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p The changes that have taken place in international relations differently affect the interests and position of the two world systems and of the two main contending classes, strengthening one of them, the proletariat, and weakening the other, the bourgeoisie. This is correspondingly refracted in the class consciousness and policy of the modern bourgeoisie. In its socio-political views there is perhaps no other problem in which there has been such an obvious shift from democracy to political reaction. Lenin regarded this shift as the substance of imperialism.

p The democratic views and ideas of the bourgeoisie when it was an historically progressive class have given way to totally different views expressing the basic fact that there has been a change in the position of the class that has degenerated from a proponent and champion of progress into a conservative force holding up social development. The purpose of these views is to substantiate an entire system of measures 91 designed to limit the people’s influence on social life. Their target is to slander the masses and to revive in a new aspect the concepts that had been used through the ages to justify the denial of rights to the majority of society and the unlimited power of the oppressor minority.

p Of course, modern anti-popular ideology cannot be founded on references to God, to the divine rights of the chosen elite, rights that had been claimed by the feudal nobility. The high priests of the modern bourgeoisie had had to construct a new argument, which they tried to find mainly in references to the nature of man. The new interpretation of this nature given by contemporary bourgeois theory is the exact opposite of the interpretation that was offered by ideologists when the bourgeoisie was a progressive class.  [91•*  The earlier interpretation is now declared “pre-scientific”,. naive, or simply “Jacobinic” heresy (this is the assessment of, among others, Walter Lippmann). In bourgeois ideology the predominant theory today is that as soon as a person becomes part of the masses, part of the “mob”, he loses his ability to think rationally and is motivated by blind instincts and emotions, which can only be shed by outstanding personalities, by the “élite”.

p Gustave Le Bon, who published a number of books at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, 92 is generally regarded as the father of this theory.  [92•*  To this day references to these works are to be found in almost every book by bourgeois scholars on the problem of the masses, "human nature" and the war of ideas. The views preached by Le Bon are now in vogue, having become a virtual craze in bourgeois sociology. At the turn of the century they were zealously propounded by German reactionary ideologists, who were destined to become the spiritual forerunners of nazism. These ideologists went so far as to identify the "human herd" with animals—“gregarious” or " predatory".  [92•**  In the ideology of national-socialism the masses were altogether accorded the lot of an inarticulate and thoughtless instrument in the hands of the führer.

p The attempts to prove the irrationality and psychological poverty of the masses have today become pivotal in imperialism’s ideology and propaganda, for they unite the most diverse schools and trends of bourgeois sociological thought.

p According to Arnold J. Toynbee, for example, society divides into “creators”, who make history, and “non-creators”, internal and external “barbarians”, who, in the long run, destroy every civilisation.  [92•*** 

p The German bourgeois philosopher Karl Jaspers divides mankind into a "faceless mass" and a "spiritual aristocracy”. Martin Heidegger ascribes to the masses the socially dangerous "irrational psychology of the herd”. Gabriel Marcel, a leader of the Right wing of the French existentialists, asserts that the masses "are the degraded state of humanity".  [92•****  These are only a few haphazardly chosen examples, but they give a sufficiently clear idea of the general picture.

p It goes without saying that in this age of science attempts are being made to give assertions of this kind a semblance 93 of scientific authenticity (in this respect the contemporary bourgeois theoreticians have moved far ahead of, say, Le Bon, who proclaimed his revelations with the air of a prophet, caring nothing for arguments). To this end they are trying to enlist the services of biology,  [93•*  biochemistry  [93•**  and, above all, psychology (in particular, the theories of Freud, the behaviourists and other schools).  [93•*** 

p A kind of “comprehensive” sociological theory of "mass society" has lately become widespread. It was originated by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, who proclaimed that the 20th century was the age of "the rebellion of the masses against individuality”. According to this theory, in modern society people have lost their group (class and other) ties, and this has resulted in "social atomisation”. Having lost their individuality, independence and their intolerance of injustice, people have, by virtue of their “mass” behaviour, become helpless before any skilful demagogue and manipulator. The American sociologist William Kornhauser explains that "mass society is a system in which there is a high availability of a population for mobilisation by elites".  [93•****  This sort of argumentation makes it easy to whitewash the bourgeois system and its creations such as fascism. This, as a matter of fact, is exactly what 94 Kornhauser seeks to do, writing that "totalitarian movements are fundamentally mass movements rather than class movements”.  [94•* 

p The "mass society" theory doubtlessly merits an independent study on account of the importance and complexity of the social phenomena that serve as its object. One of these phenomena is bourgeois society’s real and actually existing problem of the alienation of the individual from politics, which for many millions of people who, for one reason or another, have not found their place in the social struggle, remains an elemental force that produces confusion and a sense of helplessness. The American authors Ernst Kris and Nathan Leites have given a fairly vivid picture of the psychological aspect of this state of the individual in a paper entitled Trends in Twentieth Century Propaganda. " Individuals in the mass societies of the twentieth century,"they write, "are to an ever increasing extent involved in public affairs; it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore them. But ’ordinary’ individuals have ever less the feeling that they can understand or influence the very events upon which their life and happiness is known to depend.... The common man is usually acutely aware of the fact that the ’button’ he is ‘pushing’ belongs to an apparatus far out of the reach of any unorganised individual.

p "This feeling of disparity greatly affects the common man’s attitude to foreign policy. The potential proximity of total war produces situations that not only seem inherently incomprehensible, but that he, the common man, feels cannot be made comprehensible to him by his government. ’Security considerations’, he infers, are the reason why the ’real dope’ is kept away from him. Thus the distance between the common man and the policy maker has grown to such an extent that awe and distrust support each other.

"The common man feels impotent in a world where specialised skills control events that any moment may transform his life. That feeling of impotence bestows upon political facts something of the solidity of natural events, like weather or hurricane, that come and go."  [94•** 

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p A socio-psychological state of this sort is understandably fertile soil for demagogues, for the manipulation of the masses. Modern mass media provide the suitable weapon for such manipulation. Explosions of fanaticism reminiscent of fits of mass madness have often been deliberately precipitated in the past. Recall the medieval witch-hunts and pogroms and certain episodes of the Crusades. The sole difference is that media like the press, the radio, the cinema and, more recently, television have made it possible to foment such explosions on a nation-wide scale and sustain hysteria for a relatively long time, the best illustration of this being the fascist dictatorships.

p Of course, these may be called extreme political situations that are by no means typical of all countries or of all [ periods of history. But the socio-psychological attitudes we are referring to, together with the attempts to utilise them for political ends, are typical in one way or another of the political life of modern bourgeois society. To a considerable extent this is the basis for the day-to-day propaganda, for the shaping of public opinion by the imperialist “elite”. This propaganda unquestionably turns to account not only the public’s insufficient information or ideological delusions but also some elements of psychological vulnerability (this sphere evidently merits a closer study by materialist psychology and social psychology).

p But all this does not alter the fact that the attempts to blame human nature, the masses, for social and political calamities are untenable. The masses are people living in the real conditions of their social environment on which depends both the level of their enlightenment and information and their ability to act intelligently in defence of their cognised interests.

This also concerns the foreign policy interests of the masses, no matter how some bourgeois theorists try to repudiate their ability not only to act in accordance with these interests but also to perceive them intelligently. It is simply that the gulf between the interests of the masses and those of the ruling “elite” of the imperialist powers is steadily growing wider—this is precisely what is being misrepresented by the bourgeois theorists opposed to the people’s intervention in politics. Some of these theorists speak quite frankly of the real motives behind their outcry.

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p Very curious in this respect are the arguments of Sisley Huddleston. He begins his excursion into the nebulous sphere of "crowd psychology" with the words: "Vox populi, vox Dei. Was ever a greater or more dangerous falsehood uttered?"  [96•*  And he crowns it with what he believes to be the incontestable conclusion that today public intervention in foreign policy is a greater menace to mankind than the atomic bomb. This intervention, he declares, "may well be the method whereby the species known as homo sapiens will commit racial suicide and be eliminated from its reigning position".  [96•** 

p But here we are by no means interested in Huddleston’s psychological exercises especially as he is in no way an expert in that field. Much more interesting are his examples of specific cases of public intervention in politics which, he opines, have caused damage to mankind. One of these cases, he says, was the League of Nations, whose activities "were a direct and leading cause of the Second World War".  [96•***  He does not mean the inability of that organisation to create an effective system for curbing aggressors. He sees the root of evil in something else, namely, that under the impact of public opinion the rostrum in that organisation was given to Soviet diplomacy.  [96•**** 

He regards the emphatic condemnation of the Munichmen and appeasers as another crime of public opinion.  [96•*****  He waxes similarly indignant over post-war developments. "We continue to inquire first of all of any country whether it is anti-fascist or pro-fascist, whether it is anti-communist or procommunist is of secondary importance,” he writes. Why, he asks, is the USSR a member of the United Nations, while Franco Spain is still excluded?  [96•****** 

p True, far from all the adversaries of public intervention in foreign policy preach such extreme reactionary views as Huddleston. Among them are people of quite another stamp, for instance, people like Walter Lippmann (he calls 97 himself a "liberal democrat”). These people ascribe different sins to public opinion. Lippmann speaks of the Munich conspiracy from a totally different angle. He argues that the responsibility for that conspiracy is borne not by the appeasers of the nazis but by public opinion which, he alleges, forced the British and French governments to come to terms with Hitler at any price. He interprets some other international events in the same spirit.

p Whatever his approach, Lippmann nonetheless arrives at essentially the same conclusions as Huddleston. Like Huddleston he regards the people’s increased role in politics generally and in foreign policy in particular as something that has to be combated, arguing that popular influence is a hindrance to effective policy and hamstrings political leaders and governments. "Where mass opinion dominates the government,” he writes, "there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern."  [97•* 

p In the light of these arguments the basic question is: precisely how does popular influence hamstring the freedom of action of governments?

p Lippmann tries to prove that this influence hampers enlightened, flexible and subtle policy and destroys the very art of diplomacy. In this he has the support of many well-known career diplomats. Harold Nicolson, one of the veterans of that honoured profession, has aptly expressed the feelings of his colleagues, their nostalgia for the good old days. "In the days of the old diplomacy”, he wrote, "it would have been regarded as an act of unthinkable vulgarity to appeal to the common people upon any issue of international policy."  [97•** 

However, neither Lippmann, nor Nicolson, nor the other admirers of the old, traditional diplomacy found the time to prove the main thing, namely, that once the governments and career diplomats received the desired freedom of action, fenced international relations off from popular intervention, from the influence of public opinion, they would indeed revert to the enlightened and intelligent foreign policy so admired by these authors.

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p The whole history of secret diplomacy shows that a return to these "good old days" would not augur well for the peoples, for civilisation. Not a shadow of a doubt is left on this score by the pronouncements of some particularly zealous critics of the increased public influence on foreign policy. An example of this are the writings of the West German sociologist and publicist Winfried Martini, who does not even try to make believe he fears the “irrationalism” or “unreason” of the masses. Their intervention in foreign policy does not suit him for other reasons. "In all cases”, he writes, "the masses want to settle the conflict between state interests and morality in favour of the latter."  [98•*  In particular, they regard war "as a crime" and they generally regard as quite intolerable the "robber morals”, which, as Martini declares, may perfectly well be inherent in realistic policy and to which only the "numerically small stratum of leaders" can spiritually accommodate themselves.  [98•** 

p Admissions of this sort help us to understand why the imperialist bourgeoisie regards the people’s increased role in socio-political affairs as a veritable calamity.

p However, the bourgeois theorists do not only condemn the people’s increased influence on international relations. They also offer recipes on the ways and means of offsetting this influence. Naturally, the exact recipes largely depend on the political standing of the theorist in question and on his understanding of what has caused this increased^ public influence on politics.

p We have already mentioned the imperialist concept of a "push-button war”, and the recommendations to re- professionalise armies in order to safeguard imperialism against the threat of an armed people, of the existence of massive armies.

p Many of the Western researchers writing about the masses recommend the curtailment of democratic rights and freedoms and the establishment of a "strong arm" regime.

p This, in particular, is the gist of the recommendations of the "liberal democrat" Walter Lippmann, who offers as a model the practices in 18th-century England where, if the king so desired, he coud consult the parliament while 99 retaining an absolutely free hand in deciding matters of foreign policy.  [99•*  Lippmann does not, of course, suggest restoring the "divine rights" of kings. He urges something else—the further intensification of executive authority at the expense of representative institutions.

p Another recommendation to Western politicians is that they should return to the traditional secret diplomacy of the old days in order to deprive the people of access to foreign policy information and gradually make them lose all interest in international politics. This is precisely what was recommended, for instance, by Huddleston. "We must return to the more discreet and competent methods of professional diplomacy. This is my basic contention.... Back, then, to real diplomacy."  [99•** 

p The significance of these recommendations from a diehard reactionary and undisguised apologist of the Munichmen hardly requires comment.

p In all fairness it must be said that similar recommendations may be heard from more respectable authors, who belong if not to the liberal then at least to the moderate wing of bourgeois scholars.

One of them is the American historian Theodore Sands, who was associated with the US Department of State. In "Propaganda vs. Diplomacy”, an article written for the journal The Nation, he protested strongly against the situation in which "diplomacy, which once was a whispered secret, has now become the favoured subject of radio, television and newspapers; daily we are bombarded with the moves and proclamations of national leaders".  [99•***  In fact, Sands goes so far as to deny to this diplomacy even its name. "Much of what passes today for diplomacy”, he writes, "is not diplomacy at all: it is propaganda. Yet unless the practice of proper diplomacy is protected and preserved, the means required to find future solutions of current problems will not be available.” On the basis of this argument he recommends that the US Government should take the "initiative to force a separation of diplomacy from propaganda".^^  [99•**** ^^

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p The questions raised by Sands, especially as in one way or another they are dealt with by some other bourgeois theorists, merit a closer examination. In Sands’ arguments there is more than simply nostalgia for the old days when foreign policy was charted by governments without any hindrance from the public. As far as may be judged from his article, Theodore Sands is worried also by the propaganda abuses that, condoned by cold war diplomacy, far from helping to settle international issues make the very possibility of such a settlement difficult.

p Does this problem actually exist? Yes and no.

p No, because diplomacy cannot be regarded solely as an instrument for the settlement of conflicts, and propaganda only as an instrument of fanning conflicts. Both the one and the other are instruments of foreign policy, and provided the mechanism of state functions normally they serve the objective of the given government. In some cases this objective may be the peaceful settlement of international issues, and in others, the kindling of conflicts. One can hardly believe that this is not appreciated by a person who has had to do directly with foreign policy.

p Sands is sooner worried by something else, namely, that among other factors ideology is today influencing foreign policy itself. This may not be to the liking of certain career diplomats, but in an age when the main contradiction in international relations is between the two social systems things could not have been otherwise. The only consolation that one can offer the retired American diplomat is that in the past, in the clays of traditional diplomacy, there had been a surfeit of conflicts, including bloody ones, and that this diplomacy, fully "separated from propaganda”, had not only been unable to avert them but had meekly helped to precipitate them.

p Nevertheless, the anxiety voiced by Sands can hardly be written off altogether as unfounded or invented. Farther in this book we shall yet deal with the complicated question of the borderline between the historically inevitable ideological struggle between the two systems, and propaganda of the cold war type. The latter is indeed not inevitable, but under certain conditions it can become not only the creation but also an additional source of international tension, 101 particularly if diplomacy is also enlisted into the service of such propaganda.

p With this is linked yet another problem—that of the contradiction that may arise between a hard and uncompromising position in ideology and the flexible approach, i.e., the realistic attitude to compromises, that may be demanded of diplomacy. The United States diplomats have evidently felt the acuteness of the problem when the cold war tension began to relax and there appeared not only the possibility but also a vital need (from the standpoint of properly understood state interests of the USA as well) for a definite normalisation of the international situation, and also when the entire ideological and psychological heritage of the cold war and MacCarthyism, with its fanatical anti-communism, intolerance and prejudices, formed a bulky obstacle to a policy of relaxation. But the substance of problems of this kind lies in the qualitative characteristics of ideologies and the war of ideas, in their conformity to reality and the genuine interests of the given country and people.

p As regards the question of whether, having assumed definite ideological functions, diplomacy can serve the cause of peace, we find ourselves returning to the argument about the advantages and shortcomings of the new (open) and traditional (secret) diplomacy, which we have partially touched on in the preceding chapter.

p In the case of open diplomacy, we understand it as the diplomacy of a country whose fundamental foreign policy interests and objectives do not require secrecy and can be openly proclaimed and championed before the eyes of its own and other peoples. It undoubtedly may and does employ methods facilitating the most effective conduct of its foreign policy, including behind the scenes contacts, soundings, and confidential correspondence and negotiation. But this is a diplomacy which, in addition, employs new methods that enable it to make full use of the advantages of a foreign policy that rules out secret compacts at the expense of the people’s interests. Such precisely is the foreign policy and diplomacy of socialism whose foundations were laid by Lenin. It is not in anybody’s power to "annul it”, even if the US Government were to follow Sands’ recommendations.

p In this context Sands’ assertion that "Russian-style diplomacy has become more an instrument for extending 102 conflict than for reconciling differences"  [102•*  can only give rise to puzzlement. Besides, even Sands himself is unable to uphold this contention with any minimally convincing examples.

p It will be noted that in the West they are beginning to use the name “open” diplomacy for any diplomacy in which the propaganda aspect has acquired a considerable role—including purely imperialist diplomacy. This “publicity” for diplomacy has been a step forced on the bourgeois powers by the far-reaching changes that have taken place in i\ nternational relations, by the increased public influence on foreign policy and by the birth of socialism with its new, really open diplomacy. But this is not open diplomacy. It is sooner a new form of the traditional, secret diplomacy, which imperialism has been unable to renounce. In anything, including politics, the truth can be concealed not only through silence but also through deliberate deceit.

p Without belittling the threat that such deceit holds out to peace, one can place it on record that the necessity compelling imperialism to win public support to its foreign policy creates a certain obstacle to aggression and war. This is a new element in politics which can be regarded legitimately as an achievement of the masses, the working class and socialism. It goes without saying that all the recipes for a return to traditional diplomacy with its total disregard for public opinion are a sheer utopia.

p This is evidently realised by most bourgeois scholars. And it is the point of departure of the official policy of the imperialist countries. This policy counts not on chimerical attempts to return to the old days but on adaptation to the new situation. It has to reckon with the fact that the struggle for the support or at least for the neutralisation of the masses, the struggle for public opinion, has become part and parcel of foreign policy efforts.

p In the above-mentioned Mansfield-Sprague report to the US President, for instance, it is stated that in the present epoch "formal and traditional diplomacy of the predominantly government-to-government type often plays a limited role. This means that our diplomacy increasingly must understand public opinion in all countries, open and closed, old 103 and new, and must give greater emphasis to this factor in the handling of conferences and negotiations, in the selection and training of members of the foreign services, and in our treatment of foreign visitors".  [103•*  The report offers the following conclusion: "The Committee therefore believes that world opinion should be fully considered in the development of policies and programmes—diplomatic, economic and military—which have impact abroad.  [103•** 

p In recent years this approach has been winning broad recognition. It would be difficult to find a more or less serious work in which this standpoint is not stated, even in the examination of the semi-technical questions of diplomacy.  [103•*** 

p An interesting point is that this subject is dealt with at some length in the memoirs of some United States ambassadors. Chester Bowles, for instance, writes: "An ambassador’s job is no longer the relatively simple one of carrying out the policy of his government on a high level in the country to which he is assigned. As I see it his job is also to reach the people."  [103•**** 

p Moreover, increasing recognition is being won by the idea that, to say nothing of major problems of the ideological struggle between the two systems, even the conduct of " dayto-day" foreign policy is no longer conceivable without influencing public opinion, without winning its support. This 104 question receives considerable attention from the Professor Eugen Fischer-Baling of West Berlin in his book The Theory of Foreign Policy. It is his opinion that it is necessary "to use every means" in order to persuade public opinion that "government policy best of all serves the common good".  [104•*  Similar views are offered by the American sociologist Kenneth W. Thompson, who considers that public support cannot be won without a "moral evaluation" of foreign policy. "No problem on the agenda of America’s relations with the rest of the world”, he writes, "is more bewildering, compelling and ultimately decisive than the moral evaluation of foreign policy".  [104•** 

The increased public influence on foreign policy is a process which is undermining the positions of imperialism. This process is irreversible. In proportion to its realisation of this truth the imperialist bourgeoisie is intensifying its efforts to adapt itself to this process.