

Indifference, passivity and idle optimism have no place in wartime. It is not enough to increase the quantity and quality of our instruments of war if the men who may have to use them do not know why they are fighting. We hope that it will never come to all-out armed conflict. But armed conflict, as the rulers of the Soviet Union know better than anyone else, is only one element in the spectrum of total war. The teacher does his fighting in the realm of thought, which is precisely where imperial communism hopes to defeat us before its armies move. Indeed, were it completely victorious in this theater its armies would not have to move at all, except to occupy our land.

The way to shatter the Soviet ideological offensive is to teach Americans what communism is, how it operates and what its goals are. By taking an active part in this battle, as well as in any subsequent counter-offensive, American teachers of the social sciences can help defend their country against those who would subject the minds of men to slavery.

PROFESSOR ADAMS

"The teacher does his fighting in the realm of thought, which is precisely where imperial communism hopes to defeat us before its armies move."

The Author: Professor Adams, one of the most dynamic and popular members of the Dartmouth faculty, is teaching courses this year in "The Foreign Policy of Imperial and Soviet Russia," "The Diplomatic History of Modern Europe" and "Europe Since 1919." He also is in charge of the senior seminar in RussoBalkan relations, and is a member of the inter-departmental staff teaching the major in Russian Civilization. Professor Adams was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1931 and received his Ph.D. at Duke in 1936. He came to Dartmouth in 1941, after teaching modern European history at Princeton, and was made full professor in 1947. He is the author of Flight inWinter (1942), the story of the heroic Serbian army in World War I, and of "Serbia in the World War." a chapter in the book Yugoslavia.