COMENTÁRIO: existe uma incultura melancólica nas hostes da assim chamada esquerda e nas hostes da assim chamada direita. Uma técnica para preservar o dito apaideutismo reside na leitura selecionada de autores e obras. O livro de Arthur Koestler, O Zero e o Infinito, serve como vade mecum para todo direitista que imagina descobrir nele todo o horror do stalinismo. Engano. O stalinismo tem mais horrores do que os apresentados por Koestler. O próprio escritor escreveu uma obra bem mais ampla e rica de combate a todos os regimes totalitários, de esquerda ou direita.

O primeiro assassinato dos totalitários é o da mente. Todos eles odeiam o raciocínio e mostram ojeriza pelos assim ditos intelectuais. A palavra da seita ou igreja política é sagrada, mesmo que existam provas de seu erro ou crime. Sagrados também os líderes, por definição impecáveis, oniscientes, onipotentes.

A liberdade de pensamento é a primeira vítima do totalitarismo. Intelectual correto e louvável, só o que dobra a pena, a lingua e a espinha diante dos grupos dominantes. Intelectual correto é o que repete a ladainha do poderoso e afirma que, após ele ter falado, tudo se ilumina e se esclarece.

Em Koestler e outros poucos escritores honestos, ocorre a defesa do pensamento, numa hora em que o colosso soviético ordenava e tudo se esclarecia para os mentecaptos do Partido. Mas na mesma hora, os defensores da assim dita civilização ocidental exercitavam o exercício da delação, da censura, do terror na caça às bruxa conhecida como cruzada do macarthismo.

O Manifesto abaixo deveria ser lido pelos jornalistas chapa branca e pelos opositores que ontem foram governo: pensar dói, como diz Millor Fernandes, mas livre pensar é só pensar, sem anquinhas ou viseiras partidárias ou ideológicas.

Boa leitura, proveitosa leitura. E que os honestos sigam além das leituras ordenadas ao modo da Academia de Moscou ou das Seleções do Reader´s Digest.

Roberto Romano


Arthur Koestler : The Trail of the Dinosaur & Other Essays (Macmillan & Co., 1955)


The Right To Say "No"

FOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM

The Congress for Cultural Freedom, an international meeting of writers, scholars and scientists under the patronage of Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, John Dewey, Karl Jaspers, and Jacques Maritain, was held in June, 1950 in Berlin. Its opening session coincided with the beginning of the Korean war. It served a double purpose: as a kind of intellectual airlift, a demonstration of Western solidarity with the brave and battered outpost of Berlin, a hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain; and as an attempt to dispel the intellectual confusion created by the totalitarian campaigns under the slogan of peace. Out of the deliberations of the Berlin Congress arose an international movement with branches and publications in a number of European, American and Asiatic countries, among them Encounter, London, and Preuves, Paris.

I. MANIFESTO OF THE CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM *

We hold it to be self-evident that intellectual freedom is one of the inalienable rights of man.Such freedom is defined first and foremost by his right to hold and express his own opinions, and particularly opinions which differ from those of his rulers. Deprived of the right to say "no", man becomes a slave.
Freedom and peace are inseparable. In any country, under any régime, the overwhelming majority of ordinary people fear and oppose war. The danger of war becomes acute when governments, by suppressing democratic representative institutions, deny to the majority the means of imposing its will to peace.
Peace can be maintained only if each government submits to the control and inspection of its acts by the people whom it governs, and agrees to submit all questions immediately involving the risk of war to a representative international authority, by whose decision it will abide.

We hold that the main reason for the present insecurity of the world is the policy of governments which, while paying lipservice to peace, refuse to accept this double control. Historical experience proves that wars can be prepared and waged under any slogan, including that of peace. Campaigns for peace which are not backed by acts that will guarantee its maintenance are like counterfeit currency circulated for dishonest purposes. Intellectual sanity and physical security can only return to the world if such practices are abandoned.

Freedom is based on the toleration of divergent opinions. The principle of toleration does not logically permit the practice of intolerance.

No political philosophy or economic theory can claim the sole right to represent freedom in the abstract. We hold that the value of such theories is to be judged by the range of concrete freedom which they accord the individual in practice.

We likewise hold that no race, nation, class or religion can claim the sole right to represent the idea of freedom, nor the right to deny freedom to other groups or creeds in the name of anyultimate ideal or lofty aim whatsover. We hold that the historical contribution of any society is to be judged by the extent and quality of the freedom which its members actually enjoy.

In times of emergency, restrictions on the freedom of the individual are imposed in the real or assumed interest of the community. We hold it to be essential that such restrictions be confined to a minimum of clearly specified actions; that they be understood to be temporary and limited expedients in the nature of a sacrifice; and that the measures restricting freedom be themselves subject to free criticism and democratic control. Only thus can we have a reasonable assurance that emergency measures restricting individual freedom will not degenerate into a permanent tyranny.
In totalitarian states restrictions on freedom are no longer intended and publicly understood as a sacrifice imposed on the people, but are on the contrary represented as triumphs of progress and achievements of a superior civilisation. We hold that both the theory and practice of these régimes run counter to the basic rights of the individual and the fundamental aspirations of mankind as a whole.

We hold the danger represented by these régimes to be all the greater since their means of enforcement far surpasses that of all previous tyrannies in the history of mankind. The citizen of the totalitarian state is expected and forced not only to abstain from crime but to conform in all his thoughts and actions to a prescribed pattern. Citizens are persecuted and condemned on such unspecified and all-embracing charges as "enemies of the people" or "socially unreliable elements".

We hold that there can be no stable world so long as mankind, with regard to freedom, remains divided into "haves" and "havenots". The defence of existing freedoms, the reconquest of lost freedoms [and the creation of new freedoms], are parts of the same struggleWe hold that the theory and practice of the totalitarian state are the greatest challenge which man has been called on to meet in the course of civilised history.

We hold that indifference or neutrality in the face of such a challenge amounts to a betrayal of mankind and to the abdication of the free mind. Our answer to this challenge may decide the fate of man for generations.

[The defence of intellectual liberty today imposes a positive obligation: to offer new and constructive answers to the probems of our time.]

We address this manifesto to all men who are determined to regain those liberties which they have lost, and to preserve [and extend] those which they enjoy.
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* The manifesto, drafted by request of the steering committee, was unanimously adopted at the closing session of the Congress on 30th June, 1950. The words in square brackets were added to my draft by the British members of the editorial committee, Professor A. J. Ayer and Mr. Trevor-Roper.