Backslide of "New York Intellectuals" described

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Accurate but incomplete Wald finds the reasons for the course taken by Trotskyist-influenced intellectuals to be "rooted in post-war situation of economic boom, upward mob [of the intellectuals], the failure of revolutions in wes A Sport of Nature, by Nadine Gordimer. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, N.Y., 341 pages, $18.95 hardcover.

No other writer has written with such insight about life in South Africa as Nadine Gordimer. In her latest novel, "A Sport of Nature," the polemics are sharper, the language more descriptive, and the style more experimental than in earlier works.

Gordimer has the ability to realistically portray people caught in the moral dilemmas and dangers of South African apartheid without overpowering us with righteous overtones. Her hatred for the apartheid regime is always balanced with beautiful passages describing her country and its people.

The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s, by Alan M. Wald. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987. 440 pages. $32 hard-cover, $12.95 paperback.

"The New York intellectuals" is a phrase widely used for a group of writers who have been leading figures in the cultural world for the last 30, 40, or 50 years.

As Alan Wald shows, they were originally called the "the Trotskyist intellectuals." But in the 1950s, many of them gained national reputations, becoming identified with New York intellectual magazines that attracted others following the same path away from the Trotskyist sympathies with which they began. The phrase "New York intellectuals" then took hold.

Some of the best-known of them are Daniel Bell, Saul Bellow, James T. Farrell, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, Irving Kirstol, Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, Lionel Trilling, and Edmund Wilson.

So widely recognized have they become as a force in the cultural history of the time that no less than five books have been written on the group since 1982. However, Wald's book is by far the fullest, most well-informed, and most analytical.

Political amnesia dispelled

Wald did an enormous amount of work, not only reading the vast literature of the subject but interviewing over 100 persons and corresponding with even more. Although Wald is a socialist who does not hide his partisanship, he was able to gain the cooperation of those of opposing views in obtaining biographical information.

He has thus been able to show how individuals interacted upon each other and how a movement grew and developed. More than this, Wald has dispelled a political amnesia that obscured the political past of many.

Wald not only describes the evolution of the New York intellectuals, but he describes the political struggles within the Trotskyist movement that influenced them. For those familiar with the history of this movement, however, opinions concerning his estimate of the tendencies and personalities involved may differ. the the lity ern Europe, and the advent of the international Cold War and domestic McCarthyism."

This course was also taken by intellectuals of all other sectors of the left, including the Stalinist sector.

Moreover, as a result of the stimulus given by the movement against the war in Vietnam, some New York intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald, Mary McCarthy, and Philip Rahy returned to a radical critique of capitalism, if not to a revolutionary perspective.

Wald's analysis is accurate, but it would have been better if he had provided a fuller and richer background, rather than a bald analytical summary of that background.

This would have brought out clearly the existence of a stable core of proletarian leadership in the Socialist Workers Party—which provided revolutionary continuity until recent years when a new leadership junked the party's Trotskyist program.

By describing in greater detail the forces impinging upon the Socialist Workers Party and its periphery, Wald would have better informed the young radical intellectuals to whom he is addressing himself and would have made more difficult the kind of criticism his book was bound to get from establishment intellectuals.

"Extremely opinionated?"

An example of such criticism is that of David M. Oshinsky in The New York Times Book Review. Oshinsky acknowledges that Wald has written "a valuable book" that is "well-researched" and "insightful." But he says that Wald is "extremely opinionated"-by which he means that Wald's opinions differ from his own.

For Oshinsky, the Socialist Workers Party from whose influence the intellectuals broke away was merely an ineffectual sect. Yet this supposed sect attracted talented people who became what Oshinsky himself calls "this country's leading intellectuals."

This attraction was due to the power of the party's ideas and its leadership in such important class battles as the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934.

Oshinsky finds that the intellectuals "did not turn away from radicalism" primarily because of "Cold War pressures or economic interest," which he states is Wald's thesis. He points out instead that American capitalism "was stronger than ever" and " the war had not brought revolutions to Europe or the downfall of Stalin-both of which Trotsky had predicted."

Oshinsky fails to notice that Wald made the same point, asserting that "ad hominem attacks" on individuals as "sellouts" and "opportunists" are "a poor substitute for the searching out of social and historical factors," namely, the "continued success of U.S. capitalism."

Wald states, however, that this success was "conSidney Hook tingent" on "dominating economically underdeveloped countries," the thwarting of the post-war revolutionary threat in Europe, and a "Stalinism" that seemed " stronger than ever."

An aid in orientation Nevertheless, Wald might well have expanded upon these points. The question is whether Trotsky provided a long-range orientation that holds good, whatever modifications of theory must be made to take into account new historic forces that have manifested themselves.

"A prognosis," Trotsky said, "is not a promissory note which can be cashed on a given date...All those who seek exact predictions of concrete events should consult the astrologists. Marxist prognosis aids only in orientation."

Those who demanded immediate payment on what they construed as Trotsky's promissory notes gave up an orientation that has proven itself to be correct.

A statement Sidney Hook made in the 1930s, when he was under the influence of Trotsky, is as applicable today as it was then. Hook stated:

"No tinkering with capitalism will enable us to avoid the evils of war, cyclical depression, and cultural perversion inherent in the existing social relations of production."

Of course, Wald's subject is the New York intellectuals, not the problems of world revolution or of building a revolutionary party in the United States. However, by painting a more detailed background giving greater depth to his treatment of his subject, he would have improved an excellent book.