New York Intellectuals

Mid-20th-century American writers and critics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"),[2] 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, Dissent, and 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, Sidney Hook, and Norman Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of neoconservatism.[3]

Members

Writers often identified as members of this group include:

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.