The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s

by Alan M. Wald

Overview

In contrast to other scholars who emphasize the affinity of the "New York Intellectuals" for literary modernism and its largely Jewish composition as its defining characteristics, Wald finds these traits to be secondary to the group's agonizing efforts in the 1930s and after to build a Marxist alternative to the official Communist movement. Wald presents an absorbing account of this misunderstood chapter in the history of literary radicalism and the Marxist intellectual tradition in the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807841693
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/13/1987
Edition description:	1
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.07(d)

About the Author

Alan M. Wald is the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan and is the recipient of the Mary C. Turpie Prize of the American Studies Association.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	A Note on the Text and the Illustrations	xv
	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	375
	Index	423

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An impressive piece of investigative reporting, full of facts about neglected and forgotten figures—not to mention some more familiar ones. It outdistances the current spate of books and articles on that imperfectly defined subject and sets a high standard for scholarship in its wake. It deserves wide attention.—Daniel Aaron, Harvard University



The best informed and most hard-hitting account of a group—the 'New York intellectuals— central to twentieth-century intellectual life and politics in America. Without sharing Wald's fervent politics, I am full of admiration for his knowledge.—Alfred Kazin

Editorial Reviews

A masterwork of scholarly inquiry, based upon vast research of primary sources including interviews with over one hundred informants, and will no doubt prove to be the definitive study. Wald glides adroitly between
multiple roles of intellectual and social historian, political theorist, and literary critic; his own engaging literary style finds expression in the tightly drawn biographical sketches that he weaves gracefully into the larger fabric. This is Marxist scholarship at its best.—Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

From the Publisher

Wald's studysubtle, insightfulranks with that small cluster of fine works on 20th-century radicals and on the familiar political odyssey of that loosely knit circle, the ``New York intellectuals,'' as they devolved from anti-Stalinist revolutionary communism to neoconservative allies of Nixon and Reagan. But Wald throws a wide net, exploring the thought of, among others, Dwight Macdonald, Harvey Swados, and Philip Rahv, as well as the writings of the Trillings, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, et al. Admittedly a Marxist, Wald is balanced, though not detached or uncritical; the pages on Podhoretz, Decter, Kristol are hardly forgiving. Essential for those interested in the cultural and scholarly activities of an important group. Milton Cantor, History Dept., Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

Library Journal