Just one hundred years ago, my father entered City College,
the first member of his extended family to seek a higher education. The next year his younger brother, my Uncle
Bob, followed him. At CCNY, they met two
other Jewish boys who were also socialists, Ernest Nagel and Sidney Hook. In those days, each alcove table in the CCNY
student cafeteria was reserved for students of a particular ideological
bent. My grandfather, two years earlier,
had sided with the Socialist Party and against the Communist International, so
that pretty well decided where my father and my uncle would eat lunch.
It was not a better time, let us be clear. Lynchings were common occurrences, Negroes
were denied simple human rights, women had not yet gained the right to vote,
and the social welfare protections of the New Deal were then no more than
planks in the Socialist Party platform.
But it was possible then to hope.
7 comments:
There's still hope. 100 years ago today, the country was headed into twelve years of Republican administrations--Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. There will be life after Trump--although you and I may not live to see it.
Sure, there will be life after Trump, but few people have hope in the socialist future in the way that they did 100 years ago.
One hundred years ago the Russian Revolution was new and many people saw it as the beginning of a world socialist revolution. There was no experience of Stalinism and on the left little fear that a socialist revolution such as the one in Russia could turn so bad.
When people spoke of hope 100 years ago, they didn't just mean that a Democrat would be elected some day in the U.S. and that he or she would try to undo some of the damage done by Trump, but that a new glorious future was in sight for workers throughout the world. Few people still believe that today.
S. Wallerstein
Good point.
The 20th century was enough to kick the hope out of any optimist: Stalin, Hitler, Mao,
Ruanda, Viet Nam, Hiroshima, a Zionist socialist dream converted into a fascist nightmare, the reintroduction of the use of torture by "civilized" nations, immigrants left to drown in the Mediterranean.
Especially if we go back to 1914, instead of 1919, we're going to find that almost everyone was more optimistic, including liberals and humanists of every sort.
The artists and writers beginning the incredible period of experimentation of the early 20th century actually believed that experimental art would somehow change us for the better. Read Joyce's Portrait of the Artist to see the role he gave the artist. Look at the manifestos of surrealism or dada, etc. No one believes in art any more.
It's a sad commentary on contemporary American politics and philosophy that there's no longer any Nagal or Hook in the world. I still remember watching Hook on Buckley's, "Firing Line", PBS program. He diced and spliced the old word wizard. Notwithstanding which, still love the prose of Buckley's political essays and sailing books. Whoops, forgot to mention, in the delirium of nostalgia, our Prof.'s own unique literary gifts.
I've never been able to find the Hook vs Buckley episode, do you know where I can view it?
I don't think, "Firing-Line", episodes are archived on-line. The egregious theologian, the late Richard John Neuhaus, founder of, "First Things" (available on-line), was also featured in the referenced episode. It was a hoot. I just want to add that Prof. Wolff's argumentative skills are equal to his literary, and that he is definitely up there with such as Nagal and Hook. My previous comment might have been taken for a slight.
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