A Postscript to the Enlightenment

In his 1973 book on non-party Communist sympathizers (The Fellow-Travellers: A Postscript to the Enlightenment), David Caute wrote:

"...we can understand fellow-travelling only in terms of a disillusionment. The societies which nailed 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' to their mastheads failed to live up to these ideals: the once-progressive doctrine of laissez-faire and enlightened self-interest resulted in poverty, unemployment and inexcusable inequalities of wealth and opportunity. Freedom came to mean exploitation, treating the worker as a wealth-producing object. Nations which valued liberty at home trampled colonial peoples underfoot. Capitalists and the politicians who served their interests did not scruple to embark on vast, decimating wars. Education, knowledge and culture remained minority privileges while art, appalled by its environment, turned its back on life. In short, the great promises of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment were not realized. By the time the swastika rose over Germany, the theory of progress-by-evolution was already in ruins." (5-6).

This begs the question, of course, of why fellow-traveling at all? Why not wholehearted Communist party membership and revolutionary zeal?

There are a variety of answers to this question, although the one that appeals most to the Mazeppist is Nietzsche's observation from Human, All Too Human: "He who thinks much is not suited to be a party member: too soon, he thinks himself through and beyond the party."

Fellow-traveling is, in a sense, the thinking person's "consolation prize." More positively put, however, it is his lot as an integral human being, i.e., one who understands, with Kierkegaard, that "many fools do not make a wise man, and the crowd is doubtful recommendation for a cause" (Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing).

Fellow-traveling in politics and in religion is an Enlightenment postscript in more ways than Caute imagined.