From My Happy Days in Hell, page 63.
This is a continuation of the on-going dialogue between Faludy–who for all intents and purposes is a political Liberal as that term should be properly understood–and his companion Bandi, who is a somewhat self loathing but also proud Communist. The context is that Stalin has just allied with Hitler–which was a horrific and confusing moment for the world’s Communists–and Freud has just died. They are out at a dinner party paid for by a third companion, a brilliant but lazy man, who made good money writing an essay on Freud, who he knew personally (and who had also just predicted the fall of France, since the French had become so obviously decadent and incompetent; he had just refused to write a book singing the praises of the Maginot Line because he expected it to fail, fully and quickly, which of course is what happened).
Bandi, in familiar psychodynamic terms, has just spoken of the death of his “second mother”, Communism. Falludy, in effect, expects a resurrection.
Quite recently you formulated your attitude beautifully. You said that communist ideology was the prison of your mind but the horizon of your heart. Yet, I must contradict you. I should compare the Marxist-Leninist ideology not to a massive prison building but to a wobbly pillar left over from the past century. It could be brought down by a single kick but what would be the use? You are chained to it with the twenty-four carat gold chain of Freudism. There could be nothing stranger than the situation in which you involved yourself. You are bound to an exclusive, conspiratorial, underground brotherhood by the very fact that you belong to an even more exclusive one. It would be a vain effort to apply the Freudian outlook to communism and reject its vulgar and mechanical materialism. And it would also be in vain to look at Marx’s obsolete political economy through Freud’s eyes, because you would still remain chained to bolshevism by your mother-complex, your herd instinct, your frustrated sexuality and suppressed thirst for power–the very emotions communism so passionately denies and to which it owes its best followers [emphasis mine] Not even if you proved to yourself that the communist ideology is all wrong could you break with boshevism. You could break with it only if Freudism failed. But Uncle Sigmund died only last night and I am afraid a psychological theory like his might live for decades and may survive all of us.
Lot of content there. I may comment on it later. I may not. I share this, because this is a good example of the sort of thing honest intellectuals used to say, and the way they used to say it. Even our communists are mediocre, compared to how they used to be.