This Quarter
IFIRA
Andre Breton, a founder and leader of the Sur-
realist movement, and Diego Rivera, the painter
of the Mexican revolution, are two artists who
have long been active on the Left. Some· time ago they rejected the
Third International, politically as well as culturally. They now pro–
pose
a new federation of artists and writers, Left-wing in tendency
and free of all organizational dependence.
On
page 49 of this issue, we
print their manifesto calling for the formation of the International
Federation of Independent Revolutionary
Art.
An increa.sing number
of writers, artists and intellectuals are coming to realize that socialism
offers the only permanent escape from the barbarism that is gaining
ground so fast
in
capitalist
~iety.
We believe that these intellectual
forces, hitherto scattered and isolated, should now draw together into
some .sort of organization for free discussion and for defense against
their common enemies. We are, therefore, in complete sympathy with
the general aim of the IFIRA, and we are ready to take part in the
formation of an American section of 'the Federation. This, we think,
should incorporate the international aims of the IFIRA in a program
otherwise strictly adapted to American conditions. We invite all those
interested in forming such a group in the United States to communi–
cate with the editors of
PARTISAN
REVIEW.
MUNICH
AND THE
INTELLECTUALS
The liberal and radical intellectuals have thrived
for two decades on exposing the meaning and
motivation of the last Great War. Yet today they
are urging upon us the_ very same social-patriotic
policies, the identical supra-class illusions which they claimed the
catastrophe of 1914 had taught them to renounce forever.
If
the
Czech crisis did not come to war-if this time the imperialists held
back-it was certainly not the fault of the intellectual Left. Its mem–
bers, who only a few years ago pictured themselves as the bitterest en–
emies of war, are now arriong its chief evangels. It would almost seem
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