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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 21, 23 May 1949, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
“There is, indeed, a gap between Soviet – or, better, Kremlin – and Western culture which can no longer be bridged. But this gap, this abyss is not just a political matter: democracy vs. totalitarianism ... It is that, too, but it is also something bigger. There was more in common between Bakunin and Metternich, or Debs and Frick, or Marx and Mill – and there is more in common between the present-day similars of such extreme antagonists – than there is between, to reduce the scale slightly, Comrade Howard [Milton Howard, writer for The Daily Worker] and myself. The chasm that separates Western from Kremlin culture is the most important political fact in the world today. The basic premises, the very concepts of reality have become so different that there is simply no communication possible, and it is either ignorance or hypocrisy to assert that there is.” – Dwight Macdonald in Politics, Winter 1949, page 10.
“I must confess that I got quite a different impression of the Stalinoids – at least of their New York ‘cultural’ periphery – than I had had from my previous experience, which was based largely on their press. Talking to them face to face, I had two main impressions. The first was that it was possible to communicate, since we had a common culture and even (oddly enough) political background: that is, we read the same books, went to the same art shows and foreign films, shared the same convictions in favor of the (American) underdog – the Negroes, the Jews, the Catholic hierarchy and the U.S. State Department ... It proved to be very easy to enter into discussion, or at least argument with NCASP [National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions]; even Howard Fast proved to be quite congenial ...” – Dwight Macdonald in Politics, Winter 1949, page 32-D.
Heads, we bridge the gap; tails, we don’t.
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