"Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it"
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Communism, in Durrenmatt's phrasing, isn’t a red flag to be waved or burned; it’s a thought experiment with consequences. Calling it a "proposition" drains the term of its Cold War mystique and returns it to the realm of human design: a plan pitched against reality, subject to testing, revision, and rejection. That’s classic Durrenmatt: the dramatist who loved exposing how lofty systems collide with messy motives. He doesn’t romanticize revolution; he proceduralizes it.
The key move is "structure the world more reasonably". Reason here is bait and trap. It flatters the reader into imagining politics as engineering, as if society can be made efficient by better blueprints. Durrenmatt knows the seduction: modernity’s faith that if we just think hard enough, we can outsmart history. His subtext is less "communism is good" than "stop treating ideologies like religions". If communism claims to be rational, then it must submit to rational scrutiny - not taboo, not propaganda, not inherited fear.
Context matters: Durrenmatt wrote from a 20th-century Europe where communism wasn’t a classroom abstraction but a state project, with prisons and purges on one side, capitalist hypocrisy and opportunism on the other. In that atmosphere, his insistence on analysis is a kind of intellectual civil defense. The sting is in the final clause: "act upon it". He rejects spectator politics. Thinking is not a moral alibi; if you judge an idea "reasonable", you own the obligation to test it in the world - and to bear the fallout.
The key move is "structure the world more reasonably". Reason here is bait and trap. It flatters the reader into imagining politics as engineering, as if society can be made efficient by better blueprints. Durrenmatt knows the seduction: modernity’s faith that if we just think hard enough, we can outsmart history. His subtext is less "communism is good" than "stop treating ideologies like religions". If communism claims to be rational, then it must submit to rational scrutiny - not taboo, not propaganda, not inherited fear.
Context matters: Durrenmatt wrote from a 20th-century Europe where communism wasn’t a classroom abstraction but a state project, with prisons and purges on one side, capitalist hypocrisy and opportunism on the other. In that atmosphere, his insistence on analysis is a kind of intellectual civil defense. The sting is in the final clause: "act upon it". He rejects spectator politics. Thinking is not a moral alibi; if you judge an idea "reasonable", you own the obligation to test it in the world - and to bear the fallout.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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