MEMORANDA
I.e
Trahison des Clercs.
No matter what they do the intellec·
tuals suffer, like Joseph K., from generic guilt. As the tide swings they
are alternately accused of betraying their calling by being too political
or not political enough, particularly by those for whom self.flagellation
is a form of consciousness. (In fact, one wonders how, with such a record,
they can ever be thought of as the "conscience of mankind" or "the
vanguard of art and thought." And if
they
aren't, who is?)
The latest indictment comes from Jean Paul Sartre. In an interview
in the
New York Times Magazine,
Sartre accuses the intellectuals of
"bad faith" because they limit their political activity to the typewriter
and fail to take to the streets in support of the revolutionary workers and
students. At one swoop, Sartre has not only reversed Julien Benda's
famous criticism - that the intellectuals "play the game of political pas·
sions" - but he has also resurrected the old Stalinist logic, according to
which anyone who didn't come out for the party was a bourgeois escapist
if not an outright counterrevolutionary. Sartre goes the Stalinists one
better, though: they were content to have an intellectual support them
with his pen; Sartre wants
his
body too. Apparently he doesn't care
where your mind is, so long as your body is on the line. "It is very easy,"
Sartre says, "to denounce the war in Vietnam by signing petitions or
marching in a parade with 20,000 comrades. But it doesn't accomplish
one-millionth of what could be accomplished if all your [American]
in·
tellectuals went into the ghettoes, into the Oakland port, to the war fac–
tories, and risked being mishandled by the roughs of the maritime union.
In my view, the intellectual who does all his fighting from an office is
counter-revolutionary today, no matter what he writes"
[my italics].
One has to admire Sartre's intellectual achievements and
his
polit–
ical courage. But it must be said too that this kind of romantic leftism
does the socialist cause no good. It misreads the political situation, par–
ticularly in this country, and its effect can only be to inflame those
hopped-up kids of all ages who already can't wait for the revolution.
Surely Sartre has read Lenin's warnings about infantile leftism, a "dis–
order" that isolates radicals from their potential supporters by glorify–
ing violent and uncompromising gestures. "Inexperienced revolutionists,"
cautioned Lenin, who was not exactly a softie, "often think that legal
means of struggle are opportunist. . . .
On
the other hand, they think
that illegal means ... are revolutionary."
What's unfortunate is that because of the appeal of his name, Sar–
tre's
barricade-itis
might be catching, further spreading the antiintellec–
tualism already almost epidemic on the left.
Black Writing: Separate but Equal.
In my opinion, Morris Dick–
stein's piece in this issue of PR is one of the few attempts - besideS
Richard Gilman's"- to talk about the claims of the so-called blaCk aes-
