following things are absolutely neces–
sary:
1.
You must
be
anti-capitalist. No
Keynesian meliorism; it has not yet
been proved, except in theory, that the
Keynesian formula "works" (whereas,
I suppose, it
has
been proved that the
Marxist one does). The "intellectual
vocation," Professor Howe tells us, lies
in "a life dedicated to values that can–
not possibly be realized by a commer–
cial civilization."
If
you do not see the
necessity of this proposition, you are a
.fool or a knave. But it is not enough
to be anti-capitalist; you must
be
anti–
capitalist in the right way. No agrar–
ianism, no turning back the clock, no
gradualism.
If
you disagree with Marx,
you are not only mistaken, you are
a "Marx-baiter." On the other hand,
you must not
be
a Stalinist; that is
not true non-conformism. There is only
one true non-conformism.
2. You must believe, not only that
Senator McCarthy is wrong and bad,
but that he is an
imminent
threat to
freedom. "Serious intellectuals,"
Pro–
fessor Howe tells us in a voice charged
with non-conformist irony, have so far
forgotten themselves as to debate the
question of how much of a danger
Senator McCarthy really is. No true
non-conformist will debate about any
of the propositions in the non-con–
formist creed. That way lies the un–
disciplined chaos of conformity.
3. You must believe that the modem
world is in a state of "social apo–
calypse," and this means you are not
to discover in it any non-apocalyptic
elements; the apocalypse is indivisible.
On the other hand, you must be sure
that the apocalypse you are talking
about is Professor Howe's apocalypse
and not, say, Reinhold Niebuhr's or
Arnold Toynbee's. There is only one
true apocalypse.
4. You are not to raise objections to
Rousseau's notion of a "state of na–
ture"; many "literary people" have
gone wrong by doing just that. The
idea of a "state of nature" is only a
"term of controversy" and it's not fair
to object to terms of controversy. "To
be sure," Professor Howe adds, there
are some thiags in Rousseau's thought
"which one may well find distastefu1."
5. You must not be pleased at any–
thing in the present cultural situation.
(That's where Lionel Trilling made his
mistake. )
6. You must not discover any justifi–
cation for the Smith Act. (That takes
care of Sidney Hook.)
7. Don't suggest that class barriers
are becoming less rigid in America.
(There goes Mary McCarthy.)
The list could be extended, but I
would suggest that those interested
in
finding out whether they are real non–
conformists (and who can fail to be
interested?) would do better to make
a study of Professor Howe's article for
themselves. It may appear, perhaps,
that some parts of the catechism are
petty, but it must be remembered that
Marxism is a science which sees the
world as a whole. That makes every–
thing just as important as everything
else.
If
you start out by believing that
the United, States benefits from a
uniquely fortunate geography, as Dan–
iel Boorstin seems to have done, you
may finally begin to doubt the coming
dictatorship of Senator McCarthy.
The tests may also seem, to the
be–
ginner, a little rigid, but remember
that true freedom comes only from dis–
cipline. Once you have succeeded in
purging your mind of its stodgy con–
formist ideas and know yourself to
be
a real non-conformist, then you will
be
truly free-you will have "a mind com–
mitted yet dispassionate, ready to stand
alone, curious, eager, skeptical"-and
you will be able to hit upon all kinds
of refreshing non-conformist ideas for
yourself. Consider the following, for in-
stance:
"Statification, war economy, the
growth of a mass society and mass cul–
ture-ali these are aspects of the same
historical process."
"A simplified but useful equation
suggests itself: the relation of the in–
stitutional world to the intellectuals is
as the relation of middlebrow culture
to serious culture.. .."
"It is as if Stendhal had never come
forth, with his subversive wit, to testify
how often life and literature find the
moral apparatus irrelevant or tedious,
as if Lawrence had never written
The
Man Who Died,
as if Nietzsche had
