Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR FRANCE Although it is true that one does not, in Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit's new book. Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, "receive a clear view of what happened in...
...I even seemed to detect a sort of sadistic pleasure in his face when he was exhibiting his toughness...
...In the days of our acquaintance, I always wondered why a man like Brecht should make himself the slave of positions he had taken in his youth...
...And the politicans, from the Communists to Gaul-lists, are pretty much satisfied with the way things are...
...by Steven V. Roberts...
...it would not do for him to calm his conscience by saying...
...The students are more interested in talk-festivals at the Odeon and guarding against bourgeois indulgence than in leading a serious movement for change...
...I was particularly concerned with the fate of the opposition in the Soviet Union at Stalin's hands...
...Brecht needed to emphasize his indifference to human suffering, to the demands of justice and of decency in the face of the large historical forces...
...New York City Sidney Hook Since Berthold Brecht has been canonized by a clique that also is trying to monopolize him...
...The French Communist-dominated labor confederation, the CGT, is...
...That, unfortunately, was his understanding of "historical materialism...
...I was then ideological Enemy Number One of the Communist party, and of its cultural commissar, V. J. Jerome, whom Brecht detested...
...For this reason, relatively few French workers join unions...
...of the reasons for my concern about the fate of those arrested after Kirov's assassination December 1, 1934, and for my indignation with Brecht when he responded to me as he did...
...And for some time I have highly regarded the mellow, yet penetrating, comments of James R. Mellow...
...it is perhaps the duty of those who knew him to keep all sides of his genius before the public eye...
...I have no special interest in the subject of Brecht except to set the record straight in the face of Bentley's innuendoes...
...Even so, I would not publish my own memories had not Bentley asked so insolently...
...Black Capitalism and Black Banks...
...Brecht's remark, as reported by Hook, is indeed a very deep insight into the nature and meaning of totalitarianism...
...Like the frightened petty-bourgeois that he was in such moments...
...Fifty years hence the Communists will have forgotten Stalin, but I want to be sure that they will still read Brecht...
...But others have...
...at that time we were ignorant of what was actually happening to them...
...I wrote this down immediately and have not forgotten it ever since...
...New York City Henry M. Pachter Visiting Professor, City College of New York KUDOS It is almost a compulsion to write you and praise the well-rounded and well-written group of articles I have just read in your March 17 issue...
...Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, "receive a clear view of what happened in France last May, or of why it happened, or of what went wrong with it," one unfortunately is not left any more enlightened by Leo Sauvage's essay-review ("Daniel Cohn-Bendit's Alternative," NL, April 14...
...After all, one does not easily forget the only time one has shown a guest the door, and the reasons therefore...
...But it does not explain the strike of the workers or the temporary breakdown of the government...
...Because I was an independent, neither a member of the Communist party nor of any opposition group, I was persuaded by B. J. Field, who came to me in 1932 as an emissary from Leon Trotsky, to serve as Treasurer of the American Committee for Exiled and Imprisoned Russian Communists (organized to aid their wives and children...
...Why would Brecht have picked Hook, of all people, for such a special avowal...
...The tragedy is that there is no place for the workers to go...
...De Gaulle fashioned his election pitch very crudely, but effectively, around the issue of revolution versus stability—and won decisively...
...Aron ascribes the whole May affair to the desire to resurrect the dreams of democratic revolution that were shattered by Stalin...
...This formulation goes back to the political philosophy of our mutual friend H.B.,according to which a revolutionary government in an underdeveloped country must first create the people it represents...
...On the contrary, he took an almost perverse pride in stating the truth coolly...
...The truth came upon me one day with a shattering suddenness...
...Sauvage criticizes the Cohn-Bendits primarily for their failure to examine Castroism...
...Until Brecht made his infamous remark, we were not unfriendly, as his visits to my apartment in 72 Barrow Street signify...
...When I once asked Brecht whether he knew where Lenin had written that "freedom is a bourgeois prejudice," he did not question (as I did) the correctness of the quotation...
...I related the story many times after it happened, but decided to publish it only when the myths about Brecht began to develop...
...Yes," Brecht would say, "it is terrible—but do we have anything besides the Soviet Union...
...One day I saw Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism on the little table next to his bed, and said something like, "Why do you bother...
...In truth, the workers had very legitimate and specific complaints against the French Establishment, for they do not partake of la societe de consommation against which the students railed...
...The intellectuals argue about, and relive, the fights of 30 years ago...
...by Elliott Abrams, "Challenging White Rule," by Jack Chatfield (about the really fine political grasp of Robert Clark of Mississippi...
...New York City Elton White BRECHT (cont'd...
...That was one The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...and the Ronald Steel review of John Hess' look on de Gaulle...
...Bentley writes ("Dear Editor," NL, March 17) that he "never heard him [Brecht] say anything like the comments which are reported by Sidney Hook...
...Brecht never talked theater with me—except to denounce Communist philistinism—but only politics and personalities...
...A typical French strike, for instance, lasts only an hour...
...This is one of Lenin's least admirable works, and I don't think you have to read it...
...John A. Chambliss...
...Sauvage mentions this for a tantalizing moment, but does not fully examine its implications...
...on purely bread-and-butter issues, much less militant than the AFL-CIO...
...Yet Raymond Aron's explanations, in La Revolution Introuvable, do not really make any more sense...
...He did not have the same attitude toward Stalin, but like many other literary refugees from Fascism, he was absolutely dogmatic about the Soviet Union and indifferent to the issue of freedom...
...The odd thing about Bentley's present attitude is that when I told the story to him in 1960 in West Berlin, he said: "That sounds just like Brecht...
...He had an impish mind and often spoke with tongue in cheek: the remark Hook quotes is structured exactly like the famous "last" poem Brecht composed after the Berlin uprising: "It is time for the government to look for a new people...
...By May it was clear that they were potentially ready to throw off the yoke of the cgt altogether...
...Brecht was extremely anxious to be an orthodox Leninist in anything relating to "historical necessity...
...His poems of the '30s often speak of the "bag with the writings of the classics...
...Despite Eric Bentley's disclaimer, he continues to impugn the veracity of my report of Brecht's 1935 remarks on the members of the opposition arrested by the Kremlin...
...The really important questions are why the workers joined the strike, why they defied the Communist leadership, and yet remained separate from the revolutionary students...
...What did Communism and the Soviet Union mean to him...
...Brecht was very impatient with people who take a benevolent view of revolutionary necessity and try to put a nice face on ugly things...
...Well, I have news for Bentley: Though I was not especially close to Brecht, he made statements to the same effect in my presence, and anyone familiar with Brecht will agree that it was quite in character for him to use such language, either to tempt or to annoy his listener...
...I thought of it when I saw Galileo...
...Even if they had not, this would not disprove the truth of my report of what he said to me...
...Did he perhaps need its intellectual security...
...In this perspective...
...In the wishful fantasizing of puerile revolutionists, the events last May constituted proof that under certain conditions the working class may become revolutionized.Yet in the June elections, the combined vote total of all the parties of the Left (revolutionary, reformist, radical, and Stalinist) was considerably smaller than the number of workers striking the month before...
...Moreover, in many areas the CGT unions have degenerated into the purest type of gangsterism...
...I must consider it a classic and therefore I have to read it...
...Well, perhaps these people are really guilty of something, and perhaps Stalin is not as bad as he seems to be...
...Chattanooga, Tenn...
...Once again he had admitted how "terrible" Stalin's terror was and once again I tried to convince him that he was among the few who were in a position to help if he would only speak up...
...He looked at me with his big eyes full of anxiety and said...
...He answered angrily, "If Lenin wrote this book...
...And odder still, it was Bentley who enabled me to pinpoint the exact time as before the official Moscow Show Trials began in 1936...
...The answer is detailed in the account I published in The New Leader (October 10, 1960) at the time of the beatification of Brecht as a humanist and fighter for human freedom—an account Bentley gave no evidence of having read in his initial letter ("Dear Editor," NL, December 30, 1968...
...When one combines the election results with the refusal of ihe workers to identify themselves with the students to any great extent, one is forced to consider some other hypothesis...
...Specifically: "The Mood in San Francisco...
...Why would Brecht," Bentley goes on, "have picked Hook, of all people, for such a special avowal...
...Therefore I cannot separate myself from the Party...
...All these are quite a credit to your discernment and selectivity...
...This may be true for the students and intellectuals...
...In his letter of March 17, Eric Bentley tries to deny certain of Brecht's features which are not endearing but nevertheless belong in the record—in particular, Brecht's comment about the victims of Stalin's purges, as reported by Sidney Hook in The New Leader of October 10, 1960: "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die...
...This has precious little to do with France...
Vol. 52 • April 1969 • No. 8
