168
PARTISAN REVIEW
than those by cynics or gangsters. We know that the rank-and-flle of
the communists were more idealistic than their leaders. On the other
hand, many were more naive and simpleminded . Certainly, many
intellectual communists were not very smart politically-which,
perhaps, raises a more complicated question : the role of stupidity in
history.
Generally, O'Neill takes a middle-of-the-road view of the
opposing extremes, which is always safe and sensible. But it mumes
nuances and shifts of position; and, by simplifying the intellectual
overtones, particularly those of the anticommunists,
The Great Schism
frequently reads like the report of a game between two teams. And
O'Neill's choice of heroes-Roger Baldwin, Dwight Macdonald,
Sidney Hook, Mary McCarthy, Margaret Marshall, George
Orwell, Diana Trilling, and Edmund Wilson-is a strange
assortment, not all of whom can be considered among the leading
anti-Stalinists or the leading thinkers of the period . The list
represents some personal bias of O'Neill's, which he is careful not to
reveal. Why, for example, are not Irving Howe, Daniel Bell , and
Lionel Trilling in his pantheon?
But there is a more serious objection to O'Neill's scholarship,
involving the question of objectivity and accuracy of historical
research, not only by O'Neill but by other scholars and memoirists.
And since my own experience differs at some points from other
accounts, it might be useful to compare them . To be sure,
recollections and reconstructions are bound to disagree. But there
must be some incontrovertible facts; otherwise history becomes a
melange of different findings and memories.
For example, O'Neill tries to reconstruct a meeting of the
American Committee for Cultural Freedom on the subject of
McCarthy from notes by Dwight Macdonald. Now Macdonald was
a brilliant writer, but not always an unbiased observer. It so happens
that I was a member of the executive board of the committee and
was present at the meeting. But O'Neill-or is it Macdonald–
confuses this meeting with several others. At the meeting O'Neill
thinks he is writing about there was a round-robin airing of the
views of each person . And O'Neill distorts my remarks as well as
a resolution offered by Daniel Bell. O'Neill has me saying something
about separating a general statement about McCarthyism from
a specific resolution, implying some softness on my part toward
McCarthy. The truth is that I thought a criticism of McCarthy
