The Monstrous Falsehood

During the 1952 presidential campaign, liberal U.S. intellectuals-in-politics resented the term "egghead," reading it as part of an attack against intellectuality as such. British intellectuals, particularly of the left wing, have shown similar indignation against similar remarks. Last week Australian Colin Clark, a distinguished political economist now lecturing at Oxford, suggested that the debate is narrower than a supposed issue between intellectuals and "know-nothings."

In a letter to the Manchester Guardian Weekly, Clark wrote: "What happened in the 1930s was that a substantial element among the university population and among authors and literary critics adopted Marxism. And what we are witnessing now is the complete discrediting of Marxism in all its forms--Bolshevik or Menshevik, extreme or moderate, academic or practical. And with this obstacle removed, the group who used to be called 'the intellectuals' quite naturally resume their proper position in the [British] national life as men who can influence, but not dominate, the development of the public taste and the course of public affairs.

"This appears to be the happy development of events in Britain, but is far from true, alas, in the U.S. or the British Commonwealth countries, where academic Marxism--or crypto-Marxism--is stronger than ever. The almost unbearable tension in American academic and civil-service life at the present time springs from the intransigence of Senator McCarthy on the one hand, but on the other hand from the widespread adherence, amongst the younger university men in America, to the monstrous falsehood (and to the belief in a totalitarian state, which it implies) that all human actions, political, cultural or religious, arise ultimately from economic causes."

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