The combination of the grimness of Communism as it now existed in Europe and the success of American capitalism had essentially devastated the traditional left. By the mid-1950s, only J. Edgar Hoover seemed to think Marxism was a powerful force in postwar America. With the triumph of capitalism and the threat of the Cold War, traditional American politics had, if anything, narrowed; the differences between the Republican party and the Democratic party were seen as marginal by many serious social critics of the time. Yet the success of capitalism did not mean the end
