Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916 - October 24, 1970) was an American historian and held the chair of Dewitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. His works include The Age of Reform (1955) and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction, as well as Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (1944), The American Political Tradition (1948), and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964).

Biography

Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York in 1916 to a Jewish father and a German American Lutheran mother, who died when he was ten. In 1933, he enrolled at the University at Buffalo, majoring in philosophy and minoring in history. He worked with the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. At the university, Hofstadter became involved in left-wing politics, joining the Young Communist League and meeting a radical student named Felice Swados, whom he would marry in 1936.

Marxist Stage

After graduation, Hofstadter entered the graduate program in History at Columbia University. In New York, Hofstadter became more involved in Marxist circles, joining the Communist Party in 1938, though, in his words at the time, "I join without enthusiasm but with a sense of obligation... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don't like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now." By 1939, however, he had become disenchanted with the party and his participation began a steady decline; by the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact in September, he was thoroughly and permanently disillusioned with the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, and Marxism itself. He did not, however, change his views on capitalism: "I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it."

Hofstadter was left with a deep sense of cynicism that pervaded his academic work and thought. In 1945, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University after completing his dissertation, which had already been published in 1944 as Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 and sold 200,000 copies. It was a Marxist critique of American capitalists of the late 19th century who, he argued, believed in a dog-eat-dog sort of ferocious competition endorsed by Social Darwinism as preached by William Graham Sumner. Later critics took issue with his evidence, aruging that very few businessmen were Social Darwinists and that many took positions in favor of philanthropy.

Influence of Charles Beard

In the early and mid-1940s, Hofstadter was a disciple from afar of Charles Beard, stating "...Beard was really the exciting influence on me." Beard's conflict model taught that American history was the the struggle of competing economic groups, primarily farmers, plantation slaveowners, industrialists, and workers. The clashing rhetoric of political leaders meant little, said Beard. He argued that historians should instead look for hidden self-interest and financial goals. Beard viewed the Civil War as a transfer of political power from the Southern plantation elite to Northeastern capitalists; slavery was not especially important as a cause in his analysis.

The Consensus Historians

After 1945, Hofstadter broke with Beard and moved to the right, becoming associated with the "consensus historians". In 1946, he joined the Columbia faculty and became DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History in 1959. His most well-known and influential work, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, was published in 1948. It comprised a series of 12 biographical portraits of major political leaders from the 1770s to 1930s. Like many of his other books, it focused primarily on reading and synthesizing secondary sources. It was a major success, as Pole (2000) explains, because it was "skeptical, fresh, revisionary, occasionally ironical, without being harsh or merely destructive." The chapters titles themselves were ironic and revisionist, pointing up the paradoxes inherent in the American political idiom — Jefferson was labeled "The Aristocrat as Democrat"; John C. Calhoun was "the Marx of the Master Class"; FDR was "The Patrician as Opportunist."

Hofstadter's work after 1945 represented the "consensus school" that flourished in the 1950s in reaction to Beard. Hofstadter explained that the generation of Beard and Vernon Parrington had

...put such an excessive emphasis on conflict that an antidote was needed.... It seems to me to be clear that a political society cannot hang together at all unless there is some kind of consensus running through it, and yet that no society has such a total consensus as to be devoid of significant conflict. It is all a matter of proportion and emphasis, which is terribly important in history. Of course, obviously, we have had one total failure of consensus which led to the Civil War. One could use that as the extreme case in which consensus breaks down.

Later work

Hofstadter broke new historiographical ground by exploring sociological structures (perhaps influenced by his friend C. Wright Mills) and by probing unconscious psychological motives, status anxieties, irrational hatreds, and finally paranoia as political motivators. Although he directed over 100 Ph.D. dissertations in American history, he did not found a school, and allowed his graduate students free rein.

In The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Hofstadter described American society as a whole as extremely provincial, harboring widespread fears of any ideas outside the mainstream. Hofstadter saw a direct lineage from the Salem witch trials in the 17th century down to the McCarthyism of his era.

In other works, Hofstadter described American politics as essentially irrationally motivated. In The Idea of a Party System, Hofstadter described the origins of the first party system in America as being driven by an irrational fear that one of the two major parties hoped to destroy the republic. Hofstadter planned to write a major three-volume history of American politics, but had only partially completed the first volume (later published as America in 1750) when he died at the early age of 54 from leukemia. By that time, he had become a leader of the conservatives protesting the radical sit-in and temporary closing of Columbia university.

Published works

• "William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist," The New England Quarterly> Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 457-477 online at JSTOR
• Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944); 1992 edition with preface by Eric Foner
• The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948). online edition
• The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R (New York: Knopf, 1955). online edition
• The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). (with Walter P. Metzger)
• The United States: the History of a Republic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall, 1957), college textbook; several editions
• Anti-intellectualism in American life (New York: Knopf, 1963).
• The Progressive Movement, 1900-1915 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). edited excerpts
• The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1965).
  • includes "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" Harper's Magazine (1964)
• The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf, 1968).
• The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
• America in 1750: A Social Portrait (1971)

References

• Brown, David S. Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (U. of Chicago Press, 2006) full-scale biography
• Claussen, Dane S. Anti-Intellectualism in American Media," New York: Peter Lang Publishing (2004).
• Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick, “Richard Hofstadter: A Progress, ” in their The Hofstadter Aegis (Knopf, 1974), pp 300-367.
• Foner, Eric. "The Education of Richard Hofstadter." The Nation . Volume: 254. Issue: 17. May 4, 1992. pp 597+.
• Jack Pole, "Richard Hofstadter," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed. "Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000" U of Missouri Press. (2000) pp 68-83