Sept.8,1938

Dear Bob Lynd,

The other day I saw the last issue of Science & Society
with your very meaty criticisms of the Realpolitikier, Arnold.
I was wholly delighted by the ethico-social point of view
you took, especially after so much cold-blooded sociological
dissection as you have done, which, nevertheless, seems to have
left the spirit unbowed. I wanted to send my hearty salutes and
strongest endorsements.

Although I have no tendency naturally to be squeamish
or soft-minded, the typical New Dealers have always worried
me. One, because of their curious propensity for the most
oblique moral short-cuts; two, because of their quicksand
position, they usually basing themselves neither upon profes-
sional party organization, nor mass support (such as a labor
movement), nor even on a development of popular education.
I have done my best to warn fellows like Jerry Frank that
they will end up before political firing-squads with the
public wholly ignorant of what good things they tried to do,
never having been taken into their confidence. Last week I
ran across Frankfurter up in these hills and found very
much the same temper that you perceive in The Folklore of
Capitalism.

The queer thing is that men like Arnold really know
better. I found his book extremely funny, but undoubtedly
verging on frivolity. Meanwhile, from various indications, his
heart is apparently on the "right side". For instance he has
been a stubborn about not letting his detectives help the
Dies Committee expose Shirley Temple! But I do wish that your
wise words could have been published more prominently, this
time, so as to reach those fellows surely.

Can't you and Mrs. Lynd come out to visit us in the
country? Are you back from the White Mountains? Last Spring
after I attempted to reach Mrs. Lynd, my whole little family,
three of us anyway, were overcome by tooth afflictions and we
did nothing but run back and forth between here and N.Y. to
be ground. But now all is calm; the early autumn weather which
I most prefer in these parts has arrived, and glorious for
walking. I offer log fires, rum toddies, a trout brook, even a
small waterfall, if you come for a week-end. I think your
boy would like it too and would have my boys. My warmest
regards to Mrs. Lynd.

P.S. My wife suggests the week-end of the 17th or the 24;
the trees should be turning a little by then.

Caylordsville, Conn.

Nov.7,1939

Dear Bob Lynd,

The gathering at Max's seems to have been most interesting, and I'm sorry I couldn't reach it as I hoped to. Rightbefore yours, I received a letter telling me that I had been at the Sunday meeting, and might as well come to a dinner of the same sort at the N.R. next week, with more breast-beating. These things seem to be in the mood of the moment. However, against what Max knows of The Nation, I know worse of the N.R. (Secret me boy). I dread having what might be a healthy, vigorous group impulse, who knows, taken up, as I have seen so often, and turned into something pallid and sickly that comes out like a ribbon and lies flat on the brush... I'm rather dead on those "institutions", at least for the present.

So the problem boils down to Large Org's'n or Small Groups. When I wrote Lerner last month, it just happens that I also prayed for a small "Jacobin Club" that would attempt to guide or influence opinion rather than direct large scale orgzn. As a matter of fact the comrades have already been magnificent organizers. Being either destitute, W.P.A. ers, or wealthy, they have had leisure in which to work 18hrs, a day at party tasks. They have been the Tammany of the Left. Only Tammany boys taking orders from 50th St have been more devoted, more disciplined in the dreary day-t-day envassing business that makes up the reality of our bourgeois-democratic politics. The comrades also, in their smaller way, had their patronage or "spoil's" basis--nothing dishonorable but at least means and grounds for carrying on organization, telephones, desks, filing lists.

The trouble with us whom you kindly call intelligent folk is that we could contrive only with utmost difficulty to get ourselves some organizational grass-roots, even as little as the c.p. had. People would give a week-end or so, and then back to breadwinning and paying bills. For we do not have the wealth of the tycoons with which to support a parasitic army of professional politicians, nor the involuntary leisure of most of the comrades, who win compensation from sacrifice to party work for "future world." We must begin by recognizing our middle-class predicament, must we not.

That's why I urged a small group of choice spirits (if possible) with guests to be changed; perhaps a dictaphone hidden somewhere; a record of honest talk, by people with some information; and the best of this cut down, and passed out informally, without presumption. In other words leaving ideas out like milk bottles so they can be "stolen", that is used to give nourishment. For some years my thought has been in this direction. Perhaps such a group six or a dozen could gain authority. Dr. Johnson used to be a "dictator" of literary opinion, in a small unified 18th century London, and in a truly civilized manner. Today interest lies less in pure literature, and America is sprawling, amorphous, vast, cacophonous. Yet a group might gradually win authority, in a decent manner, and disseminate its opinion by various media, despite manifest difficulties; it might be able to <u>kill</u> by laughter, even,

Undoubtedly, something of the comrades exact grounding in political realities or grass-roots came from their bond with the U.S.S.R., and I don't necessarily mean Russian gold. Now the problem would be to connect theirs or a similar organized energy

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to the American scene, and not let their energy-plus-organization
be sacrificed to the appetites of the Dies crowd. The other day
I saw(this is in confidence) a letter of Van Wyck Brooks to
a certain friend of mine, quietly resigning from the League of
American Writers. Brooks, though having no quarrel with what
Russia did in Russia, said he wanted a movement of the Left
to run "in the American Grain". I agree; I say we ought to cut
the umbilical cord that runs to Moscow, if only to assert our
self-respect as radicals, grow up out of infancy and enjoy better
relations with the Russians and others for that reason.

I like Max Lerner as a Moving Spirit. He is after all not so
worldly-minded that he fears or despises people who think; and on
the other hand he is not a fanatic who believes in absolutes; and he
has curiosity and is articulate. Our specialists are too often
at a loss for speech; our academic or journalistic bureaucrats
tremble with fear lest someone come along and expose their ignor-
ance. Hicks I know less well. Is he to be our Wendell Phillips?
His recent apostasy, I thought, was respectably done.

This has been long enough. If anything in my corollary for
the small group proposal makes any sense or is of any use, there
it is. With hearty greetings,

Sincerely,

155 East 22nd. St.

Dec.23,1943

Dear Bob,

What I said hurriedly over the telephone, like a hastily
bolted lunch, must need some amplification.... A couple of years
ago we figured ahead war and Reaction; the progressive forces
were "in the trough of a wave". To be sure there would be an
upswing--but when?

Meanwhile I've been trying to keep myself limber anyway.
At a time when there seem to be no organized groups to
work with I've simply used my literary and technical ability
to keep afloat, to do work of a passing interest even if it
didn't give the satisfaction of moving together with other
constructive forces toward some socially desirable objective.
(The years of raising and educating the kids, helping the
sick, etc., the "middle years"). But I don't like to think
that during such a waiting period hope of better things is
cut off.

I suppose you and R. Brady are right to keep your eyes on the
N.A.M. But I have great confidence in their innate stupidity
which repeatedly brings them to unpleasant surprises. As a
specific problem, I am worried about situations like the two
liberal weeklies having handed over their consciences to the
ruling administration and "r. Big for the duration. Now he,
admittedly, has handed everything over, more or less, to the
N.A.M. people in order to speed up production without changing
our system, as the apologetics run. Ergo the Nation and N.R.
tongue-tied, are also handed over to the N.A.M. I dislike to
think that we haven't one weekly in which someone can spill
things right off his chest once in a while. This has not
happened in England.

The United Front, such as it was here, has been disconcerted
and disunited ever since Aug. 1939, over 4 years. ( The famous
Fact, helping Russia, bore hard on American radicals.) I still
can't find any sensible group working in an organized way,
all of us apparently doing our best in our separate corners.

What I fear most now is the Shadow of Metternich. On all sides
the old regime will try to reconstitute itself and postpone all
threats--this time for the sake of monopoly capitalism instead
of church and throne. What riles me is that the so-called liber-
als are playing into the hands of the latter-day Metternicheans.
And needlessly. The book I'm writing happens to deal with
some of the cultural consequences of the Metternich Restoration
in Europe. Well there--

Yours,