CORRESPONDENCE
LIBERALISM AND CONFUSION
Sirs:
The counter-attack against what is
called the liberal-progressive tradition
has been under way for several years
now, and on some grounds we do not
regret that this is true. We have our–
selves, severally, given time and thought
to the negative limitations as well as
to the positive
wrongness~
of our in–
herited democratic liberalism; and we
of course welcome the contributions of
other writers to the task of reassessing
it. We find ourselves, however, gen–
uinely confused by the form taken by
some of the attacks upon it, and should
like to suggest that there are two ques–
tions that can fairly be asked of anti–
liberal and anti-progressive writers. (1)
What is the exact and responsible se–
mantic content of the words "liberal"
and "progressive" when used, as they
increasingly are, in a pejorative con–
text? The impression grows on us that
these words are rapidly losing such a
content, and are becoming dangerously
loose and emotive "signs" for intel–
lectual inanity and political immaturity
of any sort whatever. We have frankly
failed to recognize, in many allusions to
liberalism, any precise correspondence
to
the thought we ourselves find in the
writings of a long series of liberals in
the past, especially English and Amer–
ican.
(2) When the terms have been fair–
ly defined, from what similarly well–
defined point of view are anti-liberal
and anti-progressive writers speaking?
We do not suggest that only those who
have attached themselves to another
dogma or orthodoxy have an intellec–
tual right to criticize liberalism: we
recognize that a pessimistic skepticism,
for example, is a traditional and honor–
able
Anschauung.
We submit only that
221
we have in
all.
cases a right to know
whether it is this position or some other
from which the vices of liberalism are
being belabored; otherwise we are
bound to have the impression that lib–
eralism is being used simply as a scape–
beast for the sins of the intellectual
tribe.
To take a recent example of the ten–
dency we are questioning-Mr. Richard
Chase, in his essay, "Dissent on Billy
Budd" (PR, November1948), remarks:
"Strangely, Claggart [the master-at–
arms who destroys Billy] is another
version of Melville's self-righteous Lib–
eral, the Confidence Man." Now, grant–
ing that the Confidence Man is himself
intended to represent the liberal (and
it
is a gross oversimplification of Mel–
ville's intention
to
say so), we wonder
what it is, closely, precisely, and tang–
ibly, in the text itself of
Billy Budd
that justifies this curious description.
We should have thought that Melville
intended Claggart as an embodiment
of what he himself calls (in Biblical
phrase) the "mysteries of iniquity" or,
more exactly, of "Natural [as distin–
guished from Total] Depravity." This,
too, is a necessarily oversimplified inter–
pretation; but even
if
it represents on–
ly part of a complex truth, we con–
tinue to wonder at what point the as–
sociation with liberalism invades the
conception of Claggart. Are we
to
ga–
ther that liberalism has become inter–
changeable with Natural Depravity?
Was lago a "progressive"? Did Count
Cenci take a "liberal" line?
Still more recently, in his review of
three works on Hawthorne ("The Pro–
gressive Hawthornej," PR, January
1949), Mr. Chase observes: "The most
common cliche about Hawthorne is that
he thought solitude a crime and be–
lieved in the brotherhood of man and
in man's 'dependence on society.' This
is good liberal doctrine." Now it is of
course a familiar though not very co–
gent resource in controversy to dispose
