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The New International, March 1942

 

On the Cultural Front

 

From New International, Vol. VIII No. 2, March 1942, p. 34.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

James T. Farrell, in the January–February issue of Partisan Review, wrote:

“Many lines of cultural life are now coalescing. Just as the government is becoming the main customer for the products of heavy industry, it is also becoming, more and more, a major employee of intellectuals, artists and writers. (Parenthetically and apropos of the managerial revolution, it is clear that to date the only trust that the government had really been able to control is ‘the brain trust.’) Because of the economic plight of writers, government institutions, political movements, and commerce provide many of them with the sole means of making a living. Thus the New Deal, Hollywood, the Stalinist movement play such important rôles in the cultural life of America. The result of this tendency has been restrictions on artistic production and on thought. Now, with the world crisis becoming more increasingly severe, an ideology to justify this process is in a state of formation. Even the sordid purchase and misuse of talent will be justified, not as an unpleasant necessity, but as something good, progressive, a means of furthering culture.”

 
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