Whittaker Chambers's Witness and the Dilemma of a Modern Conservatism

Abstract

AbstractPublished in 1952, Witness is the memoir of Whittaker Chambers (1901–61). A former spy for the Soviet Union, Chambers was among the most influential anti‐communists and conservatives of the 1950s. He wrote Witness to further an anti‐communist conservatism. By the objective criterion of influence, Chambers enjoyed unusual success: his book was read by a mass audience and by politicians alike; it was cherished by Ronald Reagan, who brought his own anti‐communist conservatism to the White House in 1980. Yet a careful reading of Witness complicates the story of its influence. Chambers had profound doubts about modernity and modern America. He thought that a secular capitalist modernity had undermined Western culture and America alike. Capitalism and technology may yield great power, but they also corrupt cultural integrity. Witness is as much the record of spiritual anguish within the modern world, of modern conservatism experienced as dilemma, as it is a Cold War call to arms. Chambers's anti‐communist words and energy inspired Reagan and his neoconservative admirers, but by cheerfully embracing modern America they ignored the key dilemma of Chambers's eight‐hundred‐page autobiography. Witness can thus be used to track the intellectual evolution of an increasingly modern American conservatism.