LIONEL ABEL
33
in fact the term "constructive criticism" was widely used . Unhappily,
the optimism of the period has long since gone. Today we see a spe–
cial emphasis on the negative and painful in criticism , and the term
honored at the moment is "deconstruction.")2 His essay, "Social Fas–
cism," appeared in V . F . Calverton's
The Modern Monthly.
In making
his case , Hook also took apart the theory of
"objectivl'
treason to the
working class - treason , that is, notwithstanding one's intentions .
This theory, as Hook made clear, required Communists to believe
that Stalin was infallible.
Still another instance of Hook's judgment in politics was his de–
fense of the war effort of the United States government during World
War II . Such support was by no means general among American in–
tellectuals , and it was particularly limited among those who held
Marxist views and who defended socialist values. Even before Pearl
Harbor and the American entry into the war, the Trotskyist move–
ment, which had influenced politically those of the left-wing intellec–
tuals who were not Stalinist, had split into two groups, both of which
insisted that if war came the United States and its probable allies
should receive no support from the labor movement. When war did
come, both groups maintained this view.
It
was not until the end of
the war that Shachtman characterized as "mad" the war position of
the Trotskyists he led. Recently, certain former Shachtmanites have
explained the views they held during the war as follows: they gave
critical support to the United States, they now say, but simply did
not make such support explicit. Now this line is hardly honest. In
politics , the Shachtmanites were a propaganda group, and only that.
2. Just another thought about "deconstruction" - it is probably wrong of me to dis–
miss it as if it were no more than a result of the negativism of our period or the per–
sonal sadism of certain critics. Let me say first, then, repeating what John Searle
already has said in the
New York Review
of
Books,
that as far as philosophers are con–
cerned, deconstructionist attacks on metaphysics are nothing new. What about de–
constructionist attacks on the metaphysics expressed, or latent, in literary works?
Here there was indeed something new. For example, the late Paul de Man attacked
Marcel Proust for having yielded to metaphysics in preferring metaphor to meton–
omy. Now when I asked Roman Jacobson, who had pointed up the distinction be–
tween metaphor and metonomy, if de Man's use of his idea was not an exaggeration
of the difference between the two kinds of trope, he replied that it most certainly
was. What Jacobson could not answer, though, was the charge that it was the
very
exaggeration
of the difference between the two kinds of trope which had made critics
take up his idea.
