II.

Middleton Murry relates how he was attacked in "The Daily Worker" as "nothing but an anti-working class politician and a particularly scurvy one at that." His request for the right of reply was emphatically refused by the Editorial Board—a faithful band of religious devotees—who asserted, on the inspiration of their lofty faith (how reminiscent of the noble motives of the Inquisition!) that they did not publish articles (or even replies, apparently) from the pens of individuals whose policy they considered to be deliberately anti-working class. His claim to be a Communist, they said, was "an insult to the heroic workers of the Soviet Union and a mockery of the Communist fighters throughout the world."

If this is to be the response to the ethical passion of a sincere man, even though he be mistaken as they believe, then we may well be guarded against "the infantile disease of Communism." Nor is it any reply to this criticism to argue that Middleton Murry is not truly a Communist; for members of the Party are fond of asserting that Communism is open to criticism from the outside, although it would seem that criticism as serious as Mr. Murry's can arouse nothing beyond personal abuse. The primary political maxims of Communism are in fact held absolutely immune from doubt or criticism. It has been correctly said that in their insistence on the basic principles of their faith Communists are more uncompromising than the converts to page 36 Islam ever were in their affirmation that there is but one God, and Mahommed is His Prophet.

To embrace Communism in this way, so that doubt or dissent becomes a sin, and criticism an unpardonable error, is to make it a religion, and eventually to follow in the forlorn, ill-fated ways of those whose power and intolerance brought the Russian peasants to the last pitch of revolt. It may be that Communism is a philosophy as well as a doctrine of "pure and immediate action," but it should beware of the ever-present danger of becoming a "religion" in which the opportunity for dissent and the necessity for serious analysis may be crushed by the singleminded urgence of religious faith.