Abandoning hope

Submitted by Anon on 16 July, 2006 - 10:47

Steve Cohen reviews A Margin of Hope – An Intellectual Autobiography by Irving Howe

“What would happen if men remained faithful to the ideals of their youth?” (Pietro Spina in Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine)

Irving Howe was one of that group of “New York Intellectuals” so well described by Alan Wald in his own book of that title. What distinguished this group (more accurately, a loose grouping) was the political trajectory of those identified with it from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond — a trajectory which for most of them went (in a personal form of combined and uneven development) from anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialism to accommodation of and support for western imperialism.

The group as well as being of general cultural and political importance also has a particular significance within the Trotskyist tradition in that the majority of its members were in essence fellow travellers of Trotskyism. Some were actual members of James Cannon’s Socialist Workers Party and then of the Workers Party of Max Shachtman — Shachtman himself being a spectacular example of a rightward political journey.

Within this group Irving Howe was an exception (but not the only exception — Dwight Macdonald retained a far greater radicalism). Though no longer seeing himself a revolutionary he did retain a self-professed socialism of sorts after quitting Shachtman’s Independent Socialist League (the successor of the Workers Party) in 1952.

He founded and edited the lively, questioning magazine Dissent and in 1983 he helped form the (rightwing) Democratic Socialists of America. In the 1950s, and along with Shachtman, he remained principled in fighting Stalinism whilst being consistently opposed to the McCarthyite witch-hunts — compared to Irving Kristol and other renegades based around Commentary magazine who supported the anti-communist inquisition and ultimately became central to neo-con political thought and action.

In the 1960s, whilst being opposed to what he saw as the ultra-left “excesses” of the anti-war movement Howe also was increasingly critical of the Vietnam war itself. He is a living refutation of the jibe that splitting from Leninism and even Marxism means being confined to the dustbins of history. Apart from anything else Howe should be remembered and read for his World Of Our Fathers, published in 1976. This is a major study of Jewish immigration to the USA — as seen from the perspective of the Jewish worker.

Howe, like the majority of the “New York Intellectuals”, was himself Jewish. In his autobiography A Margin of Hope he sums up in a couple of sentences what often seems to be the eternal struggle and dilemma of the Jewish radical — “They wanted a Jewishness of question and risk, whilst the American Jewish community, at least most of it, was settling into good works and self-satisfaction”.

His autobiography shows vividly the context in which immigrant Jewish children can embrace the revolution. At a young age his father taught him the Yiddish saying, no one dies once of hunger, you die three times a day. In 1934, at the age of fourteen, he joined the Young Peoples Socialist League (YPSL). According to Howe there were nine YPSL branches in the Bronx alone (the Bronx being the area of major Jewish settlement), each with a membership of up to fifty young people and meeting weekly. He subsequently studied at City College New York.

The pre-war CCNY shows how vain and ahistorical were the 1968 generation of radicalised students in somehow believing that they (we) were the first such generation. The predominantly Jewish CCNY students were extremely politically involved. Alcoves One and Alcove Two of the student dining area have assumed iconic status. Alcove One was the daily meeting place of the anti-Stalinist left, and Alcove Two of the Stalinists. Between the two was fought a war of the worlds. There were also Zionist alcoves, orthodox religious alcoves etc.

Alcove One seems to have been a site of continuous debate, redolent of both the Talmud and of Trotskyism. Howe tells the story about how he had once left some such animated discussion to attend a lecture. When he returned the debate was still continuing — but with an entirely fresh cast of participants! The more versatile of these students prided themselves on being able to carry on more than one argument at a time — somewhat in the manner of simultaneous chess.

Howe’s autobiography has many lessons for today. For instance he has interesting observations on what constitutes a political “sect” (a description he would probably apply to all Leninist/vanguard organisations). He writes that “For the political sect the October Revolution looms as a glorious memory, but also as an irksome reminder of failure: why can’t what was done be done once again? Done again if only the right strategy is found?”.

In the 1960s and 1970s the Socialist Labour League (later the Workers’ Revolutionary Party) of Gerry Healy seems to have been based on the philosophy that the more a group is hated then the more correct must be the “line” — and Howe anticipates this in writing: “The more the political sect slips into the comforts of isolation…the more its conscious members must chafe against them. There is no peace”.

At this moment the extremely small Workers Power group has become even smaller by expelling half of its membership around issues which may be legitimate for socialists to debate but not to destroy themselves over — such as (wait for it) whether Europe has entered a “pre-revolutionary situation”. So Howe writes: “The party line becomes its most precious good. To call into doubt even an inch of that line is to endanger its survival, so that, in a way, it is quite right to cast out heretics. In a sect, heresy is never incidental”.

In my view the lesson to be learned from Howe’s revulsion against sects is not to abandon socialist organisation — but rather to build looser and more inclusive workers parties analogous to those of the First International as guided by Marx. Moreover Howe, as a self-confessed member of the intelligentsia, at no point questions as at all problematic the role of the “intellectual” as a specialised sphere within class struggle — a role which as much as anything has arguably lead to hierarchy and elitism within and between the sects

Irving Howe in many ways was the direct precursor of today’s Euston Manifesto group. In particular (like Shachtman) he began to ascribe a continuing progressive role to the world bourgeoisie and in particular to imperialism. The Manifesto group see this as being progressive relative to the under-developed world. Howe saw it as progressive in respect to the bureaucratic collective states created by Stalinism (and in retrospect to Nazism, which he also seemed to categorise as bureaucratic collectivist).

He wrote “It was necessary, therefore, to strengthen resistance amongst the bourgeois democratic states in Europe as they existed and not wait for some presumed perfection in the future. This meant to support the Marshall Plan as a strategy for rebuilding the Western European Economy”. Though the Workers Party opposed the post-war Marshall Plan (in which the USA subsidised Western Europe), Shachtman later came to believe this was a mistake. In my view the error of Howe and then Shachtman and now the Euston Manifesto group is not simply one of abstract principle — never side with the exploiters. In addition it is one of faith — never trust the bastards. So the Marshall plan was not about “humanitarian” aid. It was linked to the militarization of Europe, via NATO.

There are undoubtedly important issues still unresolved by Marxists about the relationship to bourgeois intervention in particular circumstances (the war against Hitlerism being a classic example). However to catagorise imperialism as being historically progressive did eventually lead to the horrendous spectacle of Max Shachtman supporting the American invasion of Vietnam.

On a purely pragmatic level Howe writes with wit about the often boring and repetitive internal life of most of the vanguard groups. There deserves to be printed in full his poem A Song of Meetings, the first verse of which reads:

I sing a song of meetings

Of meetings held to plan future meetings

And meetings to discuss the failure of earlier meetings

Of meetings to counter the dark consequences of enemy meetings

And meetings to commemorate the uncounted meetings we have been strong enough to attend.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.