PARIS LETTER
the fact that they still feel obliged to stick to the Popular Front idea:
"the rally of all progressive forces against reaction and for the defense
of French independence." This when even the "anti-antistalinists" feel
that accepting Communist company is about as safe as keeping a
copperhead under your shirt-which feeling is one of the main reasons
for the undeniable decline of Stalinism. Stalinism was strong as long as
it could win over and control non-Stalinist elements, seduce them into
believing that it was the last refuge of political idealism, and that, in
spite of all the circuitousness, the CP would take them
somewhere.
With
the incalculably precious help of the Kremlin, such illusions have by now
been dispelled. "I don't like them. But if they are persecuted I will be
on their side," is the boldest pronouncement an "anti-antistalinist" is
willing to make at present. Once again, such ways of speaking, especially
when resorted to by intellectuals, express a last mulish reluctance to
relinquish certain ideological habits, rather than a conviction, or a choice.
If
I were a Communist, I would not put much trust in any such resolve.
The main contribution of a certain kind of intellectual to the CP
cause (as, in earlier times, to the cause of Fascism) is the spinning out
of verbal justifications. I heard a French professor, the holder of a
number of State sinecures, say of the Cominform edict against Tito:
"How beautiful. A true Church style. You can think what you please,
but in our time only the Communists are in a position to talk such a
language." An utterance which my Stalinist friend would have considered
perfectly ludicrous. Seriously speaking, however, on the level of culture
and intellectual life, the Stalinists have by now suffered a complete loss
of face, which was not the case two years ago, when the Communist
position was still being discussed with consideration, if not with awe.
Among the latest symptoms of the wearing out of Communist witch–
ery, one can certainly count the unexpectedly great success of Camus'
The Plague
(over 100,000 copies sold, at a moment when buying a
book is a luxury), and the equally great success of Sartre's
Les A1ains
Sales
which has been playing for four months to sold out houses. (The
play has now closed, but will open again in the fall) Camus' novel is
neither faultless nor written to please, but the general public have ap–
parently found in it an answer to their yearning for ordinary humaneness
and good sense. The moral of
The Plague
is that the only adequate
answer to an extreme situation is to stick to normal human behavior.
The book is not specifically directed against Communism, and yet it has
been interpreted in this sense by both the Communists and their ad–
versaries. As for Sartre's play (an intellectual product so curious, and so
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