A LETTER TO THE NEW REPUBLIC
125
believe, that aspires to a place in the vanguard of literature today,
will
be revolutionary in tendency." That is clear enough, surely.
But Mr. Cowley also objects to the
kind
of political approach we
have had, insisting that to attack the Communist Party's cultural line
is
to play factional politics. This we deny. The struggle between Stal–
inism
and revolutionary Marxism seems to us to go far beyond party
or factional issues. By this time, Stalinism has ceased to be a revolu–
tionary tendency, and in fact is rapidly turning into the opposite.
We do not consider our struggle against it as committing us to any
party line, any more than we consider our constant criticism of capit–
alist
values-whether 'democratic' or fascist-a matter of factional
politics. Many radical groups, from the Fourth International to
the Social Democratic Federation, oppose Stalinism for much the
same reasons we do. We have never endorsed the political line of any
of these groups-which obviously on other subjects have deep-rooted
differences among themselves--nor have we excluded any contributor
from our pages because he belonged to or didn't belong to any of
these groups. And
if
the literary sympathizers of the Communist Party
have not appeared in our pages, it is because they have yielded to a
well-organized boycott campaign.
Mr. Cowley quotes extensively from two paragraphs of our six–
_paragraph Editorial Statement. But he neither quotes from nor men–
tions the three central paragraphs, and for the very good reason that to
do so would explode his main charge: that we are running under false
colors. These paragraphs were devoted to a single theme: our reasons
for considering the influence of the Communist Party a major threat
to both literature and revolution in our time, and our determination
to
fight against this influence. Mr. Cowley is simply misrepresenting
when he implies we have made any secret of our position on this issue.
We must also object, in passing, to his depression, "anti-Soviet art–
icles."
He may identify the Kremlin with the Soviet Union. We don't,
any more than we identify any particular administration with the
United States of America.
Mr. Cowley's other charge-of inferior literary quality-he is
careful to make almost wholly in the form of innuendo. Thus he im–
plies
but does not state that PARTISAN REVIEW is on the same cultural
level
as
the
New Masses.
(Our lawyers assure us that, although calcu–
lated to injure our business,
this
is an expression of opinion and so
not
libelous). He implies but does not state that, for political reasons,
we have shut the door on talented young unknowns. (We might note
that our $100 short story prize was divided between two young
writers whose prose we were the
first
to print, and that we have
printed work by James Agee, Delmore Schwartz, Mary King, E. S.
Bley,
Jackson Matthews, Parker Tyler, Elizabeth Bishop and many
ether young and comparatively unknown writers.) Mr. Cowley ac–
cuses us of substituting political for esthetic criteria-and also objects
