TWO TEARS OF PROGRESS
memorable words of A. B. Magil, "with microscopes, for pimples on
the shining face of the Soviet Union." Hicks' paper dealt with the
problem of frustration in American literature-a problem real enough
to have become one of the larger concerns of the American critical
tradition. But to Hicks this became a matter of party homiletics and
Calvinist thrift. Besides counseling writers how to organize their
time efficiently, he forewarned them against swerving from the strait
path of party doctrine. To Hicks literature is an organizational ques-
tion, and the terms to which he reduced his subject illustrate the in-
tellectual level of that body of criticism of which he is the leading
spokesman.
Compared to Hicks, Newton Arvin is a tenderfoot Stalinist; but
primarily he is a diligent and able student of the antiquities of New
England. His speech on "The Democratic Tradition in American
Letters" 4ad a noble ring to it, dedicated as it was to the evocation of
the libertarian ideals of the past. Unfortunately Arvin suffers from the
tendency to slice our classic literary figures in half: the good
("progressive") half he presses into the service of present-day politics,
and the bad ("reactionary") half he commits to the outer darkness.
Such methods make the critic's job easy, but they do not contribute
to the understanding of literature as an organic process. Neither the
history of esthetics nor the history of thought will be served by this
political surgery on the American literary tradition. A conception of
Emerson or Thoreau, for example, which is not a whole but an ex-
traction is of little value to criticism.
Stalinism and American Literature
To people unfamiliar with the literary politics of the Communist
Party the juxtaposition of these two terms may seem ridiculously
melodramatic. In the final analysis, they will ask, what has Stalinism
got to do with the actual production of novels, plays, and poems?
Among those who ask such questions are many who are politically
indifferent and not a few who are trying to escape unpleasant truths.
In discussing literature in relation to Stalinism we are not dealing
with those writers to whom literature is merely a means of livelihood
or those to whom it is a purely esthetic matter. We have in mind,
rather, that advanced body of American writing which responded to
the social crisis of our decade. And in this sphere the Stalinists, despite
their insane sectarianism, played an advanced role in the early 30's.
They popularized some of the fundamental ideas of Marxism among
American intellectuals, no matter how much they themselves mis-
applied these ideas in practice. Their literary policy was a reflection
of a narrow and factional Party Line, but since the Party still based
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