Publisher’s Foreword 6
Introduction 7
I. Ideologists For A Dying System 12
Irrational “Isms”
Heroics of Futility
Dead-End Philosophers
The Faith-Cult
The Brute-Cult
Culture in the Service of Racism
Superman as Anglo-Saxon
II. Masks for Imperialism 39
Bomb ’Em and Burn ’Em!
Soap Opera: Station Nam
Rogues, Rodents, and Renegades
III. Toward a People’s Culture 47
Cultural Affirmation Against Racism
Progressive Strains
Independent Formations
IV. The Marxist Component 66
Our Cultural Resources
Labor’s Cultural Responsibility
On Theory and Practice
V. “... Advance to Meet Them…” 80
Grass Roots
“Style in the Work”
Self-Criticism
Artist and Audience
A Significant Anniversary
This booklet is based on the text of the major address delivered by V. J. Jerome at a Marxist cultural conference held in New York in June, 1947, under the sponsorship of the magazines, Mainstream and New Masses. It includes also the author’s remarks closing the conference.
The conference, national in scope, brought together some two hundred cultural workers active in the arts and sciences to discuss their common problems in relation to major political currents in the United States and internationally. The conference examined the role of reactionary ideas advanced by various exponents of bourgeois ideology, the potentialities of the people’s counter-forces moving toward a democratic culture, and the special responsibilities of Marxist cultural workers in the fight for peace, security, and the people’s right, for the defense of culture.
The swift movement of events since this report was made only underscores the significance of the author’s analysis. The emergence of the Marshall Plan, dressing up the Truman Doctrine, and the new efforts of the Thomas Un-American Committee to silence writers and artists, strengthen the author’s appeal for uniting all progressive forces against the warmongers and Red-baiters.
V. J. Jerome is the editor of Political Affairs, a member of the editorial boards of Mainstream and New Masses, and author of several books and pamphlets, his latest being The Treatment of Defeated Germany, published by New Century Publishers in 1946.
THE bourgeoisie seeks to enlist the cultural forces in its service allegedly on a non-class basis. Intent on concealing from the masses the true relationship of culture to society, the ruling class rationalizes its deception in the phraseology of philosophic confusion. In literature and the arts especially, where the element of form is present in such a high degree, bourgeois philosophic ideas insinuate themselves with less apparent vulnerability than in other cultural spheres.
The root philosophy of bourgeois politics and culture today, as throughout the epoch of decaying capitalism, is idealism. Although the schools of philosophical idealism are various, they comprise a common system of thought in which the world that we perceive has existence primarily as idea. In thus denying the existence, of an independent material world, of which our ideas are the reflections, idealism distorts the relationship between thinking and being and denies the existence of objective truth. Driven by the growing need to offer ideological apologies for a dying system, and faced with the increasing pressure of Marxist critique in every sphere of contemporary life and thought, the bourgeoisie has been impelled increasingly to present idealism in a variety of covert, ambiguous, “neutral,” and “reconciling” attitudes, of which pragmatism, instrumentalism, and logical positivism are well-known manifestations.
This reactionary philosophy is expressed in the various subjectivist, intuitivist, mystical, and nihilistic cults, which have their source especially in the irrationalism of Henri Bergson and Benedetto Croce. Their specifically American source, less apparent, are the question-begging pragmatism of William James and its offshoot, the instrumentalism of John Dewey.
By its emphasis on action and practical achievement, pragmatism has staked out its claim as the philosophy of adequacy and success, the American bourgeois method of “getting there.” In actuality, it is a philosophy of narrow, short-sighted expediency, in which truth is reduced to subjective “satisfaction” measurements and tested by an “after the event” criterion. “An idea is ‘true’ so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives.” (James.) For Dewey, “a hypothesis is true if it works.” This myth-making subjectivism lends itself to the most reactionary uses. Thus, if the promoters of the Third Reich found racist Aryanism “profitable to our lives,” then, by pragmatist logic, the doctrines of Rosenberg and Goebbels were true. Understandable therefore is the Nazi partiality to pragmatism and Mussolini’s assertion of fascism’s indebtedness to James, among others. Essentially, pragmatism, by its denial of objective truth, leaves practice without theory, revealing its vaunted action-philosophy as barren activism without basis for scientific generalization and deduction of fundamental conclusions. It is a philosophy that rules out scientific prediction and basic program for purposive social action and social transformation.
This pervasive contempt for theory was recently reiterated in Arthur M. Schlesinger’s The Age of Jackson:
“. . . if social catastrophe is to be avoided, it can only be by an earnest, tough-minded, pragmatic attempt to wrestle with new problems as they come, without being enslaved by a theory of the past, or by a theory of the future.” (p. 522)
The wrestling prowess of this tough-minded, theoryless pragmatism is demonstrated in a further conclusion in the book that “most important problems” are “insoluble.”
An important instance of current cultivation of intuitivism as the philosophy of life and art is The Meeting of East and West (1946), by F. S. C. Northrop, Professor of Philosophy at Yale. The work has been hailed by some as one of the significant books of the age.
Northrop is an eclectic who sets out to bring about a reconciliation between intuitivism and reason, between what he calls the “aesthetic component” of the Orient and the “theoretic component” of the West. For the United States, Northrop urges “a new aesthetic approach to the nature of things, different from that of the European West.” The latter, which the United States has taken as its heritage, suffers, in his opinion, from “a predominantly political, economic, technological and practical emphasis.” To counteract this materialistic menace, he proposes “a religion of the emotions and cultivation of the aesthetic intuition for its own sake.” He presumes to trace in the United States a new art that is purely intuitive:
“, . . the aim of this new art is to convey the aesthetic immediacy of things without intellectually added references and interpretations. . . . Here seems to be something self-evident and basic upon which an America and a world fighting their way away from faiths that have failed them can build.” (p. 162)
What is significant in Northrop’s thesis is not its intuitivism or its irrationality in general—that is patently borrowed and re-hashed from Croce, Bergson, and others—but rather its attempt at accommodating the intuitive to the scientific, the idealistic to the materialistic. This manifestation—a highly developed technique in contemporary bourgeois philosophy—attests to the advance of dialectical materialism in the world today, which makes it difficult to offer idealism “straight” in the philosophical market.
I cite Northrop’s work because its thesis is applicable to the various forms of renunciation of reason which we find in present-day American literature.
A particular symptom of the increasing vogue of the irrational is strikingly seen in the sphere of the novel in John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus. Steinbeck’s novel, at bottom, expresses hostility to the artificialities and meannesses of bourgeois civilization. But, and this is very significant, because in Steinbeck’s mind civilization must of necessity be bourgeois, he regresses to an exaltation of antisocial primitivism. Thus, what might have been conscious revolt against bourgeois society turns into nihilistic flight, symbolized by the bus driver’s marooning and desertion of his bus with all its passengers. The outcome is emptiness and a deflation of human values. “It was a stinker’s game and a muddy track,” as one of the characters reflects. Steinbeck’s novel illustrates the pernicious defeatism implicit in an irrational critique of an irrational society.
In the theatre, dead-end futility is bodied forth in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. O’Neill builds his drama on the thesis that life is a struggle between illusion and reality, in which illusion is indispensable to life, while reality is unbearable and means death. This is true, it would seem, not only of society in the main, but even of the social dregs in Harry Hope’s saloon and rooming house—this “last harbor,” where you might think the embers of illusion lie extinguished on the hearth of each man’s life. The attempt by the zealous salesman of reality, Hickey, to rob these lives of their self-deceptions is doomed to failure; he cannot face his own reality when he has cut its tie with illusion. O’Neill’s philosophy of stark pessimism is summed up by the one-time radical Larry Slade: “The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”
We need, however, to differentiate between the work of O’Neill, the foremost American dramatist, and the general run of flippant, nihilistic writing. We are concerned with a major artist who, though unconscious of the moving forces of reality and drifting into the “last harbor,” yet strives seriously to grapple with the phenomenon of living. But he grapples blindly; unable or unwilling to see the guilt of capitalism, he condemns “Life.” In O’Neill’s skepticism there is an intense sympathy for people—a sympathy, however, not enlightened by any rational hope; thus his work becomes a shutter against the light of reality.
Writers and artists who lack clear vision of the course of history sink into decadence. To cover up or to glamorize their failure to see and express the positive, they improvise crude philosophies of despair and cynicism.
SOURCE: Jerome, V. J. [Victor Jeremy] Culture in a Changing World: A Marxist Approach. New York: New Century Publishers, December 1947. 94 pp. Publisher’s Foreword, p. 6; Chapter I: Ideologists For A Dying System: Irrational “Isms,” pp. 12-17.
Jerome is the author of several fiction and nonfiction works. See esp. The Negro in Hollywood Films (New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1950).
Book Summary:
Heroics of Futility: denunciation of existentialism, Sartre, Camus.
Dead-End Philosophers: denuciation of Kafka, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Neo-Thomists, Trotskyites, … contrasted with worthy writers.
The Faith-Cult: denunciation of the reactionary T. S. Eliot, contrasting his poetry with real life events of 1935. Also condemned are Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Karl Shapiro, Maxwell Anderson; also the reactionary bias and influence of the Catholic Church and popular magazines, reactionary clericalism in movies.
The Brute-Cult: on aggressive idealism and fascist tendencies, violence in radio, movies, pulp magazines, comics, detective fiction.
Culture in the Service of Racism: Since the end of the war Hollywood has reverted to its anti-Negro stereotyping, the same in radio, coupled with employment discrimination in all media, the arts, the press. The falsification of history is rampant. Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma reduces the social causes of the oppression of Negroes to a moral dilemma.
Superman as Anglo-Saxon: American magazines are heavily biased in favor of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon peoples and biased against Negroes and Jews.
Bomb ’Em and Burn ’Em!: On “Western Moral Culture” propaganda, anti-Sovietism; condemnation of Trotsky, the Truman Doctrine, James Burnham.
Soap Opera: Station Nam: The “American Way of Life” as touted by the Establishment is exposed as a sham. Michael Polanyi’s detached, individualistic ideology of science is contrasted with the reality of what would be called over a decade later the military-industrial complex. Jerome trashes American exceptionalism and its anti-Sovietism.
Rogues, Rodents, and Renegades: Against red-baiting, Koestler, Orwell, Trotskyism.
Cultural Affirmation Against Racism: Documents the growing militancy and progress of the Negro freedom struggle―in the courts, in the arts, in baseball, on Broadway. Film and radio are not doing so well. Sinclair Lewis’s novel Kingsblood Royal is praised. Herbert Aptheker’s booklet, The Negro People in America refutes the ideological basis of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma. Negro cultural initiatives are outlined, and of course Paul Robeson is highlighted as a key figure. Examples of assertive and militant literature on the part of Negroes and their white advocates are mentioned. Jerome also cautions on the dangers of antisemitism (and the British manipulation of the Palestine situation). The struggle against antisemitism in literature and film is exemplified. Still, there remain obstacles, not only of outright prejudice and censorship, but timid and lukewarm approaches to these social problems.
Progressive Strains: There are some good books on the labor movement, but little in the arts reflecting labor issues. Works sympathetic to the USSR are mentioned. A handful of progressive American plays and films are mentioned, also the radical Italian film Open City. The less than successful efforts of atomic scientists to address the threat of the atomic bomb are also mentioned.
Independent Formations listed include the Art, Science and Professions Council of the Progresive Citizens of America (PCA-ASP), the Communist Party, the erstwhile federally funded WPA projects, various cultural and labor educational institutions, radio and film initiatives. Efforts should expand into the terrain of FM radio. Trade unions should support more cultural activities. The Marxist literary periodicals Mainstream and New Masses are helping to fill this gap.
The Marxist Component begins with a brief review of dialectical and historical materialism. Marxism rejects both economic determinism (with fatalism) and the transcendent individual. Theory is indispensable. So is the Communist Party, says Jerome.
Our Cultural Resources: A further pitch for Marxism-Leninism. Progressive Americanism is pro-science, internationalist, anti-monopolist, pro-labor.
Labor’s Cultural Responsibility: Following the war’s end, there is a strong left throughout Europe. Despite its advances, the American working class still lacks class consciousness. The labor bureaucrats are too philistine to back cultural efforts. Even the CIO is lacking.
On Theory and Practice: Empiricist sociology and literary works limited to isolated situations lack connection with the essence of social dynamics. Jerome has some advice as to how to handle social problems in literature. The Marxist must struggle against ‘Browder-revisionism’ and left sectarianism.
Grass Roots: Cultural work must advance beyond New York and Hollywood.
“Style in the Work”: Browderism undermined class struggle.
Self-Criticism: “Our literary and art criticism too often evidenced a lack of sensitive approach to the problems of the artist as artist, to the aesthetic principles through which he operates.” Strategy and tactics must be deployed in adjudicating the relation between form and content. Vulgar, dogmatic condemnation does not help. “Indeed, the struggle against reaction in cultural expression would long ago have been won, were writers like T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Jeffers, and Werfel bereft of artistic expression through their reactionary consciousness.”
Artist and Audience: A labor-based audience needs to be built. Note quote from Whitman. Working class participation should not be limited to being in the audience, but also creators.
A Significant Anniversary: This is the 100th anniversary of Marxism’s founding. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1871 letter to Robert Bridges s quoted.
Comment: This is an interesting document as to where the Communist Party and American society stood in 1947, just as the Cold War and political repression were taking shape but before they became solidified. This document is a combination of Stalinist dishonesty, wishful thinking, and some sound observations, especially on the ‘Negro Question.’ ― RD
Harold
Cruse’s Attack on Jewish Communists: Comment
by Sid Resnick
introduction - historical background
in Modern Science and Its Philosophy by Philipp Frank
Creativity and Its Discontents: The Response to Whitehead’s Process and Reality
Anti-Bergson: Bibliography & Links
Occultism, Eastern Mysticism, Fascism, & Countercultures: Selected Bibliography
Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide
Offsite:
V. J. Jerome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
F. S. C. Northrop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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