604
PARTISAN REVIEW
Western Europe consumes the cotton, gasoline, non-ferrous metals and
grain given it gratuitously by the land of Wall Street. Regardless of
what their share in these things may be, the Europeans who discourse so
freely on the American inferiority complex only give evidence of an in–
feriority complex of their own. Making an aggressive parade of anti–
Americanism is their way of compensating for it.
American generosity would be insupportable to them if they did
not see in it a shrewd form of selfishness. The wealth of America
would be too striking a refutation of their vulgar anti-capitalism
if
they
did not believe that technological progress is paid for with spiritual
impoverishment. The superior culture that you possess or think you
possess makes
it
easier for you to accept a loss of political power. It is not
perhaps the most gracious thing to make a point of not thanking your
benefactor, of denouncing his greed or barbarism, but it is certainly
a way to avoid being accused by others or oneself of kissing the hand
cf
the rich protector.
In short: from the moment that the French position ceases
to
have
a universal significance, intellectuals seek a position neither Russian nor
American, in hopes of thus attaining to universality. The American
position they reject for the additional reason that it entails a rupture
of the traditional tie between the proletariat and liberty.
I t is remarkable that some non-Communist intellectuals, such
as the existentialists, should try to incorporate Marxism into a philosophy
hardly in accord with it. A century has gone by since the first appearance
of the
Communist Manifesto
and one looks in vain for any first-rate
French works, literary, economic, or sociological, which Marxism has
inspired. France has known nothing comparable to the numerous
Marxist discussions that were carried on in Germany and Russia in the
first decade of this century. Georges Sorel and Jean Jaures, our sole
Socialist writers of any stature, were neither of them thoroughgoing
Marxists. Today a first-rate thinker like Sartre clings to a Marxism of
the most elementary kind. Because he believes the program of the R.D.R.,
which he is elaborating to have value for the whole of Europe, he
imagines it will avoid that oblivion which is the usual fate of ideas
originating
in
small countries.
It is the same misapprehension always. From the storehouse of
obsolete ideologies you abstract a few notions with which you think
to keep alive the unity of the people and the unity of liberty and the
revolution. You fancy yourself in the vanguard of history and you are
a hundred years behind the times.
