GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

606 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
Yet in comparison with the theories now to be expounded
the idealist theory of the State seems remote from and
inapplicable to the conduct of daily
life. This remoteness
appears particularly striking when the idealist theory is
contrasted with Fascism. The idealist theory of the State
constitutes one of the most important, if unacknowledged,
sources of Fascism. Fascism is, indeed; from one point of
view, simply the theory in action. Yet Fascism is, its
exponents insist, an attitude to life as well as a theory
of the State; a temper of mind no less than a conception
of government. It is not merely a repudiation of Socialism
and Democracy, it is a renascence of the spirit of man.
While Communism does not make such all-embracing
ethical claims, it entails as directly as does Fascism, a
particular view of ethics. Communism, that is to say,
entails a particular view of the way in which life in a
modern State should be lived, a view which is related to,
which, indeed, springs from the communist theory of
society and of the nature of the forces that determine the
form and behaviour of society. Ethics is a subject much
discussed in contemporary Russia. How far should a man's
life be dedicated to the service of his class in a Capitalist,
or of the State in a Socialist, society? How far is sexual
behaviour a private matter for the individual's personal
determination, how far a public one falling within the
cognisance of the State? How far is a degree of asceticism
in matters of eating, drinking, dancing, love-making,
even of smoking, required (a) of a member of the Communist
Party, (b) of a member of a Communist State
who is not a member of the Party? Are positive obligations
in the way of conduct, laid upon members of the Communist
Party from which non-members are exempt?
Are one standard of conduct and one code of ethics appropriate
to a revolutionary period, another to a counterrevolutionary
period, when enemies have been beaten off
and the Socialist State is in process of being established,
and yet another standard to a *tate of established Communism?
Questions such as these are continuously debated