STATEMENT
125
their struggle for freedom, but rather to the extent that the socialist move–
ment grows strong enough to fight the reactionary consequences of world
politics and of the bourgeois desertion [of Democracy]. Hence, he who
wishes to strengthen Democracy should desire also to strengthen and not
to weaken the socialist movement. To abandon the struggle for Socialism
means to abandon both the working class movement and Democracy."
llARoLD RosENBERG
Statement of the L.C.F
.S.
w.
ADDRESS
this statement to all artists and writers who are con·
cerned about the present drift of the United States to reaction and war.
Not
in
this country alone but everywhere, culture is threatened by
advancing reaction. In forcing the recrudescence of social forms which
had seemed obsolete, German and Italian fascism have at the same time
compelled the revival of obsolete modes in art and science. In the Soviet
Union, on the other hand, where nationalism and personal dictatorship
are replacing the revolutionary ideals of freedom and democracy, culture
suffers regimentation and debasement no less severe.
Nor are signs lacking of deepening social reaction
in
the United
States. Increasingly, experimentation is discouraged in the creative arts;
a premium is put upon the conventional and the academic. The social
sciences are witnessing the revival of various forms of obscurantism, the
rise of an intolerant orthodoxy. Educators are being intimidated through
loyalty oaths. Government censorship cripples W.P.A. theatre, art, and
literary projects. Terrorism is exercised by the Catholic church over such
cultural enterprises as the movies. Covert sabotage hinders the publication
of work by independent and revolutionary writers. And in heresy hunting
bodies like the Dies Committee, many of these tendencies find official and
concentrated expression.
Such conditions are a challenge to independent intellectuals. Yet no
existing cultural organization is ready fully to meet the challenge.
If
in
the totalitarian states intellectual life is an affair for the police, in America
it is preparing, under pressure of anti-fascist hysteria, for voluntary abdi–
cation. Cultural circles, formerly progressive, are now capitulating to the
spirit of fascism while ostensibly combatting its letter. They fi ght one
falsehood with another. To the deification of Hitler and Mussolini they
counterpose the deification of Stalin, the unqualified support of Roosevelt.
The mysticism of "Aryan" supremacy they match with a national-demo–
cratic myth conjured out of America's historic infancy. To the war drive
of the fascist powers they reply with a war drive of their own.
