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PARTISAN REVIEW
phrasemongery. No matter what they do its spokesmen talk "ultra-left."
Second, as primitive Marxists the basic conflict appears to them to-day
to be between capitalism and socialism, and although they dispute among
themselves as to whether the Soviet Union is socialist, they are unan–
imous in thinking of the U.S. as an expanding imperialist capitalist
power. Since capitalism is the main evil, the existence of cultural and
political freedom by which capitalism can be transformed, is dismissed
as a sham. Many among them are convinced that the American political
regime is not far away from Fascism. It was instructive that Rousset felt
called upon to assure his audience that he had seen with his own eyes
the freedom with which Americans walk the streets and associate with
each other. Farrell got the close attention of the audience when he
denied that the U.S. had a fascist government. He was bringing news.
(Whereupon the Trotskyists, who are post-graduates of the Stalin school
of falsification and the source of the most fantastic reports about what
transpired at the meeting, tagged him as a flag-waving American im–
perialist.) The American literary expatriates either contribute to this
kind of information by puffing up some of the shameful episodes in
American life or remain silent for fear of being tagged as apologists of
America and losing some of their "existentialist" friends.
*
Finally, it costs nothing-there are absolutely no risks-in denouncing
American culture and foreign policy, whereas naggingly present in the
consciousness of these Frenchmen, and not only them, is an awareness
that the borders of France are only a short march from the Soviet out–
posts in Europe. And the sad fact is that at present the fears of France
are deeper than its hopes and courage.
*
The case of Richard Wright is a curious one. Having broken with Stalinism
more on personal than on political grounds, he has no understanding of its true
nature. He is flattered by the use which Sartre makes of him as a kind of club
against American culture analogous to the use the Communists make of Robeson.
Although he joined Sartre in his statement, in a recent interview he sought to
dissociate himself from Robeson's view that the American Negroes would not
fight for "American imperialism" in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Union.
According to Wright they would and should. But if he believes the statement he
signed, such a position makes no sense. Only Robeson's position is consistent with
Sartre's simple-minded formulas.
In the same interview-which since it appeared in the Trotskyist press may
have been edited according to Bolshevik ethics-Wright pretended he had dis–
cussed his position with me in Paris. I have never exchanged two words with
him on politics or anything else. He also refers to me as one "who proclaims
to high heaven that he is an orthodox Marxist." This means that he has Dot
read a line-but not a line!--of anything I have ever written about Marx or
Marxism.
If
any additional commentary were needed about the character of left–
wing French political thought, the emergence of Wright and Garry Davis as
political figures would be sufficient.
