New York Intellectuals

Last updated

The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics but were also firmly anti-Stalinist. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory with Marxism and socialism while rejecting Soviet socialism as a workable or acceptable political model.

Contents

Trotskyism emerged as the most common standpoint among these anti-Stalinist Marxists. Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Leslie Fiedler and Nathan Glazer were members of the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League. [1]

Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"), [2] New York University, and Columbia University in the 1930s,[ citation needed ] and associated in the next two decades with the left-wing political journals Partisan Review and Dissent , as well as the then-left-wing but later neoconservative-leaning journal Commentary .[ citation needed ] Writer Nicholas Lemann has described these intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury".[ citation needed ]

Some, including Kristol, Sidney Hook, and Norman Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of Neoconservatism. [3]

Members

Writers often identified as members of this group include:

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Commentary</i> (magazine) American magazine

Commentary is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, and politics, as well as social and cultural issues. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945 under Elliot E. Cohen, editor from 1945 to 1959, Commentary magazine developed into the leading post-World War II journal of Jewish affairs. The periodical strove to construct a new American Jewish identity while processing the events of the Holocaust, the formation of the State of Israel, and the Cold War. Norman Podhoretz edited the magazine from 1960 to 1995.

Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1960s during the Vietnam War among foreign policy hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives typically advocate the unilateral promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, grounded in a militaristic and realist philosophy of "peace through strength." They are known for espousing opposition to communism and political radicalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irving Kristol</span> American columnist, journalist, and writer (1920–2009)

Irving William Kristol was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. After his death, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social Democrats, USA</span> American social democratic political organization

Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is a social-democratic organization established in 1972 as the successor of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). The SPA had stopped running independent presidential candidates and consequently the term "party" in its name had confused the public. Moreover, replacing the "socialist" label with "social democrats" was meant to disassociate the group from the Soviet Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irving Howe</span> American writer, literary and social critic and socialist activist

Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lionel Trilling</span> American literary critic and writer

Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. With his wife Diana Trilling, whom he married in 1929, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review.

<i>The Public Interest</i>

The Public Interest (1965–2005) was a quarterly public policy journal founded by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, members of the loose New York intellectuals group, in 1965. It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars and policy makers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felix Morrow</span> American political activist and newspaper editor

Felix Morrow was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. In later years, Morrow left the world of politics to become a book publisher. He is best remembered as a factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement.

Encounter was a literary magazine founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was an Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the Central Intelligence Agency who, along with MI6, discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of Cold War neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy and generally shaped its content to support the geopolitical interests of the United States government.

The American Workers Party (AWP) was a socialist organization established in December 1933 by activists in the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, a group headed by A.J. Muste.

Herbert Solow was an American journalist and co-editor of the Menorah Journal who was first a Communist fellow-traveler in the 1920s, a Trotskyist in the 1930s, and then abandoned leftist politics to work in Henry Luce's publishing empire as Fortune editor.

Elliot E. Cohen was the founder and first editor of Commentary.

The Fieldites were a small leftist sect that split from the Communist League of America in 1934 and known officially as the Organization Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party and then the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party. The name comes from the name of its leader B. J. Field.

Aristodimos Kaldis was an artist and left-wing activist in New York.

The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition.

The Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) was a centrist faction, active in the 1970s within the Democratic Party of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan M. Wald</span> American academic, writer

Alan Maynard Wald is an American professor emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and writer of 20th-century American literature who focuses on Communist writers; he is an expert on the American 20th-Century "Literary Left."

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950) is a collection of sixteen essays by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published by Viking in 1950. The book was edited by Pascal Covici, who had worked with Trilling when he edited and introduced Viking's Portable Matthew Arnold in 1949. With the exception of the preface, which was written specifically for the publication of the book, all the essays included in The Liberal Imagination were individually published in the decade before the book's publication in literary and critical journals, such as The Partisan Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, and The American Quarterly. The essays represent Trilling's written work and critical thoughts of the 1940s.

The Menorah Journal (1915–1962) was a Jewish-American magazine, founded in New York City. Some have called it "the leading English-language Jewish intellectual and literary journal of its era." The journal lasted from 1915 until 1961.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elinor Rice Hays</span> American writer

Elinor S. Rice Hays was an American biographer and novelist.

References

  1. ↑ Alexander Bloom: Prodigal Sons. The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press: NY / Oxford 1986, p. 109.
  2. ↑ Leonhardt, David (2017-01-18). "America's Great Working-Class Colleges". New York Times. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  3. ↑ Hartman, Andrew (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0226379234.
  4. ↑ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 210. ISBN   978-0-8078-4169-3 . Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  5. ↑ Brick, Howard (1986). Daniel Bell and the decline of intellectual radicalism : social theory and political reconciliation in the 1940s. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 60-61,90,148. ISBN   978-0-299-10550-1. OCLC   12804502.
  6. ↑ Wilford, Hugh (2003). "Playing the CIA's Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War". Diplomatic History. Oxford University Press (OUP). 27 (1): 15–34. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00337. ISSN   0145-2096.
  7. ↑ Roberts, Sam (2021-03-29). "Morris Dickstein, Critic and Cultural Historian, Dies at 81". New York Times. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
  8. 1 2 Howe 1970, p. 226.
  9. 1 2 Howe 1970, p. 228.
  10. ↑ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 50. ISBN   978-0-8078-4169-3 . Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  11. 1 2 Michael HOCHGESCHWENDER "The cultural front of the Cold War: the Congress for cultural freedom as an experiment in transnational warfare" Ricerche di storia politica, issue 1/2003, pp. 35-60
  12. ↑ Jumonville, Neil (1991). Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America. University of California Press. p. 187. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  13. ↑ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 141. ISBN   978-0-8078-4169-3 . Retrieved 22 June 2020.

Bibliography

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.