exemplify an attitude of
rejection.
But the test of a
revolutionary position is not in
what one rejects,
but
in
what one would put itl place of the rejected.
Not
in the "push away from," but in the particular "pull
towards" one selects to match it. Furthermore,
by
reason of his overly "American" emphasis, he over-
looked the feature of these earlier men that could
be emphasized with most profit to our purposes:
The
fact that many of them so naturally incorporated
foreigll material in their thinkillg whenever they
found such material serviceable.
On the other hand, there is only danger in the
naive attempts of some to make a build-up for Marx
as the omniscient and unerring wizard of prophecy.
It will be resisted by ."Americans" because it would
be resisted by any people. l\1arx is a
forerunner,
and
must be presented as such (as he is presented in the
Russian Marx-Lenin combine).
Similarly, I consider
it a great mistake (a part of the "build-up" pro-
cedure) to attempt dismissing every development
of
scientific thought since Marx by the pronouncing of
anathema.
There is much of value in modern psy-
chology and in relativistic physics that must be in-
corporated,
regardless of its "bourgeo~s" origin.
Marx himself specifically admitted that he borrowed
much from bourgeois sources that came before him.
The mere fact that he appeared at one moment of
time rather than another cannot serve to prevent the
same borrowing from sources that came
after
him.
Every once in a while I see, in communist papers,
attacks upon one scientist or another that make me
wince. The procedure is too much like the Ptolemaic
attacks upon Copernicanism.
A philosophy proves its
value, not by what new material it must
categorically
reject,
but by what new material it can
assimIlate.
A critic who looks at a new theory, and without ever
discussing it on its own terms, solves everything in
advance by simply condemning it as "reactionary,"
is simply being reactionary himself. He may make a
hit with the boys, but he has done worse than noth-
ing. The consideration of non-Marxist
contributions
to thought cannot be done within the simple proprie-
ties of bureaucratic routine. Fortunately,
the tenden-
cy to do so is dying fast anyhow-much of it was
due to mere rawness, and one cannot go on being
raw forever.
Improvement
in this respect is occur-
ring, if only because it would be too hard not to
Improve.
I might close by one little bit of cynicism.
f there
is anything that seems peculiarly "American" to me,
in the bad sense, it is the resistance to philosophy-
the feeling that philosophy is some kind of parlor
sport, of no immediate application to our necessities.
This is troublesome because capitalism is a philoso-
phy (no less a philosophy through seeming "natural"
to the amateur philosophers that give it expression).
And similarly, the philosophy of capitalism can only
be combated by
allother
philosophy.
I always use the
example of the dust storms in the West. "What?"
PARTISAN
REVIEW
AND ANVIL
I murmur. "You say that philosophy doesn't matter?
Then just look at those dust storms. They are abso-
lute evidence of the ways in which a bad philosophy
can actually have an effect upon the weather.
They
show how, if you don't get things straight, you may
even ruin the climate of a whole continent. A
bad
philosophy can thus endanger vast populations.
Whereupon,
all the greater need to have a
good
philosophy." Yours for the
good
philosophy,
the
philosophy of communism.
WALDO FRANK
I RECOGNIZE the "publicity" value of this sym-
posium. The problem is indeed crucial; and it is in-
teresting, doubtless, to learn whether the opinions of
certain other men coincide with our own. But there
is a danger. In a symposium,
where one is limited
to a few hundred words, little more than an unsup-
ported opinion can be stated.
Such opinions,
on
myriad subjects, make up what passes for "criticism"
-and for "education"-in
the United States. The
foundations of experience, and of considered anal-
ysis and synthesis, are almost wholly lacking, if not
in a few books, then in the minds of those who call
themselves enlightened readers.
And without such
foundations the plethora of opinion remains what it
has been and is in this country: a gas shifting with
outside pressure.
The relationship between American culture and
social revolution has been the direct subject of at
least five of my books. In
The Rediscovery of Amer-
ica
(1928-9) I intimated the passage and transmu-
tation of what I called "the Great Tradition," from
the Mediterranean littoral (Egypt,
Judea, Greece,
Italy, Spain) via England and France to our shores;
in
America Hispana
I followed this tradition to the
shores south of our own; and in these and other
volumes, I have established a continuity between the
deepest intuitive and cultural heritage of Western
man and social revolution.
Thus far, in my recent
writings, I have only fragmentarily touched on the
specific Marxist action by which this Great Tradi-
tion must be, not fulfilled, but kept alive
here and
now.
I have not yet given my conclusion a definitive
critical form. Yet it should be obvious that I can
say nothing respectable without first re-stating the
premises as they exist in my books-an impossible
task within the bounds of a symposium.
This must go in lieu of a reply. I will add only
this: The necessary continuity between that Great
Tradition) of which American culture
must be
a per-
mutation,
and social revolution in Marxist terms, is
the truth-is
today's dominant truth. But in order
to establish this continuity all the terms must be re-
interpreted with far more sagacity and depth than
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