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PARTISAN REVIEW
gradually had been losing its hold on serious intellectuals, even on
left anticommunists, though there were some residues. It was be–
coming clear that the international rhetoric of Marxism was blinding
us to political and esthetic realities. To serve some abstract notion of
humanity meant to blur the fact that America, with all its shortcom–
ings, still represented the possibility of a free and democratic life.
The vulgar Marxism of the period also magnified and transformed
into an absolute the critical strain native to the American tradition.
And the emphasis on an international perspective in all matters
tended to obscure the fact that art - and especially literature - came
out of a specific experience and that it was uniquely national as well
as broadly human.
It
was time to reconsider our relation to our
country and our culture.
This did not mean somersaulting into some conservative or
chauvinist posture. What we said was:
The affirmative attitude toward America which has emerged
since the Second World War may be a necessary corrective of
the earlier extreme negation, but the affirmation cannot be
equivocal. For American political and economic institutions
have not suddenly become ideally beneficent, and many in–
tellectuals are not prepared to give up all criticism of them.
The statement further pointed to the dilemma - a dilemma ig–
nored by Kramer, presumably for ideological reasons - created by
the fact that mass culture thrives in modern political democracy.
"Political democracy," the statement said,
"seems to coexist with the domination of the 'masses.' Whatever
the cultural consequences might be, the democratic values
which America either embodies or promises are necessary con–
ditions for civilization and represent the only immediate alter–
native so long as Russian totalitarianism threatens world
domination. Nevertheless there are serious cultural conse–
quences: mass culture not only weakens the position of the artist
and the intellectual by separating him from his natural au–
dience, but it also removes the mass of people from the kind of
art which might express their human and esthetic needs. Its
tendency is to exclude everything which does not conform to
popular norms; it creates and satisfies artificial appetites in the
entire population; it has grown into a major industry which con–
verts culture into a commodity."
Now regardless of whether this description of the political and
