26
PARTISAN REVIEW
new enemies, no automatic mechanism, no constitutional guaran–
tees. There is nothing, that is, which can force men to be free.
Fortunately! Perhaps after I have finished writing the novel I am
working on now, I will try to write a "School for Liberty" as a
sequel to that
School for Dictators
you already know.
What is your opinion of contemporary left-wing literature?
Left-wing literature? You must admit that the expression is
ambiguous. One should reserve the adjectives "left," "right,"
"center" and their nuances for political parties and their propa–
ganda. However, I understand what you are referring to. There
are a few great left-wing writers and there is a left-wing literary
industry, nourished by a left-wing literary philistinism which has
become especially abundant and vulgar since the Kremlin dis–
covered literature as "instrumentum regni."
Stalinism is really the hom-of-plenty of this literature.
Writers find themselves flattered in all their vague aspirations and,
into the bargain, they ·risk nothing. In a society where they were
accustomed to being considered merely a luxury, they are now
given the illusion of playing a leading role. They are called
together in congresses, they sign appeals, they are "popularized."
.All that is asked of them is that they approve everything the Party
does-or at least that they do not disapprove in public. Nothing
more!
There are also a good many writers, essentially bourgeois and
reactionary
in
the quality of their writing, who conform to the
etiquette of anti-fascism. Their hostility to fascism .has this particu–
lar quality: they address themselves always to far-distant fascist
regimes and have not a word to say about fascism and reaction in
their own country. Truly, a platonic and tactful anti-fascism! Their
socialist convictions are also strictly export commodities: these
writers are partisans of socialism in Russia but not in their own
country. They are most eloquent about the victorious revolutions
of the past-1789, 1848, etc.-but are silent on the revolutionary
tasks of our own epoch. Already this whole left-wing literary indus–
try is going to pieces as the result of the collapse of "popular
front" politics.
The true left-wing writers are distinguished by characteristics
