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Dwight Macdonald and the Politics Circle: The Challenge of Cosmopolitan Democracy
"Gregory Sumner's book is wonderfully detailed in telling the story of Macdonald and the friends who helped him put out his unforgettable magazine."--Alfred Kazin "The author has captured the spirit of the animators of politics with empathy and precision. I know--I was there. He brings to life key aspects of the radical past that are worth preserving today."--Lewis A. Coser
One of the best known and most iconoclastic of the "New York Intellectuals" of the 1930s and 1940s, Dwight Macdonald was also the editor of politics. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.
"A scholarly, informed, and impassioned meditation on the potential contribution of Macdonald's political vision for our own times."--Chicago Tribune
Born out of revulsion at the mass violence of the Second World War, politics became the center of an international dialogue about post-Marxist alternatives to the Cold War. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.
One of the best known and most iconoclastic of the "New York Intellectuals" of the 1930s and 1940s, Dwight Macdonald was also the editor of politics. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.
"A scholarly, informed, and impassioned meditation on the potential contribution of Macdonald's political vision for our own times."--Chicago Tribune
Born out of revulsion at the mass violence of the Second World War, politics became the center of an international dialogue about post-Marxist alternatives to the Cold War. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1996
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December 24, 2015
Thanks to George Scialabba for introducing me to Dwight Macdonald. This is a well-researched and engaging read. The author admires Macdonald and makes a strong case for his continuing relevance, though he is not afraid to critique his shortcomings.
From the start, Macdonald had a qualified and critical relationship with Marxism:
“‘I leaned toward the Communists because they alone on the American Left seemed to be ‘doing something.’” “‘The critical side attracted me, and also the protest against the capitalist injustice but the dogmatism and the insistence on explaining everything by one system of thought repelled me (as did a certain moral callousness’” (9).
Unlike some of his fellow leftists, Macdonald abandoned communism and his support for the Soviet Union as soon as he learned of the Moscow Trials in 1936.
The Holocaust, the Manhattan project, and “depersonalized warfare” caused him to become disillusioned with the “bankruptcy of the Western faith in the inevitability of progress, the dead end of the Enlightenment project of freedom through mastery.” He continues, “The application of scientific organization and technology to the project of efficient mass murder presented…a challenge to the faith in progress through instrumental reason” (51).
Politically, this led him to a critique of the modern state and its bureaucracy. While this constituted a sort of leftist anti-modernity, Macdonald’s ideas took on a modernist orientation with his embrace of the ideals of cosmopolitanism and internationalism.
His emphasis on culture anticipated the New Left. From early on in his Partisan Review days, Macdonald was preoccupied with the state suppression of culture by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Sumner states that “Already in the 1940s he understood that debates about militiarism and the bureaucratic state, race, and gender relations, and the moral autonomy of the individual were eclipsing the class issues that had preoccupied the Old Left” (87).
Macdonald’s disenchanchment caused him to become a “renegade Marxist,” who intended to “reshape theory to fit the concrete facts instead of doing the opposite” (151). He disavowed Marxist prophecy for its (1) failure to recognize the state as oppressive in and of itself regardless of who was running it, (2) problematic view of violence as legitimate, even in the age of nuclear weapons, and (3) lack of concern for the individual.
Interestingly, he divided the left into progressives who still included Marxists of the “scientific” type concerned with the “objective” flow of history and radicals which included anarchists (and renegade Marxists like himself) concerned with subjective questions of morality and who disavowed state oppression and mass violence. Macdonald pointed out that Marx’s “ideas lay vulnerable to wildly varying interpretations, permitting regimes like the Stalinist dictatorship to appropriate the mantle of his authority” (155).
Macdonald was strong on criticism but weak on solutions. Accordingly, the new iteration of politics magazine also seemed to lose its way. In his writings, Macdonald embraced the idea of “sociability” between individuals among affinity groups linked together internationally. Essentially, this set of mushy ideas and wishes resembles classical anarchism of a federation of mutual aid societies. He also adopted Andrea Caffi’s notion of operating “outside politics,” though the author doesn’t elaborate on this concept enough to know how novel an idea this was or whether it anticipated the social movements of the mid-century.
Ultimately, this straightforward book presents a narrative of a critical milieu that begins with excitement and ends underwhelming.
From the start, Macdonald had a qualified and critical relationship with Marxism:
“‘I leaned toward the Communists because they alone on the American Left seemed to be ‘doing something.’” “‘The critical side attracted me, and also the protest against the capitalist injustice but the dogmatism and the insistence on explaining everything by one system of thought repelled me (as did a certain moral callousness’” (9).
Unlike some of his fellow leftists, Macdonald abandoned communism and his support for the Soviet Union as soon as he learned of the Moscow Trials in 1936.
The Holocaust, the Manhattan project, and “depersonalized warfare” caused him to become disillusioned with the “bankruptcy of the Western faith in the inevitability of progress, the dead end of the Enlightenment project of freedom through mastery.” He continues, “The application of scientific organization and technology to the project of efficient mass murder presented…a challenge to the faith in progress through instrumental reason” (51).
Politically, this led him to a critique of the modern state and its bureaucracy. While this constituted a sort of leftist anti-modernity, Macdonald’s ideas took on a modernist orientation with his embrace of the ideals of cosmopolitanism and internationalism.
His emphasis on culture anticipated the New Left. From early on in his Partisan Review days, Macdonald was preoccupied with the state suppression of culture by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Sumner states that “Already in the 1940s he understood that debates about militiarism and the bureaucratic state, race, and gender relations, and the moral autonomy of the individual were eclipsing the class issues that had preoccupied the Old Left” (87).
Macdonald’s disenchanchment caused him to become a “renegade Marxist,” who intended to “reshape theory to fit the concrete facts instead of doing the opposite” (151). He disavowed Marxist prophecy for its (1) failure to recognize the state as oppressive in and of itself regardless of who was running it, (2) problematic view of violence as legitimate, even in the age of nuclear weapons, and (3) lack of concern for the individual.
Interestingly, he divided the left into progressives who still included Marxists of the “scientific” type concerned with the “objective” flow of history and radicals which included anarchists (and renegade Marxists like himself) concerned with subjective questions of morality and who disavowed state oppression and mass violence. Macdonald pointed out that Marx’s “ideas lay vulnerable to wildly varying interpretations, permitting regimes like the Stalinist dictatorship to appropriate the mantle of his authority” (155).
Macdonald was strong on criticism but weak on solutions. Accordingly, the new iteration of politics magazine also seemed to lose its way. In his writings, Macdonald embraced the idea of “sociability” between individuals among affinity groups linked together internationally. Essentially, this set of mushy ideas and wishes resembles classical anarchism of a federation of mutual aid societies. He also adopted Andrea Caffi’s notion of operating “outside politics,” though the author doesn’t elaborate on this concept enough to know how novel an idea this was or whether it anticipated the social movements of the mid-century.
Ultimately, this straightforward book presents a narrative of a critical milieu that begins with excitement and ends underwhelming.
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