38
PARTISAN REVIEW
But Krutch is too wily a sophist to execute such a daring about-face
merely by addressing an inspirational appeal to writers; instead he does what
Max Eastman, politically degenerate and steeped in venom, is fond of at–
tributing to Marx and Lenin-he reads his idea into the objective nature
of art, thus "discovering" its eternal "purpose." His whole pattern of
thought here is cast in the mold of teleology, expressing the typical inverted
clericalism of idealist criticism. The result, of course, is a special counter–
revolutionary category: artist. Whether starving or sated his purpose is to
draw our attention to the silver lining on every dark cloud. True, the
world is full of misery and chaos, but .after all, the artist who ponden
about this rejoices in these calamaties, for they furnish him with the
material "out of which tragedies are written, and the contemplation of
tragedy is one of the purest, one of the most human joys there is." The
revolutionist is busy proving that "Things As They Are" can no longer
be borne, while the artist "is busily proving with his songs and his tales
that it can."
Krutch is certain that Marxism dooms art, and he tries to prove it
by quoting an alleged conversation with Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet
filo:.
director, who explained to him that by making the film a weapon in the
proletarian class struggle he was helping to destroy it, since as soon
as
the aims of this struggle are realized, there will be no further need for art.
For at that time, with perfection reigning and no unsatisfied desires left,
art, being essentially a compensation, will wither away.
Needless to say, this idea of the ciassless desert of art is at log·
gerheads with the basic principles of Marxism. And it is very illuminating
to observe how Krutch, like many of his colleagues, makes use of dis–
torted dialectics to attack the real dialectic. He quotes Eisenstein's con–
versation, but it never seems to occur to these people that the only
way to find out what Marxism is about is to study it in its original context.
It is absurd to speak of "perfection" in characr.erizing the classless society.
Change the Marxist recognizes ·as the sole absolute, and in the classless
society there will be new contradictions and new struggles-with this
difference, however: these new contradictions and struggles will develop
on an incomparably higher level. For it is then, with the extinction of
the fight for individual existence, that man will for the first time in his–
tory actually enter into his human estate.
To speak of art in general, in the abstract, and then to tack onto this
abstraction an eternal "purpose," is just as chimerical as to speak about
an abstract man isolated from a specific form of society and a specific
