The New York Intellectuals (10th Anniversary Edition)

by Alan M Wald

  Gold also attached a political label, “fascist-minded,” to the poetry of Eliot, claiming that when the modernist writers radicalized they rejected their former mentors because of their politics. This subordination of art to politics was characteristic of many Communist Party critics throughout both the Third Period and Popular Front phases of its cultural activity during the 1930s. It is reflected in Gold’s judgment of Nathanael West, a Communist Party sympathizer who wrote Miss Lonelyhearts (1933): “His writing seemed to me to be symbolic rather than realistic and that was, to me, the supreme crime.”49 Symbolic form is judged criminal. To be sure, many Communist writers employed modernist techniques, and others privately held views similar to those of Phillips and Rahv, but it was the open endorsement of modernism as a viable heritage for communists that gave Partisan Review its special stamp.

  Yet the theory and practice of the leading Partisan Review writers must be judged a partial achievement at best. Their Marxist critique of modernism never went beyond a few illuminating insights, unlike the brilliant work of such European contemporaries as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Georg Lukács.50 In fact, there were elements of elitism inscribed in Partisan Review’s project from its inception. It overreacted to vulgarized Marxism by assigning high culture its virtually exclusive center of interest and was rather selective in the modernist writers it promoted. This approach, of course, contradicted Trotsky’s views. His well-known opposition to a theory of proletarian culture as an official policy of the Soviet Union did not stem from a lack of interest in creative activity among workers or literary depictions of working-class life. Rather, Trotsky held that the dictatorship of the proletariat was intended to be a transitional and exceptional phase; its goal was to construct a classless society and a socialist culture.

  Moreover, from the point of view of the overall development of American literature, it can now be seen that even the most clumsy and forced attempts of some of the pro-Communist writers to bring the experiences of the oppressed and the outcast to the printed pages had a historic significance that the post-1936 Partisan Review editors failed to appreciate. Some aspects of certain “proletarian” novels are noteworthy on purely literary grounds as well, such as the vivid depiction of work experience pervading Jack Conroy’s The Disinherited (1933) and the forms of oppression among plebeian and working-class women described by Tillie Olsen and later published as Yonondio: From the Thirties (1974). It is possible to recognize such accomplishments without indulging in a policy of celebrating a writer’s book simply because he or she adheres to a certain political line or comes from a certain class background.

  What ultimately vindicates the cultural perspective championed by Partisan Review is not so much the specific judgments that the editors made about the works of the time, as it was the fact that so many of the finest books of the decade embodied the magazine’s spirit of openness to modernism and its radical political commitment: U.S.A (1932-38), Call It Sleep (1935), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), and Day of the Locust (1939). The fusion of these two elements is also evident in the work of Farrell, an early contributor to Partisan Review, who admired Marcel Proust as well as Marx and Lenin. Gas-House McGinty (1933), for example, was the highly experimental first volume of an intended trilogy about the Wagon Call Department of the Amalgamated Express Company in Chicago as it evolved under the successive direction of four chief dispatchers. It was originally titled “The Madhouse” and described as “a Romance of Commerce and Service.”51 The structure of the novel is designed to reflect the flow of internal pressures felt by the company workers. The success of his Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-35) is related to Farrell’s attempts to find new modes of communicating the spiritual desolation of his characters. The influence of Joyce is evident in Farrell’s use of dreams, interior monologues, and “snap-shot” episodes.

  Some cultural historians have oversimplified the antagonism that immediately flared up between Partisan Review and the Communist Party in 1937, offering an explanation centered mainly on the editors’ decision to heavily emphasize modernist literature. The first issue of the reorganized magazine included poetry by Wallace Stevens and James Agee, fiction by Delmore Schwartz, an essay on Flaubert by Edmund Wilson, and a review of Kafka’s fiction by Dupee. However, the Partisan Review’s attraction to modernism per se was scarcely sufficient to cause the Communists to launch a literary attack of the magnitude that they mounted against the Partisan Review’s editors. Muriel Rukeyser, Horace Gregory, Malcolm Cowley, Kenneth Burke, Kenneth Fearing, Henry Roth, and Nathanael West all had been influenced by modernism, nonetheless they had been courted by the party at different points in the 1930s. More decisive for the party was the political direction in which a writer was moving. After 1935, only liberalism and Popular Front communism were acceptable political postures; Trotskyism, anarchism, and even the left-wing socialists were not tolerated.

  The Communists attempted to mobilize their literary resources to isolate the new magazine because Phillips, Rahv, and their circle had set themselves up as a rival center of revolutionary thought and an alternative pole of attraction for non-Stalinist Marxism among intellectuals. Even worse, the Trotskyists and Trotsky himself were welcomed as legitimate participants in the discussions that emanated from the new rival center. Consequently, the editors were assaulted with a fusillade of invective. The appearance of the new Partisan Review prompted a rash of articles in the New Masses and Daily Worker headlined variously as “Falsely Labeled Goods,” “A Literary Snake Sheds His Skin for Trotsky,” “Trotskyist Schemers Exposed,” and “No Quarter to Trotskyists—Literary or Otherwise.” V. J. Jerome, the Communist Party’s “commissar of culture,” wrote that the Partisan Review editors were “of the same ilk that murdered Kirov, that turned the guns on the backs of Loyalist civilians in Spain and betrayed the army’s front lines, that have been caught red-handed in plots with the Gestapo and Japanese militarists to dismember the Soviet Union.”52 By the mid-1930s, it was apparent that the core of the anti-Stalinist left intellectuals no longer could be characterized as simply modernists; their attraction to Trotskyism was far more decisive and would become clearer as they began to initiate their own literary and political activities.

  Part II. Revolutionary Intellectuals

  Chapter 4. Philosophers and Revolutionists

  Under thirty a revolutionist, thereafter a scoundrel.

  —Popular French Saying1

  THE NON-PARTISAN LABOR DEFENSE COMMITTEE (NPLD) AND THE AMERICAN WORKERS PARTY

  The internationalist Jewish intellectuals and fellow dissidents broke with the Communist Party in 1933–34, and the radical modernists became alienated from the party at the beginning of the Moscow trials in 1936. Yet these two rebellions should not be confused with rifts that occurred later in the decade. These separations occurred early in their participants’ engagement with radicalism, at a time when revolutionary prospects still seemed promising. The CIO was emerging as a major force in American society; fascism had not yet triumphed in Spain; and the full scope of the purges in the Soviet Union under Stalin was not yet apparent. Consequently, most of the rebels, rather than calling communism itself into question, began to seek out revolutionary alternatives to the Communist Party.

  At the same time, an important process of differentiation had begun between those intellectuals who were willing to make a serious, long-term organizational commitment to revolutionary politics and those whose engagement with Marxism was becoming subordinated to the pursuit of their personal and professional lives. Of course, the two extremes—embarking upon a lifelong full-time commitment to revolutionary politics as opposed to maintaining no organizational connection with the movement—were rarely evident. Much more common were variations and intermediate combinations. One such pattern began with an intellectual assuming a purist, hypercritical, and usually ultraleft stance toward the existing radical movement, followed by a startling rejection of socialist politics altogether. Another entailed an intellectual’s anno
uncement of differences with Marxist philosophy in order to justify an essentially literary association with the socialist movement. Still, one can find occasional examples of purists who overcame their ultraleftism, as well as heretical philosophers who devoted many years to building a Marxist party.

  Many of those who were drawn to activism during the early 1930s considered three particular organizations on the left to be anticapitalist, revolutionary, and non-Stalinist: the American Workers Party (AWP), an indigenous revolutionary organization, led by A. J. Muste; the Communist Party Opposition (CPO), or Bukharinists, led by Jay Lovestone; and the Communist League of America (CLA), Trotskyists, led by James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman. The most prominent of the dissident communists gravitated toward the Muste group, the most loosely structured of the three. Sidney Hook, for example, was one of the central organizers of the AWP and the author of its revolutionary program. Also affiliated with the AWP were James Burnham, who taught with Hook in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, James Rorty, V. F. Calverton, and Edmund Wilson. The Lovestone group would eventually attract only Lewis Corey, who was essentially a secret member from 1937 to 1939, although the founders of the CPO in 1929 included such talented intellectuals as Will Herberg and Bertram D. Wolfe. By December 1934, those who had joined the CLA included Herbert Solow, Felix Morrow, George Novack, and John McDonald, while allies of the Trotskyists included Elliot Cohen, Elinor Rice, Anita Brenner (who occasionally wrote for the Trotskyist newspaper under the name “Jean Mendez”), Louis Berg, and Diana Rubin (her husband, Lionel Trilling, was a sympathizer but remained more distant).2

  In addition to the personal charisma of Trotsky and the power of his critique of Stalinism, three other factors may have helped to consolidate the alliance of the younger and more activist intellectuals with the CLA. In the first place, the intellectuals’ break with the Communists was enthusiastically welcomed by the Troskyists. Second, during the summer of 1934 the CLA led the famed Minneapolis Teamster strikes, thereby establishing itself as a legitimate force in the American labor movement. Third, partly as a result of the success of the Minneapolis strikes, the AWP began to express an interest in fusing with the CLA.3 The mechanism by which the first wave of “Trotskyist intellectuals” began their collaboration with the CLA was through the construction of an alternative to the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) called the Non-Partisan Labor Defense (NPLD).

  When the New Masses denounced the February 1934 open letter of the dissident intellectuals, the Trotskyist newspaper, the Militant, responded aggressively by publishing an article called “The Intellectual Revolt against Stalinist Hooliganism.” Although the Militant claimed, falsely, that none of the signers had as yet drawn Trotskyist conclusions from their criticisms, the revolt was nonetheless assessed as significant. The Trotskyists emphasized that among the signers of the open letter were a number of bonafide activists, including Elliot Cohen, former secretary of the NCDPP; George Novack, secretary of the Prisoners’ Book Committee; Diana Rubin, former secretary of the Prisoners’ Relief Committee; and James Rorty, former secretary of the League of Professionals as well as a founding editor of the New Masses. The Militant offered to provide space for a public discussion with these dissidents on the tactics of the United Front.4

  In the 17 March 1934 issue an anonymous article—whose author was probably Solow—was attributed to a signer of the open letter. Explaining that the protest of the twenty-five was just the first overt product of the ferment then in process among intellectuals close to the Communists, Solow reviewed the conflicts in the NCDPP and League of Professionals, claiming that at least thirty more individuals agreed with the open letter and that many had been influenced by Trotsky’s writings on the United Front.5

  A week later a second unsigned article written by Solow presented a “Program for Intellectuals” that included guidelines for their relation to a revolutionary movement. He began by emphasizing that it would be incorrect for the CLA to encourage all radical intellectuals to join its ranks; the purpose of a revolutionary party was to unite those whose primary interest was organizing a social revolution. Accordingly, most intellectuals could be more effective as allies or sympathizers of such a party, with a program of their own activities to carry out. On the other hand, Solow believed it would be a mistake for intellectuals to organize as a separate, autonomous entity, since they comprised a social layer with certain weaknesses and might well end up transmitting and reinforcing the political liabilities of the middle class. He concluded that the proper place for intellectuals was in mass organizations where they could collaborate with both workers and a revolutionary party. Among the most fruitful areas of activity was labor defense because it provided opportunity for intellectuals to participate in a meaningful fashion, using their exceptional talents in valuable capacities such as writing and fund-raising.6

  Of course, for some members of the Menorah group, Solow’s articles were already dated. Novack and Morrow had already joined the CLA, and Solow himself, while not officially a member, had galvanized the others into establishing a new organization: the Non-Partisan Labor Defense. Since the origin of the conflict in the NCDPP revolved around whether or not to establish a genuine United Front, the NPLD was not simply a liberal civil-rights organization. In an official letter to Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, Solow explained that the NPLD’s program called for a struggle against capitalist oppression. Its national executive board consisted of Anita Brenner, Louis Berg, Elliot Cohen, Elsie Gluck, Martha Gruening, Sidney Hook, Albert Margolies, Felix Morrow, George Novack, Abraham Schneider, Herbert Solow, Thomas Stamm, Carlo Tresca, and Adelaide Walker.7

  The NPLD’s first case involved Antonio Bellussi, an Italian antifascist follower of Carlo Tresca. Arrested for heckling a fascist meeting, he was threatened with deportation to Italy where he was likely to be imprisoned.8 A Bellussi Anti-Fascist Dinner committee was established to raise funds. Elinor Rice was designated treasurer. Solow was scheduled to give the NPLD fund-raising speech following the dinner, but, on the day of the event, the Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon informed Novack that Solow was simply incapable of speaking and that Novack would have to take his place. This sudden inability to speak was characteristic of the psychological problems that plagued Solow, which resulted in his often assuming a behind-the-scenes role while Novack and Morrow did most of the public speaking at the other NPLD activities that followed. These included mass meetings in support of striking workers in Minneapolis and Toledo, actions against the impending deportation from Holland of four young left-wing German refugees, and a demonstration against a pro-Hitler rally held in Madison Square Garden at which some of the demonstrators were arrested.9

  During 1934 and 1935 Solow combined his journalistic and political activities. At the start of 1934 he published a critique in the Nation of the response of German writers to the new fascist regime.10 In February, he reported on the New York hotel-workers strike of which Trotskyists were the leaders.11 During the summer of 1934 Solow traveled to Minneapolis to edit the Organizer, the paper of Teamsters Local 544 which, led by the CLA, was engaged in a series of historic strikes. Strike leader Farrell Dobbs, a Trotskyist, was listed as editor on the paper’s masthead, but it was initially Max Shachtman, and later Solow, who actually put the paper out and wrote most of the articles that appeared in it. Under difficult conditions—virtual civil war in the streets of Minneapolis amidst an intense red-baiting campaign directed especially against “outside agitators”—Solow so impressed the workers with his courage and efficiency that they made him an honorary member of the union.12 Solow also wrote about the Minneapolis strike in the Nation, beginning with a piece called “Class War in Minneapolis” and continuing with a series of articles and letters that appeared throughout the fall of 1934.13

  Returning to New York, Solow and John McDonald formally joined the CLA in December 1934, although Solow had been functioning as a de facto member for at least a year.
Their decision to join came partly in anticipation of the fusion of the AWP and the CLA that occurred only a few weeks later. The fusion process had been under way since the spring of 1934 when the AWP sponsored a series of conferences in New York to discuss its program. Solow, Morrow, and Novack had been asked by the CLA leaders to help accelerate the process of fusion through their close personal and professional ties with various intellectuals in the AWP, including Hook, Rorty, Burnham, and Calverton. The fusion itself was proclaimed by the Trotskyists as a historic alliance of grass-roots activists (from the AWP, which had recently led the Toledo Auto-Lite strike) with revolutionary Marxist theorists (from the CLA). The new organization was called the Workers Party of the United States (WPUS) and its paper the New Militant. But of the intellectuals associated with the AWP, only Burnham chose to establish firm ties to the new party. Hook and Calverton were kept on the rolls for a period but never attended any meetings. Rorty intended to switch his membership from the AWP to the WPUS, but then decided that, as a journalist who was frequently on the road investigating strikes and workers’ struggles, it would be best for tactical reasons to become an “independent.”14

  At the beginning of 1935, Solow flew to California to serve as secretary of the National Sacramento Appeal Committee, a branch of the NPLD established to assist in an important trial. The main defendant was Norman Mini, a recent convert to Trotskyism and a militant young leader of agricultural workers who had been indicted under the state Criminal Syndicalism Law. Members of the Communist Party were also on trial, which made the situation exceedingly complex. Solow pushed himself to the limit organizing the legal defense, raising funds, writing for the New Militant (under the party pseudonym “Harry Strang”) and the Nation, as well as authoring the NPLD pamphlet, Union-Smashing in Sacramento: The Truth about the Criminal Syndicalism Trial (1935). But Solow also ran into difficulties with the Political Committee of the WPUS, which censured him for allegedly stirring up members of the San Francisco branch against the national leadership and for hiring Chicago attorney Albert Goldman, who had resigned from the CLA the previous November to join the Socialist Party. Solow refuted the charges in great detail by mail. The tone of Solow’s defense of his actions seemed surprisingly good-humored, but the episode revealed a streak of individualism on his part that was scarcely compatible with the party discipline the Trotskyists aspired to establish.15