Vol. 4 No. 3 1938 - page 23

TWO rEARs OF PROGRESS
than a handful of writers were sufficiently far-sighted and courageous
to take a stand for proletarian revolution, today hundreds . . . re-
cognize the necessity of personally helping to accelerate the destruc-
tion of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' government."
The suggested program for the permanent organization to be evolved
at the Congress committed itself to "the fight against imperialist war
and fascism, defence of the Soviet Union against capitalist aggres-
sion, the development and strengthening of the revolutionary labor
movement, solidarity with colonial people in the struggle for free-
dom," and other equally militant ideas.
Now, it must be remembered that this first Congress was as
much a congress "against war and fascism" as the second one. Yet
no attempt was made to dissociate the fight against fascism from the
fight against capitalism, and imperialist
fascist
wars from imperialist
democratic
wars. The class struggle was still being fought between
two material entities called capital and labor, not two ideologies
known as fascism ·and democracy. The focal discussions concerned
themselves with the various forms of revolutionary writing and the
writer's relation to Communism. In his speech Earl Browder declared
that "the overwhelming number of writers who are producing living
literature" were choosing sides on the basis of "the class struggle be-
tween capitalists and workers-the two basic forces in modem
society.... " The other speakers were just as outspoken. "What are
we here for? What do we believe in?" asked Edwin Seaver; and
his reply was candid: "The fight against war and fascism? True
enough. But this is largely a negative statement. Are we not here
because we believe in forming a new and Communist ideology within
the shell of the old and decaying capitalist society.... "
As to literature, the most flaming message came from Louis
Aragon in Paris, who wrote to the Congress that "the literature of
tomorrow has for it'>foundation the new humanity which rises from
the proletarian revolution ....
Above this living literature floats the
red flag of the new materialism, of the Soviet literature of the whole
world."
This was still in the blood-and-thunder style of blatant "leftism."
Aragon's ultra-revolutionary rhetoric was only a grandiose French
version of Granville Hicks, but the delirium of both had its identical
source in the literal translation of sectarian and utopian party policies
into the language of literary proclamations. These people have never
learned to distinguish between the living world and the mechanized
dreams of their party-apparatus.
The most amusing episode of the first Congress was provided by
Kenneth Burke, who blandly suggested that Communist propagandists
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