3/26/98. Latest rvision 3/26/98
 
Introduction
 
 
*The American left has been perennial feature since late 19th century. See John Patrick Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left
 
1. Immigrant/worker Left 1870s-1910s. Major organization was Socialist Party of America (1901-) with more radical Socialist Labor Party (Daniel DeLeon)
 
2. "Lyrical Left"" Bohemian, young intellectuals : Bourne, Max Eastman, John Reed 1910s
 
3. "Old Left" 1930s-1950s
 
4. "New Left" 1960s
 
5. "Academic Left 1980s-90s
 
** at each stage had different social groups behind. But thesis of this class is that was particularly appealing to "intellectuals," and can be seen as preeminently if not exclusively a phenomenon of the intellectuals. Finally had implications not only for the culture of the 1930s, but also through the 1950s-60s, especially in End of Ideology. which served as direct challenge to the creation of a "New Left" in the 1960s.
 
I.Appeal of Communism to intellectuals in early 1930s (see Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left)
 
A. Major figures:
 
1.writers: Dreiser, Anderson, DosPassos, Erskine Caldwell, Waldo Frank
2.intellectuals: Sidney Hook, Steffens
3. Critics: E Wilson, M Josepheson, Newton Arvin, Malcolm Cowley, R Cantwell, Granville Hicks, Philip Rahv
 
* book that illustrates intellectual pilgrimage
 
Steffens, Autobiography
 
B. Declaration gives concerns. see Aaron, pp. 213-14
 
C. later organized into John Reed Clubs, followed by the formation of the League of American writers
 
D. Repudiation of 1920s literary creed
 
1.seen in Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return [1997 previously covered]
 
Summary:
 
A. Cowley's Exile's Return both a "leisurely, untheoretical sociology of one group of American modernists" (Tallek p. 166), and a critical review of them from the perspective of the 1930s (cf. Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography 1931) [all page numbers to Viking Press edition 1951, which probably different from Penguin).
 
B. Major themes: deracination of his generation, as they became "homeless citizens of the world."
 
1. began in high school, where ongoing debates seemed old hat:
a. religious discussions converted them all to "indifferentism." (p. 18)
 
b. literature the same (p 20. See how he made may through Hardy, Mencken, Nathan).
 
c. even modernist emphasis on "paradox" now trivialized in boyish, oneupsmanship of the "convolutions." (p. 23)
 
*as with Education of Henry Adams, his generation as yet unaware of the changes transforming their world.
 
2. cosmopolitanism of the Genteel Tradition as embodied in the school curriculum continued the process of uprooting.
 
* key in retrospect is changing sense of what "culture" is (see M. Mead).
 
3. service in WWI as ambulance corps drivers put them further "above the battle" as outsiders in someone else's war.
 
4. Returned to post-war Greenwich village where Bohemianism had become "artiness" and reduced to a litany. Cowley especially perceptive in noting the fit between this "self-expression" culture and the new consumerism, a theme developed at length by a later generation of scholars, e.g. R. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace.
 
5. Escape to Europe provides no solution since Weimar inflation is symbol of way in which "values" now "valuta," and meaningless.
 
6. Rest of book describes the European sources of what he describes as "religion of art" and the final collapse of this meretricious world as symbolized by the suicide death of Harry Crosby--a playboy Henry Adams who finally finds his "absolute" in death.
 
*in conclusion, shows how the "religion of art" was a mistaken response to deeper social/economic forces that now (1930s) demanded radical (= Marxist) analysis.
 
 
2. In Archibald Macleish's dedication to "social muse"
 
3. and dedication to "proletarian art" . Examples.
 
Explanations:
 
1. Schlesinger says "insecurity." See Age of Roosevelt, p 165-66
 
2. but also seems culmination of "efficiency" strain in progressivism.
 
3. this coupled with Bolshevik hardness which may have appealed to American virility and stocicism , possibly related to to deauthoritized father of immigrant/Jewish culture. Allowed to identify with power without feeling guilt.
 
4. Richard Pells, Radical Dreams puts together as final search for identity and order. See Pells, p. 165.
 
5. Cooney, Balancing Acts [discussion of ovevrall thesis and view of America Left] See esp. Ch. 5 "Writing Wrongs and Asserting Rights"
 
DOCUMENT ANALYSIS: H&C, Am. Intell. Trad. Meridel Le Sueur, "I Was Marching,' pp. 224-30;

Evaluation: In restrospect can nonetheless see why Old Left seemed so inadequate to the New Left:
 
# Some positive aspects
 
a. helped create the breakdown of parochialism, not only in narrow prejudices but culturally
 
b. showed vital indpendenece in opposing Stalin [although contnued this opposition to Soviet Union in Cold War era.
 
2. But negative outweighed
 
a. other side was parochialism of their own in hostility to rural America and to popular culture (Cooney Stresses)
 
 B. cosmopolitanism in Bourne's model assumed the continuing vitality of ethnic traditions. But in their abence became simply a "cosmopolitan position would rapidly become the equivalent of an assimialationist stance" (Cooney p. 268)