ABSTRACT
IN the American Committee, in addition to the concern about the funding of the Congress by the CIA, there were disagreements about the politics of the Congress, some of which took a bizarre form. For example, a few of the tougher anti-ommunists thought the Congress was too soft on Communism—which meant, in effect, that the line of the CIA, normally conceived of as a monster of anti-Communism, was considered to have been infected by either liberal illusions or false tactical considerations. There was the Bertrand Russell affair, which split the American Committee. Russell, honorary chairman of the Congress, had supported some of the “peace” proposals of the Communists. Several members of the American Committee, led by Diana Trilling and James T. Farrell who were most disturbed by the tolerance of Russell’s views by the Congress, argued that the Congress should disassociate itself from Russell, and that the American Committee should indicate its disapproval of both Russell and the Congress. I remember arguing with Diana and with Jim Farrell that what was wrong with the Congress was not its politics but its bureaucratic organization. I thought it silly to accuse the Congress 162of being soft on Communism when its only reason for existence was to put the Communists out of business, and I felt we would get lost in hairsplitting arguments about tactics that obscured the real issue—the control of the Congress by a hand-picked, self-perpetuating leadership. It was one of the anomalies of bureaucratized anti-Communism that an undemocratic organization could speak in the name of democracy. It would seem that for the Congress the idea of complete cultural freedom was mainly for export to the Soviet Union, which should have told us something about the nature of the Congress since governments usually do not apply their criticism of other countries to themselves.
