The New York Intellectuals (10th Anniversary Edition)

by Alan M Wald

  56. Kazin, New York Jew, p. 185.

  57. Sidney Hook, Marx and the Marxists (New York: Van Nostrand, 1955), pp. 82.

  58. Gordon Haskell and Julius Falk, “Civil Liberties and the Cold War Philosopher,” New International 19, no. 4 (July-August 1953): 184–227.

  59. Sidney Hook, “Half-Baked Communism,” Nation 134, no. 3492 (3 June 1932): 654.

  60. Sidney Hook, review of What Is to Be Donel, American Journal of Sociology 38, no. 2 (September 1932): 315–17.

  61. Sidney Hook, “An Epic of Revolution,” Saturday Review of Literature 8, no. 32 (27 February 1932): 551.

  62. Hook, Marx and the Marxists, pp. 75, 78.

  63. George B. de Huszar, The Intellectuals (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960), p. 359.

  64. Ibid., p. 528.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Sidney Hook and Dennis King, “‘Bashing’ the Raj,” New America, July 1985, pp. 5–6.

  67. See Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), pp. 80–81.

  68. Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), p. 95. The oft-quoted sentence is: “However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty-bourgeois parties may go further than they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie.”

  69. The information on Bert Cochran is based on the author’s interview with Cochran, June 1977, New York City; also, Milton Alvin, “Bert Cochran, Former Leader of SWP,” Socialist Action 2, no. 7 (July 1984): 8.

  70. The information on George Clarke is from the author’s interview with Irving Beinin, October 1983, New York City.

  71. The information on Harry Braverman is from George Breitman, “Harry Braverman: Marxist Author,” Militant, 27 August 1976, p. 12.

  72. The information on the 1953 political struggle is from the [Socialist Workers Party] Internal Bulletin, 1951–53; James P. Cannon, Speeches to the Party (New York: Pathfinder, 1973).

  73. Militant, 16 November 1953, pp. 1, 3.

  74. Ibid., 30 November 1953, p. 3.

  75. Ibid., 25 January 1954, p. 3.

  76. George Breitman to AW, 30 July 1985.

  77. The biographical information on Joseph Vanzler is from the author’s telephone interviews with Doris VanZleer, 29 December 1977 and 2 January 1978, Los Angeles, Calif.; obituary by Art Preis in the Militant, 2 July 1956, p. i; George Novack, “Role of a Leading Marxist Scholar,” ibid., 23 July 1976, p. 18; Harvard Records Office, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

  78. Joseph Vanzler, “An Introduction to the Social Basis of Grecian Art,” Modern Quarterly 3, no. 4 (September-December 1926): 286–91.

  79. King published a memoir of Vanzler in Is There a Life After Birth? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), pp. 140–47.

  80. Information on Joseph Hansen can be found in an obituary by George Novack in the Militant, 2 February 1979, pp. 8–9, 24. Information on Earle Birney is contained in Joseph Hansen, The Abern Clique (New York: Education for Socialists, 1972), pp. 3–5.

  81. For example, see How a Minority Can Change Society (New York: Merit, 1965) and The Last Year of Malcolm X (New York: Merit, 1969).

  82. See the obituary by Matilde Zimmerman in the Militant, 6 April 1979, pp. 26–27.

  83. See the obituary in the Militant, 20 January 1958, pp. 1–2.

  84. See the forthcoming essay by Alan Wald, “Sculptor on the Left,” to appear in Pembroke Magazine in 1987.

  85. Author’s telephone interview with George Perle, September 1982.

  86. Author’s interview with Paul Siegel, August 1983, Oberlin, Ohio.

  87. Peter Bloch to AW, 17 August 1983.

  88. Author’s interview with DeMila Jenner, June 1983, Benton, Calif.

  89. Staughton Lynd to AW, 9 September 1980; author’s interview with George Novack, August 1980, Oberlin, Ohio; Howe, A Margin of Hope, pp. 58–59; Spencer Brown to AW, 18 February 1982; Calder Willingham to AW, 12 October 1983.

  90. Author’s interview with Martin Glaberman, October 1984, Detroit, Mich. See also the Raya Dunayevskaya Papers in the Labor History Archives, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich., and Kent Worcester, C. L. R. James and the American Century (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Documentos de Trabajo, 1984).

  91. The biographical information on George Novack is based on a dozen interviews with Novack between 1974 and 1983; author’s interview with Helen Hirschberg, June 1982, New York City; Harvard Records Office, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

  92. Author’s interview with Stanley Kunitz, October 1983, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  93. “Passports to Utopia,” New International 1, no. 5 (November 1934): 115–17, and ibid. 1, no. 6 (December 1934): 145–47.

  94. “Marxism and Intellectuals,” ibid. 2, no. 7 (December 1935): 227–32; “American Intellectuals and the Crisis,” ibid. 3, no. 2 (February 1936): 23–27; “The Intellectuals and the Crisis—II,” ibid. 3, no. 6 (June 1936): 83–86.

  95. George Novack, Pragmatism versus Marxism (New York: Pathfinder, 1975), p. 8.

  96. See the thoughtful review by Milton Fisk in Erkenntnis 11 (1977): 269–73.

  97. Author’s interview with Dr. Robert Littman, July 1983, Los Angeles, Calif.

  98. James P. Cannon to George Novack, 17 February 1961, George Novack Papers, New York City.

  99. Les Evans, ed., James P. Cannon As We Knew Him (New York: Pathfinder, 1976), p. 253.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine (New York: Atheneum, 1962), p. 154.

  2. The biographical information on Howe is from the following sources: Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982); author’s interviews with Irving Howe, October 1978, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; B. J. Widick, October 1985 and March 1986, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Emanuel Geltman, May 1982, New York City; Julius and Phyllis Jacobson, May 1982, New York City; Albert Glotzer, June 1979, Cape Cod, Mass.

  3. Leaflet in the archives of the library of the City University of New York, New York, N.Y.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Irving Howe, “Poison Gas,” Labor Action, 18 May 1942, p. 4.

  11. Irving Howe, “Terror,” ibid., 3 August 1946, p. 5.

  12. Irving Howe, “If Senator Bilbo Goes—Does the Bilbo System Remain?,” ibid., 3 December 1946, p. 1.

  13. Irving Howe, “Blum and Thorez Support Suppression of Indo-China,” ibid., 6 January 1947, p. 3.

  14. Irving Howe, “Paris, Saigon, New York,” ibid., 27 January 1947, p. 4.

  15. Irving Howe, “What Future for American Socialism?,” ibid., 7 March 1949, P. 4.

  16. Irving Howe, “The Dilemma of Partisan Review,” New International 8, no. 2 (February 1942): 20–24; see also “The Partisan Review Controversy,” ibid. 8, no. 3 (April 1942): 90–93.

  17. Irving Howe, “How Partisan Review Goes to War,” ibid. 13, no. 4 (April 1947): 109–11.

  18. Peter Loumos, “Four Books by Koestler,” ibid. 11, no. 8 (August 1945): 155—59.

  19. Neil Weiss, Letter to the Editor, ibid. 11, no. 10 (October 1946): 250–51.

  20. “A Reply by Irving Howe,” ibid., pp. 251–52.

  21. Albert Gates, “On the Significance of Koestler,” ibid. 12, no. 7 (July 1947): 155–58.

  22. “A Reply by Irving Howe,” ibid., pp. 158–59.

  23. For Howe’s initial critique of Farrell and his view of modernism, see Irving Howe, “A Note on James T. Farrell,” ibid. 8, no. 7 (July 1942): 182–84. Correspondence between Farrell and Howe in the Farrell Papers, CPVP, document the deterioration of relations.

  24. Irving Howe, Decline of the New (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), pp. 3–33.

  25. Irving Howe, “Literary Criticism and Literary Radicals,” American Schola
r 4 (Winter 1971–72): 114.

  26. Irving Howe, “Porkchoppers Prefabricated,” Anvil (Fall 1949): 14–19.

  27. Irving Howe, “On Comrade Johnson’s American Resolution—or Soviets in the Sky,” [Workers Party] Internal Bulletin 1, no. 9 (28 March 1946): 25–32.

  28. Irving Howe, “A Note on Content with a Letter on Tone,” ibid. 2, no. 7 (12 September 1947): 9–12.

  29. Irving Howe, “The 13th Disciple,” Politics 2, no. 10 (October 1946): 329–34.

  30. Irving Howe, “The Lost Young Intellectual,” Commentary 2, no. 4 (October 1946): 361–67.

  31. Irving Howe, “The Saturday Evening Post Slanders the Jewish People,” Labor Action, 5 April 1942, p. 4.

  32. Irving Howe, “Observing the Events: Czechoslovakia,” ibid., 8 March 1948, p. 4.

  33. See Labor Action, 5 April 1948, p. 1; [Workers Party] Internal Bulletin 3, no. 2 (24 April 1948); E. R. McKinney to Max Shachtman, Shachtman Papers, TL.

  34. [Workers Party] Internal Bulletin 3, no. 9 (14 January 1949): 30–32.

  35. R. Fahan and H. Judd, “The New Labor Action,” Forum (March 1951): 1–3

  36. “Statement of Resignation of Irving Howe and Henry Judd from the Independent Socialist League,” ibid. (January 1953): 4.

  37. Ibid., p. 5.

  38. “Statement from the Political Committee on the Resignation of Irving Howe and Henry Judd,” ibid., pp. 1–3; Albert Glotzer, “The New York Membership Meeting,” ibid., pp. 8–9.

  39. Hal Draper, “A New Magazine Presents Itself to the Socialist Public,” Labor Action, 22 February 1954, p. 5; Forum (August 1954): 12.

  40. Author’s interview with Emanuel Geltman, May 1981, New York City.

  41. See “This Age of Conformity: Protest and Rejoinder,” Partisan Review 21, no. 2 (March-April 1954): 235–40.

  42. Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party (New York: Praeger, 1957), pp. 500–554. The book was originally undertaken with the collaboration of Julius Jacobson, a young leader of the Independent Socialist League, who did most of the primary research.

  43. See Irving Howe and A. J. Muste, “Two Statements,” Dissent 4, no. 3 (Summer 1957): 332–37.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Sidney Lens, Unrepentant Radical (Boston: Beacon, 1980), p. 222.

  46. A. J. Muste and Irving Howe, “C. Wright Mills’ Program: Two Views,” Dissent 6, no. 2 (Spring 1959): 194.

  47. “Irving Howe Replies,” Dissent 6, no. 3 (Summer 1959): 298–301.

  48. Irving Howe, “Last Chance in Vietnam,” ibid. 11, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 3.

  49. Irving Howe, “Cease Fire,” ibid. 12, 1 (January–February 1966): 5–7.

  50. Letter from Walter Goldwater and response by Irving Howe, ibid. 13, no. 1 (January–February 1967): 107–8.

  51. “Julius Jacobson Replies,” New Politics 9, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 98–99

  52. Irving Howe, “Authoritarians of the Left,” Steady Work (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 296–312.

  53. Irving Howe, “The New ‘Confrontation Politics’ Is a Dangerous Game,” New York Times Magazine, 20 October 1968, pp. 27–29, 133–39, and “Political Terrorism: Hysteria on the Left,” ibid., 12 April 1970, pp. 25–27, 124–28.

  54. Irving Howe, “The Campus Left and Israel,” reprinted in Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, ed. Irving Howe and Carl Gershman, pp. 428–30 (New York: Bantam, 1972).

  55. Irving Howe, “The Middle-Class Mind of Kate Millett,” The Critical Point (New York: Horizon, 1973), pp. 203–32. See the effective critique by Phyllis Jacobson, “Kate Millett and Her Critics,” New Politics 8, no. 4 (Fall 1970): 89–94.

  56. Philip Rahv and Irving Howe, “An Exchange on the Left,” New York Review of Books, 9 December 1965, p. 29; and Dwight Macdonald, “An Open Letter to Michael Harrington,” ibid. 11, no. 10 (5 December 1968): 48–49.

  57. See Howe’s endorsement of Lyndon Johnson in Dissent 11, no. 4 (Autumn 1964): 380.

  58. Irving Howe, “Liberalism: A Moral Crisis,” ibid. 11, no. 2 (Spring 1955): 107–13.

  59. Howe, “The New ‘Confrontation Politics’ Is a Dangerous Game,” p. 139; Irving Howe, Socialism and America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), pp. 49–86; see the inside jacket of Dissent 11, no. 2 (Spring 1964).

  60. Howe, Steady Work, pp. 271–95; Irving Howe, “I’m Not a Marxist,” New York Times Book Review, 20 October 1985, p. 11.

  61. Hilton Kramer, “Professor Howe’s Prescriptions,” New Criterion 2, no. 8 (April 1984): 3; author’s interview with Nathan Glazer, May 1981, Cambridge, Mass.

  62. Howe, “I’m Not a Marxist,” p. n.

  63. The biographical information on Harvey Swados is from the author’s interviews with Betty Swados, May 1980, New York City; Irving Sanes, May 1980, Buffalo, N.Y.; Donald Slaiman, August 1980, Washington, D.C.

  64. See the Swados-Hofstadter correspondence, Swados Papers, UMA.

  65. Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 74.

  66. Harvey Swados, On the Line (New York: Dell, 1978), p. 45.

  67. Ibid., p. 75.

  68. “Reconciliation with reality” was Georg Lukács’s euphemism for his acceptance of the policies of the Third International after his opposition in the 1920s.

  69. See the many letters from Swados to Howe in the Swados Papers, UMA.

  70. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford, 1977), p. 212.

  71. The two essays are reprinted in Harvey Swados, A Radical’s America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), pp. 111–20 and 328–38.

  72. The notebook for Standing Fast is available in the Swados Papers, UMA; author’s interview with Irving Sanes, May 1983, Buffalo, N.Y.

  73. Harvey Swados, Standing Fast (New York: Doubleday, 1970), p. 648.

  74. Author’s interview with Irving Sanes, May 1981, Buffalo, N.Y.; Swados, Notebooks for “Celebration,” which was published posthumously, Swados Papers, UMA.

  75. Irving Howe makes this charge when attacking Schoenman for a critical review of his anthology, Essential Works of Socialism (1970) in New Politics 9, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 96. As a result of his agreement with Howe that Schoenman’s criticisms were unjust, Swados (along with Dissent supporters Meyer Schapiro and Lionel Abel) removed his name as a sponsor of New Politics.

  76. Harvey Swados, Celebration (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 141; author’s interview with Harry Roskolenko, June 1980, New York City.

  77. See Harvey Swados to Irving Sanes, 18 November 1968, Swados Papers, UMA; and Harvey Swados, contribution to “Symposium: The Prospects for American Radicalism,” New Politics 7, no. 2 (Spring 1968): 16.

  78. Author’s interview with Irving Sanes, May 1983, Buffalo, N.Y.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Daniel Singer, The Road to Gdansk (New York: Monthly Review, 1982), p. 18.

  2. See Susan Sontag, “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (For Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts 7, no. 11 (April 1969): 6–19; and author’s interview with Leslie Evans, June 1984, Los Angeles, Calif.

  3. Susan Sontag, “Communism and the Left,” Nation 234, no. 8 (27 February 1982): 231. In regard to Sontag’s talk and its aftermath, also see the thoughtful essay by Julius Jacobson, “Reflections on Fascism and Communism,” in Socialist Perspectives, ed. Julius Jacobson and Phyllis Jacobson, pp. 119–54 (New York: Karz-Cohl, 1983).

  4. Charles Ruas, “Susan Sontag: Past and Present,” New York Times Book Review, 24 October 1982, p. 11.

  5. Nation 234, no. 2 (27 March 1982): 370.

  6. Soho News, 24 February-24 March 1982, p. 10.

  7. Nation 234, no. 10 (13 March 1982): 292–93.

  8. “Comments,” in ibid., no. 8 (27 February 1982): 232.

  9. Ibid., pp. 236–37.

  10. See the article by Andrew Kopkind, “The Return of Cold War Liberalism,” ibid. 236, no. 18 (23 April 1983): 1, 503–12, and the discussion in ibid. 236, no. 20 (21 May 1983): 624, 637, 641.

  11. Macdonald’s rema
rks are printed on the jacket of the book.

  12. David Horowitz, The Fate of Midas (San Francisco: Ramparts, 1973), p. 7.

  13. David Horowitz, “A Radical’s Disenchantment,” Nation 229, no. 19 (8 December 1979): 586.

  14. David Horowitz, “Horowitz Replies,” ibid. 230, no. 1 (5-12 January 1980): 20.

  15. The article appeared in the 17 March 1985 issue of the Washington Post Magazine and was reprinted, among other places, in the May 1985 issue of Contentions, pp. 1–6.

  16. The information on Irving Kristol is from the author’s interview with Philip Selznick, August 1982, Berkeley, Calif., and from Douglas G. Webb’s “Philip Selznick and the New York Sociologists,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Toronto, 1982.

  17. Earl Raab to AW, 28 August 1985.

  18. “Where We Stand,” Enquiry 1, no. 1 (November 1942): 2.

  19. William Ferry, “Other People’s Nerve,” ibid., no. 4 (May 1943): 3–6.

  20. Irving Kristol, “‘Civil Liberties,’ 1952—A Study in Confusion,” Commentary 13, no. 3 (March 1953): 229.

  21. See Peter Steinfels’s chapter, “The Encounter Affair,” The Neoconservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 83–90.

  22. Peter Steinfels’s The Neoconservatives provides the best overview of the thought of the neoconservatives. See also the following: Nigel Ashford, “The Neo-Conservatives,” Government and Opposition 16, no. 3 (1981): 353–69; Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 19–50; Louis Harap, “Right-Wing Intellectuals and Jews,” Jewish Currents 34, no. 6 (June 1980): 4–9, 35–37; Kirkpatrick Sale, “Old Wine, New Bottles,” Mother Jones 1, no. 4 (June 1976): 29–33, 50—55.

  23. Walter Goodman, “Irving Kristol: Patron Saint of the New Right,” New York Times Magazine, 6 December 1981, p. 90.

  24. See the debate between Lionel Abel and Irving Kristol in New Politics 1, no. 2 (Winter 1962): 168–70.

  25. Walter Goodman, “Irving Kristol,” ibid., p. 202.

  26. See the discussion, “Timerman and the Jews,” in the Nation 223, no. 4 (8-15 August 1981): pp. 112–14.

  27. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. xiii.