30
PARTISAN REVIEW
itself on revolutionary principles, it was possible for them to release
certain revolutionary, forces on the literary scene. "Proletarian
literature," whose demise they deny for reasons of political prestige,
was never a pure product. It was partly an outgrowth of the social
condition of contemporary culture and partly an administrative
notion of the Communist Party and of the power cliques among
Soviet writers. The program of this literature they carried beyond
any possible application, reducing it to an absurdity; nevertheless
their agitation for it was valuable for its larger resonance. It changed
the direction of literary thought and subjected the theme of class con-
flict to the workings of the creative imagination.
But the point about the Stalinists now is that they not only
stand between the writer and Marxism but between him and the
most elementary kind of integrity. The moral degeneration which
afflicts the Communist Party cannot but reflect itself in its literary
politics. Reformism offers ~o basis for revolutionary-literature, which
either strikes at the foundations of the capitalist order or else dis-
solves into a variety of social service. To expect a bureaucratic,
authoritarian regime to nourish a truly critical, revolutionary con-
sciousness in art is to expect miracles. Already the Stalinists have in-
troduced into their literary organs the methods of calumny and
frame~up. It is impossible for the intellectual to make the moral and
political compromises that Stalinism demands of him without be-
traying himself.
The tradition of individual judgment, of skepticism, of scientific
verification is inherent in the very terms and conditions of knowledge.
The collectivity of the Marxist movement aims to raise this tradition
to the level of materialist consistency and conscious political direction.
A collectivity of blind faith and accomodation, on the other hand, is
altogether the opposite of that envisaged by the founders of socialist
thought. "Comrade," one would say with Gide, "believe in nothing;
accept nothing without proof. The blood of martyrs has never proved
anything. There is no religion too foolish not to have had martyrs or
not to have awakened burning conviction. Men die in the name of
faith and in the name of faith they kill. The taste for knowledge is
born in doubt. Cease to believe: Learn. People try to impose a belief
only when they have no proofs. Do not let them impose on you.
Do
not let them take you in."
