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notion that the Stalinist regime represented "socialism," the
New York writers found themselves developing divergent atti–
tudes toward, as these reflected divergent theories about, Stalin–
ism. Was Stalinism still, as Trotsky said, a "degenerated workers
state," or as Isaac Deutscher modified this view, a form of
despotism that nevertheless performed the "progressive" func–
tion of modernizing a backward society? Was it, as others came
to believe, a new form of class oppression, variously called
bureaucratic collectivism or state capitalism? Was it a variant of
fascism? With whom was it proper or possible to form alliances
against Stalinism? What relationship, if any, was permissible
between the democratic left and the Communist Parties in
authoritarian right-wing societies? in democratic societies? How
real was the danger of a Communist takeover in Europe during
the 1950s? What attitude should be taken toward the attacks
during the McCarthy years against fellow-travelers and alleged
spies?
These disputes were very sharp. Intellectual alliances were
broken , personal friendships ended. The debates that began in
the thirties and continue to this very day concern not merely
major theoretical issues, nor merely pressing strategic problems,
but the very ground of political morality. I think there is honor
to be salvaged in the fact that the New York writers, like the
radical sects before them, struggled with these issues. There
would always be American literary people who expressed dis–
dain at these deracinated New Yorkers who had gotten so
embroiled with the problem of communism that they paid
insufficient attention
to
such native wonders as the Lewis and
Clark expedition or such imported marvels as structuralism. But
here, with whatever distortions of emphasis and expression, the
New York writers were right: for better or worse, communism
has been central to our time.
Whatever their other failings-numerous and grave
enough-the New York writers played a positive role, in con–
trast to their more glamorous Parisian counterparts, in making
anti-Stalinism a premise of political and moral value. That,
later, it could be debased into a crude antiradicalism, or that it
could be distorted for reactionary ends: of course! To recognize
