able. The "mystic" Slav, in a Socialist Society, made
even better use of the machine and the engineers,
and transcended American democracy.
Perhaps the national characteristics of a people
vary with the observer; it depends on the analyst's
personal and class characteristics. The French were
supposed to be logical, rational, intellectual; they
had taste and style and loved freedom. But the re-
actionaries of Europe, observing the Great Revolu-
tion, said the French were volatile, restless, unstable.
But who were typical French: Louis XVI and the
nobles or Rousseau, Voltaire and Robespierre?
Charles X or Saint Simon? Clemence au or Henri
Barbusse? Viviani or Romain Rolland? Who was
truly German: Frederick the Great or Goethe?
Wilhelm II or Karl Liebknecht? Who was truly
American: J. P. Morgan in his Scotch castle or
Gene Debs in his Georgia prison?
A nation-Stalin
wrote as far back as 191
3-is a
historically evolved, stable community of language,
territory,
economic life and psychologictd make-up
manifested in a community of culture.
What, comrade? Did you say
psychologic?
I
thought the Marxists ignored psychologic factors in
history, and denied specific national characteristics.
Ah, my dear poet, if you want to know what the
Marxists think about the relation of socialism to
nationality, why don't you read what they actually
say about it, instead of spinning it out of your inner
consciousness ?
Nations,
Stalin wrote in 1913,
dif-
fer not only in their conditions of life, but also in
spiritual complexion,
which manifests itself in pecul-
iarities of national culture. If England, America and
Ireland,
which speak one language,
nevertheless
constitute three distinct nations, it is in no small
measure due to the peculiar psychological
make-up
which they developed from generation to generation
as a result of dissimilar conditions of existence. Of
course, by itself the psychological make-up or, as it
is otherwise called, the 'national character', is some-
thing indefinable to the observer, but inasmuch a,s it
manifests itself in a distinctive culture common to
the nation, it is definable and cannot be ignored.
Needless,
to say, 'National character'
is not
a
thing
that is fixed once and for all, but is modified by
changes in the conditions of life. But since it exists
at every given moment, it leaves its imprint on the
physiognomy of the nation. Thus the community of
psychological
make-up which manifests itself in a
community of culture, is one of the characteristic
features of the nation.
Lenin reminded us that the national question is
subordinate
to the "labor question"; but he also re-
minded us that national and state differences among
peoples and countries will continue to exist for a
very long time, even after the dictatorship of the
proletariat has been established on a world scale.
Our revolutionary literature is as American as
it is Marxist. The works of John Dos Passos, James
16
T. Farrell, Clifford Odets, John Howard Lawson
Josephine Herbst, Robert Cantwell and others ar~
as deeply saturated with the specific details of daily
American life as with the proletarian idea of the
international socialist revolution. This is only na-
tural. Consider the process by which a creative
writer proceeds from national psychology, from the
people, the speech, the episodes, the individual char-
acters of his specific locale to the Marxist idea. As
a rule the writer does not move from Marxism to
his concrete material, but from his concrete material
to Marxism. During six years of hunger and suffer-
ing in this country he observed what was happening
to the people he knew, and only then began to gen-
eralize on this experience. When he started to be-
come socially conscious, he usually went first into a
free speech fight or a hunger march; the preoccupa-
tion with Marxist theory, the attempt to understand
experience in general terms came afterward.
The most striking example of the relation be-
tween American literature and Ivlarxism may be
found in the works of our Negro writers. The Negro
in this country has no culture except an American
culture; his experience is purely American. But it
is the experience of an oppressed race, made consci-
ous at every moment by discrimination and oppres-
sion of every kind. A Negro writer cannot write
truly without creating scenes and characters and
episodes which can only exist in America, and with-
out conveying the shameful and barbarous treatment
of his people. That is why the best Negro literature
is written by those who have been most conscious of
the road toward liberation, by those who have
grasped the meaning of Marxism. This indicates the
importance of theory.
Without it, mere desire alone would find no solu-
tion; and the writer does well to inform his intellect
as well as to keep his passion ke'en, .his observation
alert, his language precise. vVhen the American
writer studies Marx and Lenin he does so in order
to apply their teachings to specific American prob-
lems. l\larxism does not deny variations in national
character; it does not deny the importance or the
cultural heritage of the past; it makes all the neces-
sary distinctions between creative art and abstract
scientific thinking, between poetry and politics; it
stresses the importance of form and style as well
as theme and content. If it appeals to the best minds
of our epoch-\Vhite and Negro, gentile and Jew,
American and Chinese, German and Briton-it
is be-
cause Marxism best explains the world in which we
live and most clearly shows us how to transform it
into something better. This universal idea-:-vast,
fruitful, illuminating, and energising-can only ad-
vance American literature, as it has advanced the
literature of all other countries where the revolu-
tionary movement has become a popular force in
the national life.
APRIL,
1936
