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2002

Whittaker Chambers: Witness to the Crisis of the Modern Soul

Daniel J. Mahoney Assumption College, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Mahoney, Daniel J. "Whittaker Chambers: Witness to the Crisis of the Modern Soul." The Intercollegiate Review 37.2 (Spring 2002): 41-48. https://home.isi.org/whittaker-chambers-witness-crisis-modern-soul.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney

Daniel J. Mahoney

Whittaker Chambers: Witness to the Crisis of the Modern Soul

Whittaker Chambers’ Witness was pub- during many years of government service. lished fifty years ago during the coldest days Chambers provided abundant documen- of the Cold War. It tells the story of a tation, including the so-called “Baltimore” brilliant man driven by despair over the and “Pumpkin” papers and the most de- “crisis of our time” into the arms of the tailed personal information, to support his Communist Party. After playing a promi- charges. Despite everything, Hiss would go nent role in the Communist underground on lying for half a century—right up to his in Washington, DC, in the 1930s, Cham- death in the late 1990s. The collapse of the bers painfully broke with communism in Soviet empire and the resulting revelations 1938, rejecting all its works and ideological from Soviet bloc archives and the so-called presuppositions. He resurfaced to become Venona intercepts, however, would finally a distinguished writer and editor for Henry make Hiss’s guilt clear enough even to his Luce’s Time magazine. most determined partisans.1 These recent The story of Chambers’ descent to the revelations confirm what Chambers’ ini- Communist underground and return to tial testimony and evidence ought to have the human world is told with remarkable made clear: Hiss had been a faithful Com- eloquence. The most famous part of the munist, a spy for Stalin’s tyranny, and an book is Chambers’ gripping account of the inveterate liar, all of his adult life. Cham- two perjury trials of Alger Hiss in 1949 and bers, who despised the role of informer, 1950, which pitted the cerebral if somewhat testified reluctantly and only from a sense disheveled Chambers against the worldly of duty to an imperiled free world. He Hiss, a man who had been Chambers’ friend would pay mightily for his witness. Cham- and protégé in the Washington Commu- bers was subjected to calumnies by the sorts nist underground. The former State De- of journalists and intellectuals who partment official and sometime president of the Carnegie Endowment for Interna- Daniel J. Mahoney is associate professor of political science at Assumption College. He has written books tional Peace categorically denied Cham- on Raymond Aron and Charles de Gaulle. His most bers’ allegations that he had faithfully served recent book is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent the cause of Stalin and the Soviet Union From Ideology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE R EVIEW—Spring 2002 41 Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney thought—and still think—that McCarthy- ment that he, like so many others, called ism was a far graver threat to human liberty “the crisis of our time.” than Communist totalitarianism ever was. According to Chambers, communism But Whittaker Chambers believed that itself was symptomatic of a much larger his witness was about much more than an crisis—a “total crisis,” as he called it—that espionage case or the sordid realities of was convulsing the entire world. The crisis Communist subversion, no matter how was simultaneously spiritual and social. Its much the dramatic details of the “Hiss Case” defining trait was the West’s loss of confi- engrossed his readers. If the Hiss Case were dence in its animating principles. What merely about espionage, then “it would not were the original principles that no longer be worth my writing about or your reading called forth the loyalty or assent of the about,” he wrote in the “Letter to My Chil- enlightened elites of the Western world? dren,” which provided the thematic intro- Above all, the “advanced” thinkers of the duction to Witness.2 In Cold Friday, his West had forgotten that political freedom posthumously published collection of es- presupposed the reality of the soul. Prop- says, letters, and book fragments, Cham- erly understood, “external freedom is only bers wrote that “two points...seemed to me an aspect of interior freedom.” For Cham- more important than the narrative of un- bers, “religion and freedom are indivisible. happy events” which preoccupied his read- Without freedom the soul dies. Without ers. These two capital points dealt with “the the soul there is no justification for free- nature of communism and the struggle dom”—there is only the positing of neces- against it.” For Chambers, the “crux of this sity as the governing principle of the human matter is whether God exists. If God exists, world. Chambers believed that political a man cannot be a Communist, which be- freedom “as the Western world has known gins with the rejection of God. But if God it” is best understood as “a political reading does not exist, it follows that communism, of the Bible.” Only the Christian account of or some suitable variant of it, is right.”3 This the soul could make sense of the human thesis is at the center of Chambers’ under- aspiration to responsible freedom. There standing of the conflict between commu- can be no coherent defense of freedom with- nism and western freedom. out a recognition of the integrity of the The second proposition follows from human soul. The soul, irreducible in its the first. The West must either “develop or mystery, transcends necessity and the un- recover” those spiritual and moral resources derstanding of causality put forward by a that constituted its superiority over com- mechanistic science. And the soul cannot munism or risk irrevocably losing its soul.4 ultimately be explained without an appre- Even if the West turned out to be successful ciation of the created character of the world.5 in its secular struggle with totalitarianism, At the heart of Chambers’ moral vision it still risked revealing itself to be a mere is a rejection of the fundamental conceit of frère-ennemi of its great rival. For Cham- the Enlightenment: the self-sovereignty of bers, this seemingly lucid proposition was “autonomous” man. This is the “revolu- no simple matter. He did not proffer a tionary heart of communism” that grounds simple-minded religious orthodoxy as the its revolutionary fervor and makes sense of alternative to the secular religion of com- its Promethean desire to remake human munism. Nor did he ignore the degree to nature and society radically. Communism which the West had already lost its soul and rejects the givenness of the world. For Com- was deeply complicit in the great move- munists, the goal of thought is not to un-

42 THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE R EVIEW—Spring 2002 Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney derstand but rather to “change the world,” mate measure of reality, and the “religion as Marx famously put it in the eleventh of of humanity,” the sovereignty of acting his Theses on Feuerbach. This desire to trans- man, is the moral principle of the modern form the world, to conquer the soul, to world. It was the stranglehold of this vision overcome creation, is what allowed Com- on the intellectual life of the democracies munists to “move mountains.” It gave them that allowed Communists to take advan- what was lacking in the democratic West, tage of the modern crisis—both by namely, “a simple, rational faith that in- radicalizing the modern principle and by spires men to live or die for it.” In his “Letter capitalizing on the self-doubts of the West- to My Children” Chambers links the ern liberals. The liberal intellectual posits a Promethean faith of communism both to godless universe but cannot tolerate the the enlightenment project of means—at least the most a world directed solely by brutal revolutionary means “rational intelligence” and —for actualizing human to man’s original or primor- self-sovereignty. In light of dial revolt against the Lord- this analysis, Chambers ship of God. The promise of shared Ignazio Silone’s view the serpent in Genesis that that the great struggle would “Ye shall be as gods” is older be between Communists and than enlightenment philoso- ex-Communists. Only the phy, older than the so-called ex-Communist could put modern project. “It is, in fact, forward a coherent and man’s second oldest faith.” truthful “reason to live and The Communist “vision of a reason to die” which had a Man without God” is a Whittaker Chambers fighting chance of rallying transformation and intensi- the wills of free people. Oth- fication of the age-old pride of man, who erwise, the West might win its battle with imagines a world without God. The project communism while being content with a of human self-deification is a means of re- more moderate but nonetheless insidious storing man “to his sovereignty by the simple version of the claim that “Man is the mea- method of denying God.” Atheism is at the sure of all things.”7 core of radical modernity, a modernity In this case, any defeat of communism that is broader and deeper than the Com- would at best be a Pyrrhic victory. The munist revolution.6 ultimate resolution of the modern crisis A precondition for Communist subver- would be determined by whether the West sion is the distinctly modern confidence could reconnect with the moral founda- that rational intelligence can master the tions of liberty or would be content with a whole of reality, that “thought and act” can more livable version of “autonomous” free- be united in one Promethean impulse. dom. In Cold Friday, Chambers went even Communism’s “secret strength” lay in the further than asking if by joining the West he “positivism” and “materialism” of modern was, in fact, joining the losing side. This life. Chambers argues in Cold Friday that question haunts Witness and contributes the heart and soul of modernity is to the pathos that informs every one of its “Comtean,” or was at least codified by the pages. In Cold Friday, Chambers raises the nineteenth-century French philosopher more daring question of whether the West August Comte: positive science is the ulti- deserves to be saved. Is it sure enough of its

THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE R EVIEW—Spring 2002 43 Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney principles to merit victory in its struggle question went to the very heart of the mod- with Communist tyranny? Is its principle in ern crisis. In his view, the West had lost a any significant way anything but a less con- sense of its purpose and could not provide fident and more tepid version of the men with a compelling reason to live or to scientism and materialism, the atheistic die.8 humanism, which provided communism The West had once embodied a “certain with its remarkable sense of purpose? Cham- truth” about God, the soul, and human bers hoped against hope that the titanic freedom. But that truth was now at odds ideological struggle between communism with the materialism that was the common and freedom would remind the West pre- faith of East and West alike. Communism cisely what was worth fighting and dying was in Chambers’ view only “a secondary for. But he had little confidence that such manifestation” of the modern crisis—a cri- spiritual illumination would result from sis rooted in the West’s inability to defend the protracted struggle. itself with anything resembling principled In a remarkable fragment in the first self-confidence. “The success of commu- section of Cold Friday, Chambers explores nism ...is never greater than the failure of all these unnerving questions with great pen- other faiths.” Chambers was no reaction- etration. His discussion is an amplification ary or obscurantist, and he vigorously de- of the themes presented in the foreword to fended modern political freedom and the Witness and is, if anything, more pessimis- achievements of modern science. But tech- tic than the original. Chambers relates a nological progress was strictly speaking discussion with a Catholic chaplain, Father soulless—and “unheard of abundance” was Alan, in a Maryland hospital after Cham- “perhaps the sole justification for the exist- bers’ first heart attack in 1952. Chambers ence of” technological civilization. In the asked the priest how he should respond to long run, this would not do. The West those who wrote him after the publication needed to offer itself and the world more of Witness to chide him for claiming in that than “more abundant bread” or it was work that he had left the wrong side for the “already half-dead.” The social crisis losing side. His well-meaning critics chas- marked by disrupted traditions, tentacu- tised him for succumbing to pessimism, for lar cities, inflation, unemployment, and believing “that evil can ultimately over- class conflict, needed to be addressed both come good.” Father Alan’s response stirred through economic development and Chambers to depths of meditative reflec- through a renewed sense of spiritual pur- tion. The priest quietly asked Chambers: pose. But the spiritual crisis that accompa- “Who says that the West deserves to be nied the modern social crisis could not be so saved?” In Chambers’ view, Father Alan’s readily addressed. Chambers feared that remarks “cut past the terms in which men the West stood “under the oldest and ulti- commonly view the crisis of our time.” His mate judgment,” one “which could be lifted remark went beyond questions of geopo- only in terms of more suffering than the litical rivalry or even ideological disputa- mind can bear or measure.”9 He ended his tion. His question did not ask whether the discussion by citing Revelation 3:14-17: West had “the physical power” to survive, And unto the angel of the church of the but rather if it was justified in doing so. Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, Chambers did not dwell on this question the faithful and true witness, the beginning of because he had some perverse desire to join the creation of God; the losing side. Rather, he believed that the I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor

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hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. dislocations that proliferate in the age of So then, because thou art lukewarm, and nei- machines. As his biographer Sam ther cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my Tanenhaus has stressed, by the late 1950s mouth. Chambers felt increasingly uncomfortable Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with the rigid orthodoxies of the conserva- with goods, and have need of nothing; and tive movement and what he saw as its rela- knowest not that thou art wretched and miser- tive blindness to the true nature of the able, and poor, and blind, and naked. modern social crisis. In Chambers’ view, it Chambers’ vision can appear apocalyp- was silly and irresponsible to try to put a tic and far from politics in the ordinary stop to history. The relentless modern revo- sense of that term. But it is important to lution needed to be tamed, but it could not recognize that Chambers did not reduce be stopped or ignored. Chambers feared the crisis of the West to a merely spiritual that his fellow conservatives could not ac- one. In a remarkable letter to his friend cept the irrevocability of the modern revo- Duncan Taylor, dated September 14, 1954, lution, that they were prisoners of stale and reprinted in Cold Friday, Chambers political and religious orthodoxies.11 perfectly expresses the tension between a For all his genuine affection for and theoretical critique of modernity and the friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., need for a political response to modernity’s Chambers felt somewhat uncomfortable discontents. Chambers writes: “Of course, with the spirit of orthodoxy that infused it is the duty of the intellectuals of the West National Review, a magazine he wrote for to preach reaction, and to keep pointing between 1957 and 1959. In a letter written out why the Enlightenment and its faults to Buckley in September 1954, shortly be- were a wrong turning in man’s history. But fore the founding of National Review, he it was a turning, and within its terms, we denied standing within any religious or must maneuver at the point where to ma- political orthodoxy.12 He was, to be sure, a neuver is to live.”10 man of genuine Christian faith and of a Chambers could be a hard-headed so- generally conservative political persuasion. cial and political analyst. He believed, for But he had become an unorthodox (i.e., example, that a thoughtful conservatism non-pacifistic) Quaker whose Christianity must “accommodate itself to the needs and was “paradoxical” and existentialist in char- hopes of the masses.” That meant, first and acter. His theological and philosophical foremost, accepting the imperatives of tech- heroes included Dostoevsky, Niebuhr, and nological society while trying to moderate Barth, thinkers whose affirmation of God and humanize them. A conservatism that had little or nothing to do with traditional cannot accept the dynamism of a market Christian rationalism. It was the absence of society and the relentless technological de- God, the dark night of the modern soul, velopment that accompanies the modern which confirmed the reality of God for revolution was one that was destined to Chambers. In Chambers’ view, this para- irrelevance. Such romantic or nostalgic dox was beyond any merely doctrinal for- conservatism is a “literary whimsy.” It is mulation. As he argued in a moving and incapable of addressing the modern crisis elegant tribute to Reinhold Niebuhr pub- in any kind of intellectually or politically lished in Time in 1947, the smug optimism compelling way. Chambers believed that of modern man, his groundless confidence an active and energetic state was destined to in human perfectibility through science, play a significant role in addressing the politics, or revolution, had led to the great

THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE R EVIEW—Spring 2002 45 Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney civilizational crisis of which the Commu- view had been permanently shattered by nist threat was the most radical symptom. the modern revolution. This paradox is not The failure of modern “progress” was ev- always appreciated by Chambers’ conser- erywhere in evidence. Technological vative admirers. achievement had paradoxically aided the Chambers, then, was no doctrinaire prospects for military destruction. Abun- traditionalist. But he was a lucid critic of dance and mass production had led to spiri- the voluntarism that undergirds almost tual confusion and could not even elimi- every current of modern thought—the il- nate scarcities. Science cured diseases, but lusion that the human will, self-sufficient men killed each other at the service of de- and rejecting all divine and natural limits, structive ideologies. Chambers wisely ob- could build an earthly home worthy of served that “Men have never been so edu- man. He knew that the modern crisis pre- cated, but wisdom, even as an idea, has ceded the rise of totalitarianism and would conspicuously vanished from the world.”13 likely survive its fall. The West, too, was Against “the blind impasse” of optimis- “dazzled” by a “materialist interpretation tic liberalism and rationalism, Chambers of history, politics, and economics.”14 This turned to the “great religious voices of our explains why so many intellectuals were time.” Dostoevsky’s powerful novels re- disarmed before the challenge of commu- vealed that the denial of God led to political nism and could not see it for the radical evil tragedy and to the self-immolation of the that it was. For many, it was simply a more soul. This profound diagnostician of nihil- brutal means for achieving the desired ends ism and prophet of redemptive suffering of industrial modernity and social equal- was perhaps Chambers’ greatest teacher. ity—“the New Deal in a hurry,” in Harry The German theologian Karl Barth had Hopkins’ notorious formulation. That ex- recovered the radical otherness of God plains in part the divide between ordinary against the complacent this-worldliness of Americans, who tended to side with Cham- liberal theologians. The American Lutheran bers in the Hiss case and hated communism theologian Reinhold Niebuhr had high- for its atheism as well as for its brutality, lighted the palpable reality of original sin and elite opinion, which tended toward and the paradoxical faith—beyond all logic anti-anti-communism and refused to be- and rationality—that could make sense of lieve in the guilt of one of its own.15 human suffering and limn the path of re- Chambers believed that mainstream demption. For Chambers, the choice for anti-communism, so-called liberal anti- God against deified Man was not primarily communism, was superficial because it a choice for orthodoxy or tradition. Faith could not even begin to fathom the nature could never abolish the essential solitude of of the disease that threatened the modern the human soul. An affirmation of para- world. This ailment was nothing less than doxical faith could not stem the modern what the French theologian Henri de Lubac revolution or provide certainties to rival termed “atheistic humanism” and what the the Promethean dogmatism of secular reli- great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gion. Nor could it substitute for the politi- was to call in his 1978 Harvard Address cal action by which the dislocations of our “anthropocentric humanism”: a vision of time could be addressed and perhaps healed. human progress that severed faith from Chambers was a critic of “progressivism” freedom and initiated an age of spiritual and enlightenment thinking, but he was and moral indifference.16 Sam Tanenhaus not a partisan of the orthodoxies that in his rightly notes the profound kinship between

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Solzhenitsyn’s and Chambers’ analyses of of these challenges, our elites are unable to the “modern crisis.”17 Both saw a direct stand up to the specter of nihilism. As Irving relationship between communism and en- Kristol has eloquently noted, they can give lightenment humanism. Both believed that no adequate answer to the simple query, authentic freedom must be rooted in what “Why not?” Solzhenitsyn calls the “moral heritage of Ten years after the collapse of Soviet the Christian centuries with their great re- despotism, few appear to have learned the serves of mercy and sacrifice.” Both were real lesson of totalitarianism. The profound convinced that a West that fought commu- insight of a host of thinkers such as nism in the name of “autonomous, irreli- Dostoevsky, Chambers, de Lubac, gious consciousness” could not provide a Kolakowski, and Solzhenitsyn is that all humanly compelling alternative to the more efforts at human self-deification necessar- consistent and self-conscious humanism of ily lead to what Aurel Kolnai called “the the Communist world.18 self-enslavement of man.” “Progressive de- It is undoubtedly the case that Cham- mocracy,” like communism and National bers and Solzhenitsyn underestimated some Socialism, is one of the “Three Riders of the of the internal resources of democratic so- Apocalypse”: it is, in fact, the precondition cieties. They rightly feared that modern for the totalitarian adventures of the twen- liberalism could not generate or even de- tieth century.19 Chambers may have been fend the need for civic courage. But as both too pessimistic about the West’s prospects recognized, the modern West could still in the Cold War, as some of his critics have draw on moral resources that predated charged over the years. His deepest fear, enlightenment humanism. The West’s prac- however, was not that the West would lose tice, rooted at least in part in common sense the military and political struggle with the and the moral law, turned out to be better Soviet Union, but that it would win it while than the modern theory that increasingly losing its soul—by forgetting the reasons defined its self-consciousness. As both why victory was desirable in the first place. Chambers and Solzhenitsyn suggest, mod- It would be premature to pronounce Cham- ern societies give rise to, and are predicated bers unduly alarmist in this regard. on, a dangerous emancipation of the hu- After reading Witness, André Malraux man will. But in practice, the tension be- famously wrote to Chambers that he had tween a multitude of individual wills and not “return[ed] from Hell with empty the collective sovereignty of the people pre- hands.”20 Malraux was one of the few who vents the development of tyranny in the appreciated the spiritual depth that ac- Western world. This “neutralization” of companied Chambers’ witness against competing sovereignties helps explain communism. Chambers was not only a much of the remarkable energy and vitality courageous fighter against Soviet commu- of liberal societies. nism; he was, more profoundly, one of the Yet there is no doubt that our liberal few serious writers and thinkers of the age to societies increasingly confront a moral bear clear witness to the nature of the mod- abyss: unsure of their purpose, plagued by ern crisis and the path of temporal salva- a debilitating cultural and moral relativ- tion. He knew that there could be no endur- ism, increasingly contemptuous of moral ing faith in freedom without faith in God limits, and faced with scientific and techno- and belief in the irreducible mystery of the logical innovations, such as cloning, that human soul. As with Solzhenitsyn, Cham- threaten the very humanity of man. In light bers’ defense of faith in God and freedom

THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE R EVIEW—Spring 2002 47 Whittaker Chambers by Daniel J. Mahoney was too often confused with political reac- publication of Witness, Chambers now tion. He was despised by most intellectuals belongs to that small group of modern (although he had impressive defenders such witnesses who combine spiritual wisdom as Lionel Trilling and William F. Buckley) with political judgment and provide in- and his message was too often dismissed as valuable insights about the nature of the irrelevant, or pathetic, or both. modern crisis. These insights will endure With few exceptions, Chambers’ critics long after the world has forgotten the de- missed the subtlety and depth of his reflec- tails of the most controversial espionage tion. He transcended the usual political case of the twentieth century. and intellectual categories. Like Solzhen- itsyn, Chambers recognized that there could 1. See Sam Tanenhaus’s excellent Whittaker Cham- be no turning back from the modern world. bers: A Biography (New York: Modern Library Paper- Instead, there could only be an ascent from back, 1998), 518-520. Hereafter cited as Tanenhaus. modernity, one that accepted its principal 2. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington: Regnery achievements while rooting them in a more Gateway, 1952, 1980), 3. 3. Whittaker Chambers, Cold Friday (New York: Random House, 1964), 68, 69. 4. truthful account of God and man. As Cold Friday, 70. 5. Witness, 7, 16. 6. Witness, 9, 10. 7. Solzhenitsyn suggests in his magisterial Witness, 10, Cold Friday, 157-158, Witness, 462. 8. Liechtenstein Address, delivered in 1993 on Cold Friday, 11, 12. 9. Cold Friday, 12-16. 10. Cold the eve of his return to a post-Communist Friday, 227. 11. Cold Friday, 232-236, Tanenhaus, Russia, “human knowledge and human 499-501, 506, 512. 12. Cold Friday, 236-238. 13. “Faith for a Lenten Age” is summarized in Witness, abilities continue to be perfected: they can- 505-507, and reprinted in Ghosts and the Roof, ed. by not, and must not be brought to a halt.” Terry Teachout (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Solzhenitsyn wisely adds that progress must 1996), 184-193. 14. Witness, 17. 15. See Witness, 793. be seen not “as a stream of unlimited bless- 16. Witness, 17. 17. Tanenhaus, 469. 18. See Aleksandr ings” but rather “as a gift from on high, sent Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” in East and West (Harper Perennial, 1980), 66, 69. 19. See Aurel Kolnai, down for an extremely intricate trial of our “Three Riders of the Apocalypse,” in Kolnai, Privilege free will.” Our task in a post-totalitarian and Liberty, ed. by D. Mahoney (Lexington Books, age is to “harness” progress “in the interests 1999), 105-118. 20. Tanenhaus, 502. 21. All quotes are of the human spirit...to seek or expand from Solzhenitsyn’s Address to the International ways of directing its might towards the Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein, September 29, 21 1993. The speech is printed as an Appendix to perpetration of good.” These words per- Solzhenitsyn, The Russian Question at the End of the fectly capture Chambers’ message to a post- Twentieth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, totalitarian world. Fifty years after the 1995), 112-128.

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