New York Intellectuals

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The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. Mostly Jews, 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.

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]

Overview

Writers often identified as members of this group include Hannah Arendt, William Barrett, Daniel Bell,[2][3][4] Saul Bellow, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Leslie Fiedler, Nathan Glazer, Clement Greenberg, Paul Goodman, Richard Hofstadter, Sidney Hook,[5][6] Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Mary McCarthy,[7][6] Dwight Macdonald, William Phillips, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Rahv, Harold Rosenberg, Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Susan Sontag, Harvey Swados, Diana Trilling, Lionel Trilling, and Robert Warshow.[citation needed]

Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"),[8] 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, Hook, and Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of Neoconservatism.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Alexander Bloom: Prodigal Sons. The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press: NY / Oxford 1986, p. 109.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Wilford, Hugh (2003). "Playing the CIA's Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War". Diplomatic History. 27 (1). Oxford University Press (OUP): 15–34. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00337. ISSN 0145-2096.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ a b 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
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ Leonhardt, David (2017-01-18). "America's Great Working-Class Colleges". New York Times. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  9. ^ Hartman, Andrew (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226379234.
  • Bloom, Alexander. Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-19-503662-X
  • Cooney, Terry A. The Rise of the New York Intellectuals: Partisan Review and Its Circle, 1934-1945, University of Wisconsin Press, 1986, ISBN 0-299-10710-8
  • Dorman, Joseph. Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in their Own Words. New York: Free Press, 2000. ISBN 0-684-86279-4.
  • Jumonville, Neil. Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America, University of California Press, 1991, ISBN 0-520-06858-0
  • Laskin, David. Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals University of Chicago Press, 2001, ISBN 0-226-46893-3
  • Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4169-2.

External links

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