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much like Mencken. For Mencken was not only a nimble satirist and a
very funny writer, but he was detached, cold as ice, brutally smug. Mac–
donald is writing here about events and ideas in which he was pas–
sionately implicated up to the limits of his capacity, and he gets angry
and abusive in a way that Mencken never could.
In the end, then, the book has to be read as the autobiography of
an idea-it belongs with those memoirs of the Marxist left which in
American writing correspond to memoirs of the early Progressive period.
It takes its place on the shelf with the memoirs of other old revolution–
ists; it has the immediate quaintness of material to which the author
himself looks back with incredulity, as who should say-Was
I
there,
in
Paterson, in Passaic, at the time of the great strike? Was it really
I
who wrote that pamphlet appealing to the workers and peasants of
the Bronx?
It is this extraordinary and unexpected irrelevance of the "radical"
experience that is so striking in Macdonald's book. In retrospect, it is
the unreality of old issues, old quarrels, the utter insignificance of Amer–
ican Communism, Lovestoneism, Weisbordism, Trotskyism, that is the
most profound impression he leaves. But why is the impression so much
of triviality, boredom and fatigue? Actually, the irrelevance of the radi–
cal tradition to current politics is far less obvious than the insignificance
of the conservative tradition. And in any event, the editorials in the
New Republic,
the fights on
Partisan Review,
the letters-to-the-editor
in the
New International-all
this, though it seems to him now only
vacuous, must have been important enough to Macdonald, since an
essential part of his life was invested in it. Yet vigilant and unspar–
ing as he is about himself, eager to be honest, to avoid exaggeration, he
writes as if he cannot disguise from himself the utter meaninglessness
and triviality of what it means to be an old "revolutionist." The feeble
irony of this word, borrowed from the Russian (or from the English
of Russians), illustrates the self-consciousness, the unease, the absurdity
that he feels about his position. Nowadays there are many other old
revolutionists-for some Marxism was not an adventure but part of
one's very upbringing-who also feel that the experience was essentially
accidental, sentimental, absurd; for them the Young People's Socialist
League, the branch meeting, correspond to Sunday schools and to the
Epworth League.
But despite this personal impression of triviality, there remains the
dogmatism, the materialism, and sometimes the very real corruption of
many old revolutionists. Macdonald points to this in passing, in an ex–
cellent commentary on the
New Leader's
shameless flattery of politicians
