Editing Invisible Man (section)

==Political influences and the Communist Party==
The letters he wrote to fellow novelist [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]] as he started working on the novel provide evidence for his disillusion with and defection from the [[Communist Party USA]] for perceived [[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionism]]. In a letter to Wright on August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger toward party leaders for betraying African-American and Marxist class politics during the war years: "If they want to play ball with the [[bourgeoisie]] they needn't think they can get away with it... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well-chosen, well-written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell."<ref>Carol Polsgrove (2001), ''Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement'', pp. 66–69.</ref> Ellison resisted attempts to ferret out such allusions in the book itself however, stating "I did not want to describe an existing Socialist or Communist or Marxist political group, primarily because it would have allowed the reader to escape confronting certain political patterns, patterns which still exist and of which our two major political parties are guilty in their relationships to Negro Americans."<ref>Victor Moses (2003), ''The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison'', edited by [[John F. Callahan]] (New York: Modern Library), 542.</ref>