PARTISAN REVIEW
positions of command without letting itself be compromised-that's
the politics of the C.P. Between 1939 and 1940 we were the wit–
nesses and victims of the decay of a war; today we are · present at
the decaying of a revolutionary situation.
If
it should be asked whether the writer, in order to reach the
masses, should offer his services to the Communist Party, I answer no.
The politics of Stalinist communism is incompatible in France with
the honest practice of the literary craft. A party which is planning
a revolution should have nothing to lose. For the C.P. there is some–
thing to lose and things to handle circumspectively. As its immediate
goal can no longer be the establishment of a dictatorship of the pro–
letariat by force, but rather that of safeguarding a Russia which is in
danger, it now presents an ambiguous appearance. Progressive and
revolutionary in its doctrine and in its avowed ends,
it
has become
conservative in its means. Even before it has seized power, it has
adopted the tum of mind, the reasoning, and the artifices of those
who have long since attained it, those who feel that it is escaping
them and who want to maintain themselves. There is something in
common, and it is not talent, between Joseph de Maistre and M.
Garaudy. And generally it is enough to skim through a piece of Com–
munist writing to pick out at random a hundred conservative pro–
cedures: persuasion by repetition, by intimidation, by veiled threats,
by forceful and scornful affirmation, by cryptic allusions to demon–
strations that are not forthcoming, by exhibiting so complete and
superb a conviction that, from the very start, it places itself above
all debate, casts its spell, and ends by becoming contagious; the op–
ponent is never answered; he is discredited; he belongs to the police,
to the Intelligence Service; he's a fascist. As for proofs, they are never
given, because they are terrible and implicate too many people.
If
you insist upon knowing them, you are told to stop right there and
to take someone's word for the accusation. "Don't force us to bring
them out; you'll be sorry
if
you do." In short the Communist intel–
lectual adopts the attitude of the staff which condemned Dreyfus on
secret evidence. He also reverts, to be sure, to the Manichaeanism
of the reactionaries, though he divides the world according to other
principles. For the Stalinist a Trotskyist is an incarnation of evil, like
the Jew for Maurras. Everything that comes from him is necessarily
bad. On the contrary, the possession of certain titles serves as a seal
646
