Hearings regarding the communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session. Public law 601 (section 121, subsection Q (1947)

COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY 161 this "contribution," as has been pointed out, I severed tlie organic connection between art and ideology. Tills is not a small matter, but a serious one. For if the progress of literature and art is separate from thought, if the ideas of a writer bear no intimate relationship to the work he produces, then even Fascists can produce good art. This is not oidy contrary to historic fact, but it is theoretically absurd. Good art has always, and wili always, come from writers who love people, who ally themselves with the fate of the people, with the struggle of the people for social advancement. It is precisely because Fascists must hate people that 12 years of Nazi Germany produced not one piece of art in any field. It is for this reason that a writer like Celine, the Frenchman, who began with a talented work of protest, but who found no constructive philosophy for his protest, ended in corrupt cynicism, in hatred of people, in the artistic sterility of the Fascist. It is for the same reason that the talent of American writers like Farrell and Dos Passes has not matured but has, on the conti-ary, gone into swift down-grade into slie'^r dullness as well as the purveying of untruth. Here I want to interrupt for a word of comment on Farrell. I agree now that my characterization of him was deckledly lax, and that it was the inadvertent, but inevitable, result of the line of thinking in my article that separated art from ideology and politics. I want to make clear, however, that while "a mild attitude toward Trotzkyites" was apparently the net effect upon readers of my comments, it was not at all what I had in mind, and it decidedly does not reflect my opinions. Actually if I had been attempting a thoroiigh examination of Farrell, there would have been much more to say — and I want to say some of it now. Farrell's history and work are the best example I know of the manner in which a poisoned ideology and an increasingly sick soul can sap the talent and wreck the living fiber of a mans' work. This has been clear for quite some time now; his literary work has become weak, dull, repetitious. But precisely because this is so, and because his one outstanding work, Studs Lonigan, which ranks high among contemporary American novels — deservedly, I believe — was written before he became a Trotzkyite, it is essential to trace dialectically in his work — as in the work of others like him — the process of artistic decay. It was not something I was "cheering" abovTt, but it is soraething to reckon with as sheer fact that Farrell, Wright, Dos Passes, Koestler, etc., are "not thi'ough writing yet," that they are going to produce other books. If no one in America read these authors, one could settle by ignoring them. But this is not the case ; they are widely read. As I see it, the effective manner of dealing with their work is not to be content merely with contemptuous references ; this will not satisfy those wlio. ignorant of their political roles, know only their novels. What is needed is profound analysis of this method and logic by which their anti-Soviet, antipeople, antllabor attitudes enter their work, pervert their talents, turn them into tools and agents of reaction. Only in this manner can other writers be made to see clearly the artistic consequences of political corruption: only in this manner can the struggle for a mass audience be conducted in a truly persuasive and mature manner. At this point I should like to ask a question particularly of those who I'ead my earlier article with approval, or with only sketchy criticism : What is the sum of what I have been saying up until now? It seems clear to me, as I hope it is already clear to them, that I have been discussing and illustrating revisionism, and that my article, as pointed out by others, was a specific example of revisionist thinking in the cultural field. For what is revisionism? It is distorted Marxism, turning half-truths into total untruths, splitting ideology from its class base, denying the existence of class struggles in society, converting jNIarxism from a science of society and struggle into apologetics for monopoly exploitation. In terms of my article I think the clearest summation was given by S'amuel S'illen in the Daily Worker : "A hasty reading of the article may give the impi-ession that it merely offers suggestions for correcting admitted defects of the literary left. But a deeper study of the article reveals that the.^e suggestions, some of which might be valuable in another context, are here bound up with a line of thinking that would lead us to shatter the very foundation of the literary left, Marxism. This is (he main issue. On this issue we must have utmost clarity. "While INIaltz seems to believe that he is merely criticizing a 'vulgarized approach' to literature, he is in reality undermining a class approach. While