William Phillips (1) (1907–2002)

Having recently finished reading William Barrett's memoir, "The Truants - Adventures Among the Intellectuals," I decided to follow up by reading in book form the 50th anniversary edition of Partisan Review published in 1984. At first blush I thought that the editor, William Phillips, would have done better to publish a "greatest hits' anthology of the magazine dating back to 1934. The fiction section is on the uneven side and the pieces contributed by academics were definitely a cut below those offered by professional writers. But as the content shifted to the world of non-fiction the quality of writing and thought improved greatly.

I would not be generally attracted to a publication whose twin pillars are Marxism in politics even of the admirably anti-Stalinist strain when it wasn't fashionable on the Left, and modernism in art and literature which only looks good in comparison to the post-modern dreck that succeeded it. One of the currents that run through the non-fiction is the stance of those contributors vis a vis the neo-conservative phenomenon that arose in response to the radical New Left movement of the 60's and the failures of the Great Society programs to deliver on greatness. Most of the authors stress their ongoing commitment to political leftism while rejecting the totalitarian Communist regimes that appeared to be in the ascendance in world politics. Their leftism has mellowed with age and softened from a doctrinaire Marxist faith to a democratic socialism whose most notable feature is its resistance to the conservatism of Ronald Reagan whose name goes unmentioned but who is clearly the bête noir that they reject.

There are some notable exceptions to the above, most notably comments by Lionel Abel, Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, old friends and colleagues who have shed their former political and personal allegiances and come down firmly on the side of those who maintain that the United States is a force for good in the world and that liberal democratic capitalism, whatever its shortcomings is morally superior to the alternatives at hand.

There is an interesting article contributed by Sidney Hook recounting the story of the infamous 1949 Waldorf Conference (Cultural and Scientific Council for World Peace) organized by the Stalinist left and associated fellow travelers. Hook relates his attempt to get on the conference agenda to deliver a paper that would argue three theses:

1. There are no 'national truths' in science, and that it is only by its deficiencies that a science can ever become the science of one nation or another. Illustrations: 'German science,' 'Jewish science.'

2. There are no 'class truths' or 'party truths' in science. The belief that there are confuses the objective evidence for a theory which, if warranted, is universally valid with the uses, good, bad, or indifferent that are made of it. Illustrations: 'proletarian science', 'bourgeois physics', Partinost.

3. The cause of international scientific cooperation and peace has been very seriously undermined by the influence of doctrines which uphold the doctrine that there are 'national', or 'class' or 'party' truths."

Of course Hook was turned down and he organized a counter campaign, the Ad Hoc Committee for Intellectual Freedom, which hosted its own alternative conference at Freedom House and undertook a campaign to expose the Communist bias at work in the formation of the Waldorf Conference panel agendas and the selection of speakers. If this seems like a memoir from the bad old days by a thinker who was stuck in the past, just consider the above theses propounded by Hook and substitute the category of 'race' for 'class', 'party', or 'national'. The culture wars of the present are nothing new and in some respects are a continuation of the conflicts over politics and the arts that were being waged over seventy years ago.… (more)