The New York intellectuals : the rise and decline of the anti-Stalinist left from the 1930s to the 1980s / by Alan M. Wald.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wald, Alan M., 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Socialists--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Socialists.

New York (State)--New York.

History.

Intellectuals--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Intellectuals.

Physical Description:

xvi, 440 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [1987]

Summary:

The New York Intellectuals is an absorbing account of an often misunderstood chapter in the history of literary radicalism and the Marxist intellectual tradition in the United States. It is enriched by more than one hundred personal interviews as well as critical interpretations of novels and short stories depicting the inner life of the group. Alan Wald also provides a series of powerful biographical portraits of the lives and political vicissitudes of these one-time rebels and outsiders, including commentary on writers Hannah Arendt, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Max Eastman, James T. Farrell, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Dwight Macdonald, Mary McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Rahv, Tess Slesinger, Harvey Swados, Lionel Trilling, and Edmund Wilson.

Contents:

Introduction: Political Amnesia 3

Part I Origins of the Anti-Stalinist Left

Chapter 1. Jewish Internationalists 27

The Non-Jewish Jews 27

Portrait: Elliot Cohen 31

Portrait: Lionel Trilling 33

Portrait: Herbert Solow 37

From Cultural Pluralism to Revolutionary Internationalism 42

Chapter 2. Dissident Communists 46

The Menorah Group Moves Left 46

New Allies: Sidney Hook, James Rorty, Charles Rumford Walker 50

The National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) and the League of Professionals 56

The Intellectual Disease 64

Chapter 3. Radical Modernists 75

In Defense of Literature 75

Other Dissident Writers and Critics on the Left: James T. Farrell, F. W. Dupee, Edmund Wilson 82

The Appeal of Trotskyism 91

Part II Revolutionary Intellectuals

Chapter 4. Philosophers and Revolutionists 101

The Non-Partisan Labor Defense Committee (NPLD) and the American Workers Party 101

Party Factionalism and the "French Turn" 106

The Eastman Heresies 112

Marxism and Pragmatism 118

Chapter 5. The Moscow Trials 128

The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky 128

The Hearings in Mexico 132

Marxist Cultural Renaissance 139

The Ambiguities of Anti-Stalinism 147

Twilight of the Thirties 157

Chapter 6. Cannonites and Shachtmanites 164

Party Leaders and Party Politics 164

Portrait: James P. Cannon 167

Portrait: Max Shachtman 172

James Burnham: From Neo-Thomism to Trotskyism 175

Schism 182

Chapter 7. The Second Imperialist War 193

The Enigma of World War II 193

Dwight Macdonald: From Trotskyism to Anarcho-Pacifism 199

Meyer Schapiro: Socialist Internationalist 210

The Politics of Literary Criticism 217

Chapter 8. The New York Intellectuals in Fiction 226

Literature and Ideology 226

From Acquiescence to Antiradicalism 231

Politics and the Novel 239

A Revolutionary Novelist in Crisis 249

Part III The Great Retreat

Chapter 9. Apostates and True Believers 267

"Red Fascism" 267

The Psychology of Apostasy 280

The Iron Cage of Orthodoxy 295

Chapter 10. The Cul-de-sac of Social Democracy 311

Portrait: Irving Howe 311

The "Socialist Wing of the West" 321

Portrait: Harvey Swados 334

The Ambiguous Legacy 338

Chapter 11. The Bitter Fruits of Anticommunism 344

Cold War II 344

Portrait: Irving Kristol 350

Portraits: Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter 354

The Ideologists of Antiradicalism 358

Epilogue: Marxism and Intellectuals in the United States 366.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Sheldon Hackney.

ISBN:

0807817163

0807841692

OCLC:

14273419