310
PARTISAN REVIEW
its own group norms and standards, by resisting the bourgeois in–
centives to accommodation, and perforce making a virtue of its
separateness from the mass. That this strategy has in the main been
successful is demonstrated by the
only
test that really counts--the
test of creative achievement. After all, it is chiefly the avant-garde
which must be given credit for the production of most of the
literary masterpieces of the past hundred years, from
Madame Bovary
to the
Four Quartets;
and the other
arts
are equally indebted to
its venturesome spirit.
If
the artists of the avant-garde are alienated, as it is said, then
at least they are free to convert their consciousness of that unhappy
state into an imaginative resource. This cannot be claimed for the
artists in mass-culture, whose function literally depends on their
capacity to cultivate a kind of strategic unawareness of meaning
and consequence. Of course, there are certain elements in mass–
culture, some types of jazz and the folklore of sport for instance,
that have a positive value. On the whole, though, the proliferation
of kitsch in this country under the leveling stimulus of the profit–
motive is a liability of our society which is not to be wished away
by pious appeals to democracy and the rights of the "common
man." But if under present conditions we cannot stop the ruthless
expansion of mass-culture, the least we can do is to keep apart and
refuse its favors .
DAVID RIESMAN
I think it is America, and not only some of its intellectuals
(or the relative cultural balance between America and Europe),
that has changed. In the sphere of economic development I don't
believe it necessary to argue the point in these pages, but a word
might be said concerning our political institutions. The two spheres
are of course related, and our steadily rising productivity has made
it possible for politicians to payoff their promises in jobs and coin
of the realm rather than in a fanatical search for scapegoats; in–
deed, even a demagogue like Huey Long or Townsend could hardly
keep ahead of the social services which were coming anyway. De–
spite the current outcry over apathy and corruption, Americans
