8
PARTISAN REVIEW
with other writers such as Malcolm Cowley and Kenneth Burke who
had been fellow travellers . Waldo Frank, who was not considered
trustworthy enough, was deposed as president, and the Congress
elected as its new president Donald Ogden Stewart, who was more
pliable, and was not associated in the public mind with the old guard
communists or fellow travellers .
The party regulars were there in full force, and they could have
elected Stalin as president, if they were told to. Who were the oppo–
sition? A tiny band of political Don Quixotes, made up of Mary
McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, Eleanor Clark, Philip Rahv, and
myself. Rahv and I had broken with the communists and had joined
with McCarthy, Macdonald, F.W. Dupee , and George Morris to
put out the new
Partisan Review.
Rahv and I were the most politically
experienced in the group and knew most about Marxist doctrine and
communist practice. (There were some who had broken earlier but
they were mostly not literary.) In any event, the others felt we should
attend the Writers Congress and voice our opposition. Rahv and I
said it was useless : we would be talking to the walls. But the others
insisted . We felt they did not understand that communists used any
means to crush their critics, particularly those from the left. But they
were excited by the prospect of challenging the communists on their
own grounds. They were clearly bolder than Rahv and myself, less
concerned about the consequences , and I suppose we were shamed
into going along.
Need I say it was a fiasco? Mary was a marvelous speaker,
gracious but firm, Eleanor combined conviction and sensibility,
Dwight immediately impressed one as a man of integrity, who had
no patience with doubletalk. They would have roused any free
gathering. But they were put down with great bravado by the party
stalwarts , those veterans of endless sophistical polemics and
rationalizations and lies, who could say anything they pleased
because they knew that they had everybody on their side except us .
Rahv and I, who had some knowledge of communist tactics and
methods of debate, tried to undercut their dismissal of our criticism.
But we did not have our heart in it. And after a short exchange
between our pistols and their artillery, we walked out. The New
Masses described our opposition thus: "Several Trotskyites present
who did not participate in the creative discussions attacked the
Soviet Union and the People's Front in Spain . Their conduct in an
atmosphere of full and free discussion convinced the doubtful that
Trotskyism is sterile, destructive, and reactionary.
~
Those who have
