can grasp at length their message. The majority, I
say, must be reached rather than a few small out-
posts and dusters of those who are convinced and
in transport.
We have not failed
j
we have committed many
terrible errors, lost much time, learned lessons, but
made small beginnings. The cultural preparation
must, after all, precede the era of true, swift revo-
lutionary change
(cf. Eighteenth Brumaire).
It had
"lagged" in America. Now in hundreds of dissenters'
books, poems, polemics, histories, novels, biogra-
phies, it goes forward steadily.
Yours,
MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
KENNETH BURKE
WHAT Is Americanism? There is Americanism
only in this sense: there was some loss of tradition,
due to reshuffling, and to the fact that such reshuf-
fling tended to weaken the particular forms of bu-
reaucratization by which traditions were kept most
fully alive. In particular, the remnants of what is
called in the
Communist
M anifes to
"feudal social-
ism" were weakened by the shuffle. Result: the al-
most perfect milieu for the full flowering of bour-
geois-capitalist thought, in all its rigorousness. Such
"perfection" was further aided by the almost total
annihilation of the Indians (as distinct from the
countries of Latin America, that tended somewhat
to incorporate Indian ingredients in their cultural
amalgam). Process further completed in bourgeois
style by the "liberation" of the Negro, thereby effec-
tively obliterating the modes of thought by which
some elements of feudal socialism might have been
intensified. By such "liberation" within capitalist
terms, feudal slavery became that glorious human-
itarian thing, "wage slavery," and the bourgeois-
capitalist perspective was made complete. There was
nothing left to do but go in for a series of real estate
booms. (And I sometimes stop to recall with grim-
ness how dose \Vhitman's yea-saying came to Ro-
tarianism. )
What, then, might be called "American"? Not
any particular cultural trend that is not found in
Europe-but
the
degree of excess
by which it is ex-
emplified. Correspondingly,
as the expression of
bourgeois philosophy, by lack of impediments,
reached the maximum intensity, so may the move-
ments antithetical to this be expected to reach max-
imum intensity. Thus we find significant trends in
Europe anticipated here and expressed with greater
zealousness. (Poe in letters-Peirce in philosophy
-rves in music.)
On the other hand, remember the great smear of
uniformity that was spread across the continent
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
through the abstractions of finance capitalism. An
approach to a
piece
of land via the abstractions of
"profit" tends to override differences, to put all sorts
of "investment opportunities" in the same bin. The
concrete differences of geography, dimate, and the
like lose their maximum power as producers of dis-
tinct cultural developments-the abstractions of
profit bring them into one "happy" family. It is this
tendency, I think, that provides material economic
support for the cult of unity, and makes for some
sincerity in the bQurgeois anguish at the thought of
civil war (an anguish not based merely upon the fear
of war itself, since this same group can be bellicose
enough when issues are presented on a nationalistic
basis) .
The tendency to see as the particular essence of
Americanism "the brutal struggle for individual
riches" gives me a pain in the pain-receiver. Amer-
icans are no greedier than anyone else. The terrible-
ness of the situation is, not that we are exceptionally
greedy, but that the opportunities for the expression
of greed on the part of some have reached a max-
imum state of organization. In other words, the
situation as I see it is this: We are highly organ-
ized-and such social organization amounts to an
amplifying device. Precisely the same amount of
greed that a poet might exert in trying to acquire a
good set of rhymes, would in the case of a Morgan
partner bring in millions of dollars, because of this
man's strategic hold on the amplifying organization.
As a matter of fact, very few of Our worst of-
fenders have been monsters. (There have been many
more monsters, proportionately, in the arts, owing
to the added responsibilities of the antithetical atti-
tude, the tendency towards "warping" that goes with
the cult of refusal). l\tlany of our successful business
overlords were almost tearful in their love of man-
kind. Nothing surprising in that. They could afford
to be. Particularly their wives.
"Americanism" as a protest movement (the litera-
ture of criticism that rose, with varying degrees of
accuracy and vagueness, in antithesis to the rise of
capitalism), is simply part of the romantic move-
ment in general. As such, you'll find it in Europe
quite as you find it here-and you will find it devel-
oping in the East in proportion as bourgeois "prog-
ress" makes itself felt.
Here is a "lead" that I think might have some
possibilities. Consider the romantic antithesis by
using the metaphor of monasticism. In proportion as
the bourgeois emphasis upon the secular developed,
the feudalistic way of exemplifying the "two-worlds"
principle lost prestige. Result: the rise of romanti-
cism, which can be analyzed as a kind of
secular
monasticism. \Vhat was the "two-worlds" principle
in the earlier religious frame? An island in the sea.
"Colony-thinking," quite as you find it developing in
nineteenth-century romanticism, in such ventures as
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