60
PARTISAN REVIEW
his philosophy. Some time ago Mr. Burke reviewed Barbusse's
Stalin.*
His long review was built around the metaphor of a public monument.
Now, of course, the book has many things in common with a public
monument. But it also has at least as many things in common with a
dung-hill. Why one metaphor rather than another? Unless Burke in-
troduces his special political perspective of allegiance he cannot make
his choice explicable. Here, in the realm of values, relativism for him
must have limits. Grant him, however, his perspective. His function as a
propagandist completed, we expect him to do his duty as a craftsman.
The book has at least one major error on every other page; and even
some of the photographs-particularly the one showing Lenin with
Stalin's head almost on his shoulder-are obviously faked. What do we
find in Burke's review? He is simply not interested in investigating the
character of the materials which have entered into the public monument,
the fitness of the composition, the occasion for the execution. Here, in
the realm of
fact,
relativism for him has no limits.
Or examine his reference to the Moscow trials in this book. After
some vague speculations on the nature of identity, he writes "such
speculations on the nature of identity coupled with our speculations on
allegiance to the symbols of authority, might add (sic!) plausibility to
the accusations laid against the 'Old Bolsheviks' in the Moscow trials."
He then attempts to show by the inevitable reference to Dostoyevsky
that it was not psychologically impossible for the defendants to be guilty.
As if the question of mere psychological
possibility
has any bearing upon
the questions of
evidence.
It is not psychologically impossible that Stalin
should have framed his victims nor is it psychologically impossible that
Burke should have plotted with them. What follows? The speculation
about the psychological guilt of the Moscow defendants functions like
a metaphor in Burke's pivotal frame of acceptance. Here he must be an
absolutist-blind to other metaphors
despite
the brave relativism with
which he starts. But just when we expect him as a craftsman to consider
the issues of fact and probability to which his speculations about identity
"add" plausibility, he does a disappearing act. His relativism at this point
asserts itself so strongly that the logical structure of his perspective
etherealizes, and nothing is left except the emotional overtones. The
enormity of this outrage against elementary scientific procedure would
probably be brought home to Burke himself were someone to tell him
that since it was not psychologically impossible for Dreyfus, or Sacco-
Vanzetti, or Mooney to be guilty of the crimes they were accuseu of,
this
adds
plausibility to the accusations. There are some kinds of propa-
ganda which are simply not compatible with good craftsmanship.
Or take Burke's discussion of Dewey in the present book. Having
pillaged from him to the limits of his understanding, and distorted him
in the process, he quite gratuitously attributes views to Dewey in politics
and education against which the latter has repeatedly polemicized. To
say that Dewey desires a collectivism in which there are only "rights"
and "freedoms" and no corresponding duties or restrictions-a glorified
anarchism-is so grotesque that even a super-relativistic approach to
texts cannot justify it. For Dewey the content of freedom changes with
*
I use this illustration because it exemplifies so eloquently the methodology
by which Burke would correct "the oversimplification of the party line." It can
be matched with other illustrations from the present work in which they are
hastily sketched rather than explicitly worked out.
