ASSES SEPTEMBER, .93% .5 CENTS In Tbis Issue: SHERWOOD ANDERSON CLIFTON B. F ADIMAN LANGSTON HUGHES ENGELS ON GOETHE GRANVILLE HICKS EDMUND WILSON JOHN L. SPIVACK UPTON SINCLAIR MAURICE DOBB WALDO FRANK MICHAEL GOLD A. B.MAGIL MOE BRAGIN Book Reviews Features Cartoons Free Trip to tbe Soviet Union! ASSES SEPTEMBER, 193% 15 CENTS In This Issue: SHERWOOD ANDERSON CLIFTON B. F ADIMAN LANGSTON HUGHES ENGELS ON GOETHE GRANVILLE HICKS EDMUND WILSON JOHN L. SPIVACK UPTON SINCLAIR MAURICE DOBB WALDO FRANK MICHAEL GOLD A. B. 'MAGIL MOE BRAGIN Book Reviews Features Cartoons Free Trip to the Soviet Union! , w e Cry •• HELP • Today, with the growth of the revolutionary cultural movement, WE CRY HELP! the New Masses must expand. 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Barker Bookstore, 23 Goldsmith St., Elwood, Mel­ bourne S. 3. City __._. __... « ••••••• _ •••••••••••••••••••••• _ •••••••••••••••• _ ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• NEW MASSES 1910- Seventh Year of the New Masses .... 1926 .... Twenty Second Year of the Masses-1932 VOLUME 8 SEPTEMBER, 1932 NUMBER 3 Editorial Board: ROBERT EVANS, WHITTAKER CHAMBERS, HuGO GELLERT, MICHAEL GoLD, LOUIS LoZOWICK, MOISSAYE J. OLGIN CON T RIB U TOR S :-Phil Bard, Emjo Basshe, Jacob Burck, Whittaker Chambers, Roben Cruden, Jack Conr~y, Adolp~ Dehn,.R,obert Dunn, John Do. Passos, Kenneth Fearing, Ed Falkowski, Hugo Gellert, Eugene Gordon, Horace Gregory, Wilham Gropper, Charles Yal!! Harnson, W~lltam Hernandez, l:.aas­ ston Hughes, Joseph Kalar, I. Klein, Melvin P. Levy, Louis Lozowick, H. H .. LewIs, Norman Macleod, ~. B. Magll, Scott Ne~nng, .~yra ~agel Harry Allan Potamkin, Paul Peters, Walter Quirt, Louis Ribak, Anna Rochester, E. Merrdl Root, James Rorty, Martm Russ!"<, ~sther Shemltz, Wtlham Siegel, Upton Sinclair, Agnes Smedley, Otto Soglow, Herman Spector, Bennett. Stevens, Jose ph Vogel, Mary H. Vorse, K!,ene WallIS, 11m Waters, Art Young. Published month~y by NEW MASSES, Inc., 9ffice o~ pubhcatlo~, .63 WestlS St., New York. Copynght 1932, by NEW MASSES, Inc., Reg. U. S. Patent Office. Drawmgs and text may not be repnnted WIthout permISSion. Entered as second class matter, June 24, 1926, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y •• under the act of March 3, 1879. Subscribers are notified that no change of address can be effected in less thaa a month. The NEW MASSES is a co-operative venture. It does not pay for contributions. ~? SUbsmption $1.50 a year in U, S. and Colonies and Me~ico. Foreign, $2.00. Single Copies, 15 Cents; 20c abroad. MAURICE DOBB MARXISM AND THE CRISIS Arising from, and the product of, the general crisis of capitalism among scientists that the old rough-and-ready empiricism is not today, there are two crises, or subordinate phases of that crisis­ enough and a groping after some philosophical restatement. On a crisis of thought and a crisis of politics. The crisis of politics the other hand, it shows itself in the rise of the new fashionable shows itself in this country, and not alone in this country, in a pseudo-philosophies, re-importing God through the "hole-in-the­ complete break-up of all the old party groupings and a blurring of atom" and showing that science, instead of being pagan and icono­ the old political issues. True, the old party structures and the old clastic, can be made to decorate an altar-piece after all. More party creeds still continue and still flourish with their banners generally, this crisis in thought shows itself in a vague bewilder­ and their slogans. Their mock tourneys still delude the masses ment: a starting to question assumptions, the very root of tradi­ and carry their eyes away from the real issues. But these ban­ tional bourgeois thought, whether it be traditional idealism or ners and these slogans are dead: they indicate issues which are traditional materialism. In extreme forms it becomes a general dead and past and bear no live relation to what are the real con­ bewilderment in face of universal paradox-despair in face of a temporary issues. If one looks for a historical parallel, be it only world gone mad. Some get no further than bewilderment, and a superficial one, it is, I think, to be found in the thirties of last retreat to the seclusion of various brands of mysticism-ever the century, when the old Whig and Tory issues were an anachronism. way of despair with the world. But for logical thinkers, having The Party structures, as shells, remained; but they had no mean­ the resolution to cut their way through to some new synthesis, ing; and the younger Tories and Whigs had more in common with paradox itself is the bridge to new truth.