PARTISAN REVIEW
surpasses the politics of politicians creates its particular human type.
Let us hope that ours will be of that creative order.
Burnham:
Most well-known American intellectuals have not
gone through the refining flames of real Communism. They have
only reddened their skins a bit in the lukewarm baths of polite united
fronts. Indeed, a much higher percentage
Of
our intellectuals than
of yours has never been touched by Communism.
Is this a strength or a weakness? In spite of my present rejection
of Communism, a rejection which I believe to
be
final and-one
might say-absolute, I nevertheless often feel that
the experience of
Communism
may have been a necessary phase in the moral develop–
ment of our generation. Two men today who seem outwardly to
agree completely in their views will continue to sense an age between
them if one has, and one has not, lived
through
Communism. Truth
in this case seems not rational and objective, from the outside, but
what the followers of Kierkegaard would call subjective, existential.
But perhaps, like the smug boast of a reformed drunk, this is
a self-protective illusion of those of us who have ourselves been
through Communism.
If
our eyes remain bleary, it may be that the
sights can be accurately taken only by those who, by nature or luck
or even moral coarseness, were immune to the disease.
There is now a broad movement of American intellectuals away
from Communism. No doubt the Marxists are right, in part, when
they scornfully say that this is a response to the mounting "imperialist"
pressures. But it is also deeper than that. The movement is so far
largely negative. The intellectuals find momentary shelter under a
wide variety of cover: mysticism, hedonism, pacifism, practical poli–
tics, vague anarchism, art for art's sake, or mere personal careerism.
They are like uprooted mileposts, stretching out from the Marxist
starting point, along a winding road whose end has not yet been
discovered.
Malraux:
Here, perhaps, we get to the heart of the problem.
Let us note this first: in practically all countries a certain number
of writers of the first rank were Communists, and others (the ma–
jority) were what the Communists call fellow-travelers. Later, they
broke with the party-usually violently. The Communists generally
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