In the process MacDonald separated himself from his associate editors and launched a new magazine Politics which, after wallowing helplessly in political, cultural and aesthetic disorientation, recently folded up. The disillusioned intellectuals on Partisan Review proceeded from "re-evaluations" of Marxism and rejections of Bolshevism to a sterile preoccupation with problems of pure aesthetics and literary techniques detached from their social roots along with an adaptation to the standpoint of liberal supporters of imperialist policies. Trotsky's hope that this magazine would "take its place in the victorious army of socialism" was not borne out by its subsequent evolution, as his second letter indicates. Introductory Note: The following letter by Leon Trotsky appeared in one of the early issues of Partisan Review in 1938 under the editorship of Dwight MacDonald.
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