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Irving Howe

Irving Howe (June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary critic, social commentator, editor, and democratic socialist.^[1] Born to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York City, he graduated from City College in 1940 and served in World War II before pursuing a career in academia and journalism.^[2] Howe co-founded the quarterly magazine Dissent in 1954 with Lewis Coser, serving as its editor for nearly four decades and using it as a platform for anti-Stalinist socialist thought that emphasized democratic values and opposition to totalitarianism on both the left and right.^[1]^[2] His early involvement in Trotskyist circles at City College shaped his lifelong commitment to socialism as a critique of capitalism while rejecting authoritarian communism, as evidenced in works like Socialism and America (1977).^[2] He taught literature at institutions including Brandeis University, Stanford University, and Hunter College, where he retired as Distinguished Professor in 1986.^[1] Among his most notable achievements, Howe authored Politics and the Novel (1957), which analyzed the interplay of ideology and literature, and World of Our Fathers (1976), a history of Eastern European Jewish immigration to America that won the National Book Award.^[2]^[3] He also advanced appreciation for Yiddish literature through translations and anthologies, such as The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse (1987, co-edited).^[2] In 1987, he received a MacArthur Fellowship recognizing his contributions to criticism grounded in rationality and civility.^[2] Howe's work consistently bridged literary analysis with political realism, dissenting from orthodoxies in both socialist and intellectual circles.^[1]

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Irving Howe was born Irving Horenstein on June 11, 1920, in New York City to David Horenstein and Nettie Goldman, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who anglicized their surname to Howe upon arrival.^[4] ^[5] The family resided in the East Bronx, a densely packed working-class enclave of recent Jewish arrivals from regions like Bukovina and Bessarabia, where poverty and communal solidarity defined daily life.^[5] ^[6] Howe's father initially operated a modest grocery store in the neighborhood, catering to the immigrant community, but the business collapsed amid the economic collapse of the Great Depression around 1930, when Howe was ten years old.^[7] Following the failure, David Howe took up work as a door-to-door salesman, while the family navigated severe financial hardship typical of the era's urban Jewish proletariat, including reliance on extended kin networks for survival.^[7] ^[8] This instability instilled an early awareness of economic vulnerability, reinforced by the pervasive influence of garment industry labor disputes in the surrounding Bronx tenements.^[4] The Howe household was steeped in Yiddish language and cultural traditions, with everyday conversations and communal gatherings reflecting the transplanted customs of Eastern European shtetl life amid America's industrial grind.^[7] Street scenes of picket lines, union organizing among Jewish needle trades workers, and shared tales of old-world pogroms fostered a nascent sense of class antagonism in young Howe, distinct from later ideological commitments.^[9] Parents like Nettie and David, despite their own limited formal schooling, prioritized their son's intellectual development as a bulwark against recurrent destitution, urging diligence in a milieu where manual labor loomed as the default fate.^[10]

Academic Formation

Howe enrolled at the City College of New York (CCNY) as a freshman in the late 1930s, pursuing studies primarily in literature and history amid a vibrant intellectual environment.^[8]^[11] There, he became immersed in the debates of Alcove No. 1, a gathering spot in the college lunchroom where students engaged in intense discussions on radical ideas, often led by anti-Stalinist socialists among the emerging New York Intellectuals.^[12]^[13] These exchanges, which dominated much of his early college experience, fostered his initial intellectual awakenings through rigorous argumentation rather than formal coursework alone.^[8] His academic progress was interrupted in 1942 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving primarily in Alaska at Fort Richardson near Anchorage for much of World War II.^[14] This four-year military stint, including posting to remote areas, delayed his education but provided time for personal reflection on identity and vocation amid isolation from civilian intellectual circles.^[14] Following his discharge, Howe returned to CCNY and completed his Bachelor of Social Science (B.S.S.) degree in 1946, a credential no longer offered by the institution at the time.^[15] This post-war culmination marked the end of his formal undergraduate training, equipping him with foundational knowledge in the humanities that would underpin his later critical work, though specific faculty influences from CCNY remain less documented compared to the peer-driven dynamics of his student years.^[14]

Political Trajectory

Trotskyist Activism and Early Commitments

Irving Howe, radicalized by the Great Depression and his family's immigrant struggles, joined the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, in 1934 at age fourteen.^[16]^[17] This entry into organized socialism reflected widespread youth disillusionment with capitalism's failures, as evidenced by the nine YPSL branches active in his Bronx neighborhood alone.^[16] Howe's commitments deepened amid the Socialist Party's internal debates over Stalinism, particularly after the 1936 Moscow Trials, which exposed Soviet bureaucratic betrayals to anti-Stalinist radicals.^[18] Gravitating toward Trotskyism as a critique of both capitalist exploitation and totalitarian communism, he aligned with factions rejecting uncritical defense of the USSR. In 1940, following the rupture in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) over the nature of the Soviet state and the impending world war, Howe affiliated with the breakaway Workers Party (WP), founded by Max Shachtman and other "third camp" Trotskyists who viewed the USSR as a bureaucratic collectivist regime rather than a degenerated workers' state.^[19] The WP's position emphasized independent working-class politics, opposing alliances with either imperialist powers or Stalinist expansionism.^[20] From late 1941, shortly before U.S. entry into World War II, Howe served as managing editor of Labor Action, the WP's weekly newspaper, collaborating with figures like Dwight Macdonald to propagate its antiwar and anti-Stalinist line.^[21]^[22] Under his editorial direction, the paper critiqued the war as inter-imperialist while advocating militant labor independence, as seen in Howe's 1946 article urging workers to combat strikebreaking through a labor party.^[23] He contributed polemics to Trotskyist outlets like The New International, analyzing cultural shifts such as the Partisan Review's wartime accommodations.^[24] These efforts underscored Howe's early advocacy for a socialism rooted in empirical opposition to totalitarianism, prioritizing workers' self-organization over vanguardist or bureaucratic models.^[7]

Disillusionment with Radicalism and Anti-Communism

By the late 1940s, Howe began distancing himself from the Trotskyist Workers Party, with full disagreements emerging by 1948 over its rigid ideological commitments and inability to adapt to American realities.^[25] He formally left the Independent Socialist League—a Shachtmanite splinter from the Trotskyist movement—in 1952, viewing its sectarian tactics and pursuit of permanent revolution as futile in the United States, where no viable proletarian base existed for such upheaval and where empirical evidence showed revolutionary socialism repeatedly devolving into authoritarianism rather than liberation.^[26] This break stemmed from Howe's recognition that abstract doctrinal purity clashed with practical social conditions, as the movement's isolation from broader labor and democratic forces rendered its goals unattainable amid postwar prosperity and anticommunist sentiment.^[19] Howe's disillusionment fueled a staunch anti-communism during the Cold War, where he prioritized exposing the Soviet regime's atrocities—such as the Gulag system, engineered famines like the Holodomor, and show trials that liquidated millions—over any lingering sympathy for Marxist ideals divorced from their catastrophic implementations.^[26] Co-authoring The American Communist Party: A Critical History, 1919–1957 with Lewis Coser in 1957, he detailed how the U.S. Communist Party mirrored Stalinist totalitarianism, subordinating democratic norms to Moscow's dictates and betraying socialism's ethical core through causal chains of centralized power leading to repression.^[26] While affirming socialism's moral attraction as a critique of capitalism's inequalities, Howe argued that its revolutionary variants collapsed under the weight of human nature's corruptibility and institutional incentives for tyranny, advocating instead for incremental democratic reforms grounded in verifiable liberal successes.^[25] To combat intellectual fellow travelers who downplayed these failures, Howe engaged with the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), affiliated with the international Congress for Cultural Freedom, participating in efforts to promote non-totalitarian alternatives and refute apologias for Soviet expansionism during the 1950s.^[27] He critiqued obsessive Cold War anti-communism for potentially alienating potential allies against Stalinism but maintained that ignoring communism's empirical record—evidenced by Eastern Europe's post-1945 subjugation and purges totaling over 20 million deaths—served only illusion, not truth.^[25] This stance reflected Howe's shift toward causal realism, where utopian schemes' repeated betrayals by power dynamics outweighed ideological allure, paving the way for a socialism tethered to empirical viability rather than perpetual revolt.^[26]

Advocacy for Democratic Socialism

Howe promoted democratic socialism from the 1960s onward as a reformist ideology that preserved liberal democratic institutions while advancing economic equality through welfare-state expansions and market socialism under public oversight, distinct from totalitarian or revolutionary models.^[28] ^[26] In Socialism and America (1985), he proposed "articles of conciliation" between liberals and socialists, emphasizing pragmatic welfare realism over utopian schemes and grounding the vision in ethical critiques of inequality rooted in egalitarian humanism.^[26] This stance reflected his anti-totalitarian commitments, forged earlier but matured in response to Cold War realities, prioritizing causal mechanisms of power distribution within democratic frameworks over abstract radical breaks.^[26] Howe sharply criticized the New Left's absolutism, viewing its self-righteous authoritarianism and rejection of "bourgeois" liberal values as threats to socialism's democratic core, as evidenced by displays like Vietcong flags at antiwar protests amid overlooked systemic injustices.^[28] He favored class-based analyses of exploitation and power, considering identity-driven movements secondary to addressing structural economic inequities, and rejected slogans such as "the personal is the political" for subordinating individual autonomy to ideological collectivism.^[28] ^[26] These positions underscored his insistence on empirical realism: radicalism untethered from liberal safeguards historically devolved into coercion, as seen in prior communist experiments.^[26] Howe's support for Israel aligned with this worldview, evolving post-1967 Six-Day War into recognition of the state as a democratic bulwark against authoritarian Arab regimes and a necessary haven for Jewish survival, even for diaspora communities.^[29] Co-authoring with Stanley Plastrik in Dissent, he advocated socialist-inspired humane policies, including active aid for Arab refugees and a general return to pre-war borders to avert territorial overreach.^[29] Yet he remained wary of nationalism's perils, critiquing chauvinistic rhetoric among Israeli leaders and the American Jewish establishment's uncritical ties to Israel as fostering unhealthy dependencies that risked ethical compromises.^[29] This balanced realism prioritized Israel's defensive viability while subordinating it to broader anti-authoritarian principles, avoiding both anti-Zionist denialism and blind ethnocentrism.^[26]

Intellectual and Literary Career

Development as Critic

Irving Howe's ascent as a literary critic gained momentum in the 1950s through his essays and reviews in Partisan Review, where he integrated a social-political perspective that examined how literary works embodied and interrogated the causal dynamics of historical and societal conditions.^[30] ^[31] This approach stemmed from his conviction that literature, while autonomous in its formal qualities, inevitably registered the pressures of power structures and ideological conflicts, enabling texts to serve as vehicles for rational critique rather than mere ideological instruments.^[32] Howe resisted reductive politicization, insisting on the primacy of aesthetic judgment alongside historical contextualization, which distinguished his method from both orthodox Marxist literary theory and purely formalist detachment.^[33] As a central figure among the New York Intellectuals—a term Howe himself popularized in a 1968 essay—he participated in vigorous debates over modernism's innovations versus the enduring value of traditional forms, advocating for a balanced engagement that prioritized intellectual rigor and civil discourse over dogmatic adherence to any single aesthetic or political orthodoxy.^[34] ^[35] This circle's emphasis on cosmopolitan modernism, drawn from European influences like Dostoevsky and Conrad, informed Howe's defense of literature as a realm for testing ideas against reality, free from the temptations of ideological conformity.^[27] His contributions fostered a critical tradition that valued skepticism toward mass culture while upholding the humanist potential of serious fiction and poetry to illuminate human agency amid social flux.^[36] Howe's academic roles further solidified his influence, beginning with his appointment as a professor of English at Brandeis University in 1953, where he remained until 1961, and continuing at Hunter College from 1961 until his retirement in 1986.^[1] ^[19] In these positions, he instructed students on literature's capacity to dissect relations of power and moral ambiguity, drawing from primary texts to demonstrate how narrative forms could expose the illusions of ideology and the realities of ethical choice, thereby cultivating a generation attuned to criticism as an act of intellectual independence.^[31]

Key Literary Works and Biographies

Irving Howe's Politics and the Novel, published in 1957 by Horizon Press, investigates the integration of revolutionary ideas into fiction, establishing the political novel as a genre that traces ideological currents from the 19th century into modern literature.^[37] The work analyzes novels by figures such as Dostoevsky, Conrad, and Orwell, emphasizing how narrative forms reveal the human costs and moral complexities of political engagement more vividly than doctrinal exposition.^[38] Howe contends that such literature illuminates power dynamics through character and plot, surpassing the abstractions of political theory in capturing societal contradictions.^[39] In his critical study William Faulkner: A Critical Study, first issued in 1952 by Random House, Howe dissects the author's major works, underscoring recurring motifs of Southern dispossession, racial hierarchies, and the erosion of traditional social orders amid economic upheaval.^[40] The analysis avoids uncritical admiration, instead probing Faulkner's stylistic innovations—such as fragmented narratives and mythic layering—as tools for exposing psychological fractures in characters confronting historical decay.^[41] Later editions, including revisions through the 1970s, refined these interpretations to highlight class antagonisms and the burdens of inheritance in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga.^[42] Howe's 1967 biography Thomas Hardy, published by Macmillan, integrates the author's rural Dorset origins with his literary output, examining how Hardy's fiction grapples with deterministic forces of nature, class rigidity, and personal alienation without romanticizing his Victorian-era struggles.^[43] The study details Hardy's evolution from pastoral realism to tragic pessimism in novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, attributing his thematic depth to lived tensions between intellectual ambition and provincial constraints.^[44] Unlike hagiographic accounts, Howe's approach emphasizes empirical scrutiny of Hardy's manuscripts and correspondences to reveal societal critiques embedded in his portrayals of thwarted individualism.^[45]

Promotion of Yiddish Culture and Translations

Irving Howe co-edited A Treasury of Yiddish Stories in 1954 with Eliezer Greenberg, compiling fifty-two short stories translated into English that depicted shtetl life, immigrant struggles, and broader Jewish experiences from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.^[46]^[47] Published by Viking Press with illustrations by Ben Shahn, the anthology featured translations by contributors including Howe himself and aimed to salvage voices from Eastern European Yiddish literature amid post-Holocaust decimation and American assimilation pressures that eroded the language's daily use.^[48]^[49] Howe's introduction underscored the stories' value in capturing a vanishing world of class-based hardships and communal resilience, countering the cultural amnesia fostered by rapid urbanization and secular integration.^[50] Expanding this effort, Howe and Greenberg edited A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry in 1969, presenting works by major Yiddish poets in bilingual format to highlight the language's expressive range during its period of coherent self-awareness before widespread decline.^[51] The volume included translations of poets such as Avrom Reisen, whose verses chronicled the exploited conditions of Jewish laborers and communal suffering in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe and America after his 1914 emigration.^[52]^[53] Howe's selections emphasized Reisen's unadorned depictions of poverty and ethnic endurance, prioritizing empirical portrayals of diaspora realities over idealized narratives, and thereby preserved poetic testimonies against the backdrop of Yiddish's near-extinction following the destruction of European Jewish centers.^[54] In essays and editorial prefaces, Howe advocated for Yiddish literature's infusion into American Jewish consciousness to sustain cultural continuity, arguing that its class-inflected pessimism—rooted in depictions of proletarian toil and historical fatalism—offered a grounded antidote to detached ethnic sentimentalism.^[55]^[9] Drawing from the socialist-infused realism of Yiddish writers, he critiqued assimilation's erasure of these voices while linking their revival to post-Holocaust imperatives for reclaiming unromanticized Jewish heritage, as explored in his broader reflections on immigrant secularism's fade.^[56]^[57] This work positioned Yiddish not as relic but as a vital counter to ahistorical identity constructs, with Howe's translations ensuring accessibility for English readers confronting modernity's disruptions.^[58]

Role in Dissent and Public Intellectualism

Founding and Shaping Dissent Magazine

Irving Howe co-founded Dissent magazine in 1954 with sociologist Lewis Coser, establishing it as a quarterly publication dedicated to independent left-wing thought that opposed Stalinist totalitarianism while critiquing the inequalities of capitalism without endorsing market absolutism.^[59]^[60] The venture emerged from their shared commitment to democratic socialism, informed by experiences in Trotskyist circles and disillusionment with Soviet apologetics prevalent in some leftist publications of the era.^[26] In its inaugural issue, the editors articulated a vision of "principled dissent" from mid-century conformism, emphasizing radical analysis rooted in libertarian values and empirical scrutiny of political realities over ideological purity.^[61]^[60] Howe assumed the role of editor upon founding, steering Dissent through its formative decades until 1993 by prioritizing substantive debate on socialism's practical challenges, such as the failures of centralized planning in Eastern Europe, rather than abstract theorizing.^[62] This approach distinguished the magazine from doctrinaire outlets, fostering contributions that examined causal links between institutional designs and outcomes, including the repressive tendencies in state-led economies.^[63] Financially precarious from the outset—with initial projections of bankruptcy after a few issues—Howe maintained operations through minimalist logistics, such as using volunteers and a borrowed office space, while recruiting writers committed to unpaid or modestly compensated work.^[63]^[64] Under Howe's guidance, Dissent cultivated discussions on the welfare state's potential as a pragmatic reform within mixed economies, acknowledging how capitalist mechanisms had historically provided buffers against the chaos of unchecked radical upheaval.^[63] This editorial stance reflected a realism about power dynamics: revolutions often devolved into new hierarchies, whereas incremental democratic pressures could yield verifiable gains in equity without sacrificing freedoms.^[63] By sustaining such forums, Howe ensured Dissent served as a counterweight to both authoritarian leftism and laissez-faire orthodoxy, grounded in evidence from postwar economic data and labor movements.^[60]^[63]

Debates with New Left and Cultural Shifts

Howe opposed the New Left's pervasive anti-institutionalism during the 1960s, viewing it as a rejection of workable democratic mechanisms in favor of disruptive tactics that alienated broader society. In a 1965 essay, he described these "new styles in leftism" as marked by impulsive moralism and disdain for incremental reform, arguing that such fervor often devolved into authoritarian tendencies antithetical to socialist goals.^[65] While sharing opposition to the Vietnam War, Howe criticized extreme protest strategies, co-authoring a 1965 statement with Michael Harrington and Bayard Rustin that advocated for a focused, non-violent movement pressuring for ceasefire and withdrawal without endorsing unilateral American capitulation or glorification of North Vietnamese forces.^[66] He contended that the New Left's blanket condemnation of American institutions as irredeemably imperialist overlooked possibilities for internal transformation through reasoned advocacy, a position that positioned him as a target for younger radicals who dismissed his views as conciliatory.^[32] Anticipating fractures within leftist coalitions, Howe warned in the late 1960s and 1970s that the rise of identity-focused politics threatened to erode class-based solidarity by prioritizing particularist grievances over shared economic struggles. In a 1970 analysis, he urged the New Left to channel its energy into building sustainable movements rather than splintering into insular groups, predicting that unchecked cultural fragmentation would dilute commitments to universal egalitarian principles.^[67] This critique extended to emerging cultural relativism, which he saw infiltrating radical discourse and undermining critical standards in politics and literature alike, as evidenced in his broader essays decrying the substitution of stylistic rebellion for substantive analysis.^[68] In engagements with black nationalists, Howe acknowledged civil rights advancements while rejecting separatist ideologies that abandoned interracial universalism for ethnic essentialism. His 1963 essay "Black Boys and Native Sons" praised Richard Wright's protest literature for exposing systemic racism's brutal realities but sparked a prolonged debate with Ralph Ellison, who accused Howe of imposing a reductive sociological lens that confined black writers to narratives of victimhood.^[69] Howe conceded gains from identity assertions yet decried their potential to foster antagonism over alliance, insisting that true emancipation required transcending group parochialism.^[70] Similarly, in feminist debates, he recognized women's liberation's empirical contributions to equity but critiqued radical variants for veering toward anti-male invective and relativist dismissals of traditional leftist priorities, favoring instead reforms integrable with democratic socialism.^[28] These positions reflected Howe's empirical insistence on tactics yielding verifiable progress over ideological purity.

Controversies and Criticisms

Breaks with Former Allies and Neoconservative Drift

During the 1960s and 1970s, Irving Howe experienced significant ideological rifts with former Trotskyist allies who transitioned toward neoconservatism, most notably Irving Kristol. Both had been radical students at City College of New York in the 1930s, where Howe even recruited Kristol into Trotskyism amid heated cafeteria debates. Their friendship eroded as Kristol co-founded The Public Interest in 1965, embracing empirical policy analysis that critiqued Great Society liberalism and paved the way for conservative alliances, which Howe viewed as an abandonment of egalitarian principles for hawkish pragmatism.^[71]^[26] By the 1980s, Howe lambasted Kristol's neoconservatism as "fevered" and overly focused on anti-left antagonism during the Reagan era, regretting his earlier influence on Kristol while decrying the drift from anti-Stalinist socialism to uncritical support for American power projections.^[26] Howe similarly critiqued the transformation of Commentary magazine under editor Norman Podhoretz, whom he saw as betraying its original anti-totalitarian and egalitarian roots for cultural conservatism and aggressive anticommunism. Podhoretz's rightward pivot in the 1970s, emphasizing welfare state critiques and strong defense postures, alienated Howe, who argued it prioritized ideological warfare over socialist ethics.^[35] These breaks highlighted Howe's rejection of neoconservative "realism" as excessively militaristic, contrasting it with his principled commitment to democratic socialism.^[9] Despite these fractures, Howe preserved his leftist moorings while pragmatically affirming liberalism's role as a safeguard against extremism, advocating "articles of conciliation" in works like Socialism and America (1985) to foster alliances rooted in shared anti-totalitarianism and individual rights.^[26] He cautioned against dismissing liberals as mere apologists for capitalism, instead viewing them as necessary partners in upholding democratic norms amid radical excesses, a stance informed by his disillusionment with both Stalinism and the New Left.^[28] This nuanced realism allowed Howe to critique former allies' drifts without forsaking egalitarian ideals, positioning him as a bridge between socialism and liberal bulwarks.^[9]

Assessments of Socialism's Practical Failures

In Socialism and America (1985), Howe analyzed the persistent failures of socialist organizing in the United States, attributing them to the movement's inability to reconcile its radical goals with core American cultural traits, such as faith in individual opportunity and aversion to class-based ideologies, which limited electoral appeal even during peaks like Eugene Debs's 1912 campaign that garnered 6% of the vote.^[72] He highlighted tactical missteps, including the socialist party's disastrous endorsement of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, which eroded its independent identity and contributed to organizational fragmentation by the 1940s.^[73] These reflections underscored Howe's empirical focus on historical data over ideological purity, rejecting explanations that blamed solely external suppression in favor of internal strategic flaws.^[74] Howe critiqued revolutionary socialism's track record, observing that 20th-century attempts, such as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, devolved into authoritarian systems through unchecked power consolidation, as evidenced by the Soviet regime's purges and one-party dominance that stifled dissent by the 1930s.^[75] Rather than romanticizing such upheavals, he endorsed pragmatic alternatives modeled on Scandinavian social democracies, where mixed economies preserved private ownership—accounting for over 80% of enterprise in countries like Sweden by the 1980s—while implementing robust welfare measures, achieving higher living standards without full nationalization.^[74]^[76] This preference stemmed from his assessment that pure socialist experiments had empirically prioritized state control over democratic accountability, leading to economic stagnation, as seen in the Soviet Union's agricultural output lagging behind Western peers post-collectivization.^[77] Examining labor dynamics, Howe attributed the post-World War II decline in militant unionism—membership growth stalling from 35% of the workforce in 1954 to under 20% by the 1980s—not merely to anti-labor laws like the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, but to internal bureaucratic ossification and cultural adaptations to affluence, where workers prioritized stability over confrontation.^[78] In profiles of figures like Sidney Hillman, he illustrated how early 20th-century labor insurgents evolved into institutional administrators, fostering inertia that prioritized negotiation with capital over grassroots agitation, thus diluting radical potential amid rising consumerism.^[78] Howe dismissed notions of inherent worker spontaneity as a viable engine for change, insisting on structured democratic institutions to counter such entropy, drawing from the American labor movement's historical pivot from the 1930s sit-down strikes to routinized collective bargaining by the 1950s.^[79] This institutional realism, he argued, better explained socialism's practical shortfalls than perpetual revolutionary fervor, which ignored the causal role of organizational maturity in sustaining movements.^[14]

Charges of Oversight in Jewish History

Critics, notably Edward Alexander in his 1998 biographical study Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, have charged Howe with insufficient engagement with the Holocaust in his pre-1970s writings, arguing that his emphasis on class struggle overshadowed the genocide's ethnic and particular Jewish dimensions.^[80] Alexander contends this reflected a broader parochialism among New York Intellectuals, who framed World War II primarily through universalist anti-fascist or socialist lenses rather than reckoning with the targeted extermination of six million Jews.^[81] Howe himself later acknowledged this oversight, describing the intellectual community's early postwar inattention to the Holocaust as "a serious moral failure on our part," attributing it to a prevailing optimism that subordinated ethnic specificity to hopes for proletarian solidarity against totalitarianism.^[82] This prioritization manifested empirically in Howe's early criticism and essays, where references to Jewish suffering during 1939–1945 were sparse and subordinated to analyses of Stalinism or capitalism's crises, failing to integrate the Holocaust's causal uniqueness—its industrialized, bureaucratic intent to eradicate a people—into his anti-totalitarian framework until the 1970s.^[83] Alexander highlights how this gap persisted despite Howe's firsthand awareness of Jewish displacement, as evidenced by his family's Bronx immigrant milieu, yet his Trotskyist commitments led to a causal oversight: viewing genocide as an epiphenomenon of imperialism rather than a distinct rupture demanding reevaluation of universalist assumptions.^[84] Howe's 1976 book World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made marked a partial rectification, offering a detailed 700-page chronicle of Jewish immigrant life from the 1880s to the early 20th century, which implicitly contextualized pre-Holocaust Yiddish culture against later annihilation, though critics like Alexander viewed it as belated and still class-inflected rather than a full confrontation with the event's immediacy.^[56] Defenses of Howe's trajectory invoke the WWII-era context of socialist optimism, where intellectuals anticipated fascism's defeat through collective action, yet this is critiqued as insufficient causal realism: the failure to adapt anti-totalitarian thought to incorporate Jewish victimhood's empirical primacy risked diluting its analytical power against future threats.^[80] Such charges underscore a tension in Howe's oeuvre between empirical fidelity to Jewish history and ideological priors, with Alexander arguing the early neglect exemplified how left-leaning universalism could empirically underweight verifiable ethnic catastrophes.^[83]

Personal Life and Death

Relationships and Family

Irving Howe married Thalia Phillies, a classicist and archaeologist, in 1947; the couple had two children, Nicholas (born February 17, 1953; died September 27, 2006) and Nina.^[19]^[85] The marriage later ended in divorce.^[86] Nicholas Howe pursued an academic career, earning a B.A. from York University in 1974 and becoming a professor of English specializing in medieval literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he authored works on Anglo-Saxon poetry and landscape in Old English literature.^[87] Nina Howe, based in Montreal, has contributed to preserving her father's intellectual legacy, including curating selections of his essays for posthumous publication.^[88] In 1977, Howe married Ilana (also spelled Liana) Wiener, an Israeli-born writer; this union provided companionship during his later years of writing and editing.^[9]^[89] Howe's family commitments, including raising his children in Belmont, Massachusetts, during the 1950s and 1960s, offered personal continuity amid his peripatetic involvement in literary criticism and socialist organizing.^[85]

Health Decline and Passing

In 1992, Howe underwent heart bypass surgery amid ongoing cardiovascular challenges, reflecting the physical strains accumulated over decades of intensive intellectual labor and public engagement.^[90] Despite this intervention, he maintained his commitment to writing and editing, contributing to Dissent magazine and pursuing critical projects until shortly before his death.^[1] On May 5, 1993, Howe collapsed at his Manhattan home and was rushed to Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, where he succumbed that day at the age of 72 to cardiovascular disease, specifically a rupture of the main artery supplying his heart.^[90]^[1] His abrupt passing, following a lifetime marked by unremitting ideological and literary exertions, drew immediate recognition from contemporaries as the close of a pivotal chapter in American democratic socialism and criticism.^[91]

Legacy and Reception

Enduring Influence on Anti-Totalitarian Thought

Irving Howe's co-founding of Dissent magazine in 1954 with Lewis Coser established a vital forum for democratic socialism amid the McCarthy-era suppression of leftist dissent, sustaining anti-totalitarian principles through rigorous critique of both Soviet communism and domestic authoritarianism.^[26]^[92] The publication emphasized empirical analysis of socialism's failures under totalitarian regimes while advocating decentralized, democratic alternatives, thereby preserving a moderate leftist tradition that rejected vanguardist hierarchies.^[26] This effort influenced key figures like Michael Harrington, who drew on Dissent's framework to advance anti-poverty campaigns and ethical socialism, ensuring the survival of non-sectarian leftism into the 1960s and beyond.^[8] Howe's literary criticism applied causal reasoning to trace how social structures shaped artistic expression, promoting realist interpretations that exposed the distortions of ideological propaganda in modern fiction.^[93] By linking narrative forms to historical contingencies rather than abstract doctrines, his method aided academic resistance to dogmatic readings, particularly in countering the romanticized portrayals of revolutionary violence that echoed totalitarian apologetics.^[93] This approach reinforced anti-totalitarian thought by grounding cultural analysis in verifiable social dynamics, influencing subsequent scholars to prioritize evidence over utopian projections in evaluating ideological literature.^[35] Through translations and anthologies of Yiddish literature, such as his collaborative A Treasury of Yiddish Stories published in 1954, Howe resisted post-war Jewish assimilation by reviving access to pre-Holocaust narratives that embodied communal ethics and skepticism toward power.^[9] These works preserved causal continuities between Eastern European Jewish moral traditions—rooted in collective survival and critique of oppression—and modern diaspora identity, offering an empirical bulwark against cultural erasure.^[9] By highlighting Yiddish's role in fostering independent thought amid historical tyrannies, Howe's efforts contributed to a resilient ethical framework that paralleled broader anti-totalitarian commitments, sustaining Jewish intellectual pluralism outside religious or statist orthodoxies.^[9]

Evaluations from Right and Left Perspectives

Critics on the left, including figures from the New Left, have acknowledged Howe's prescient warnings about totalitarian tendencies in communist regimes—such as the Soviet Union's gulags and purges from the 1930s onward—but faulted him for retaining a utopian core in his democratic socialism, viewing it as insufficiently detached from historical patterns of state overreach and economic stagnation seen in post-World War II Eastern Europe.^[32]^[94] For instance, Philip Rahv accused Howe of inconsistently proclaiming socialist ideals while functioning as a de facto liberal, thereby diluting radical potential amid the 1960s upheavals.^[68] This perspective posits that Howe's emphasis on "conciliation" with liberals, as in his 1985 Socialism and America, overlooked the causal drivers of socialist experiments' failures, like incentive misalignments in centralized planning.^[26] From the right, evaluations commend Howe's implacable anti-communism, exemplified in his 1957 co-authored The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919-1957), which documented the party's allegiance to Moscow directives and internal purges, aligning with conservative analyses of ideological infiltration.^[26]^[95] However, thinkers in outlets like Commentary have critiqued his enduring socialist advocacy as overlooking socialism's structural flaws, such as the empirical record of productivity declines in 1970s-1980s state-socialist economies, arguing it reflected an irrational persistence despite evidence from Chile's 1973 shift and Eastern Bloc collapses by 1989.^[33] Post-2000 reflections, including a 2015 analysis, underscore Howe's foresight in diagnosing the left's pivot toward cultural over class-based priorities, as his 1960s critiques of New Left moralism anticipated identity-driven fragmentations evident in 21st-century progressive movements.^[36] Yet, some assessments fault his relative de-emphasis of particular Jewish identity and the Holocaust's implications—prioritizing universalist socialism over cultural specificity—potentially underplaying assimilation risks documented in mid-century Jewish demographic shifts.^[81] Overall, Howe's insistence on reasoned debate amid 20th-century polarizations earns cross-ideological respect, though his reformist optimism is tempered by recognition of institutional incentives favoring authoritarian drift in egalitarian projects.^[27]

Selected Bibliography

Authored Books

Irving Howe's solo-authored monographs spanned literary criticism, immigrant history, and personal-political reflection, often intertwining his socialist commitments with cultural analysis.^[96] Politics and the Novel, published in 1957 by Horizon Press, dissects the interplay between political ideologies and narrative fiction, contending that great novels reveal the moral and social tensions of their eras through authors such as Dostoevsky, Conrad, Stendhal, and Orwell.^[37]^[39] The work establishes Howe's thesis that the political novel thrives when ideology confronts human complexity, rather than serving as mere propaganda.^[97] In 1976, Howe released World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made, a detailed chronicle of Yiddish-speaking immigrants' adaptation in New York City's Lower East Side from the 1880s onward, drawing on oral histories, newspapers, and labor records to depict their cultural vitality amid poverty and radicalism.^[98] The book received the National Book Award for Contemporary Affairs in 1977.^[99] A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography, issued in 1982 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, recounts Howe's evolution from Trotskyist activism in the 1930s to advocacy for a democratic socialism reconciled with American pluralism, emphasizing ethical limits on radical pursuits amid Cold War disillusionments.^[100] It critiques both Stalinist excesses and neoconservative retreats, positing gradualist reforms as viable paths for social justice without totalitarian risks.^[101]

Edited Works and Articles

Irving Howe co-authored and effectively co-edited The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919–1957) with Lewis Coser, published in 1957 by Beacon Press, which provided a detailed examination of the party's internal dynamics, ideological shifts, and subservience to Soviet directives, drawing on primary documents and ex-member testimonies to argue that its failures stemmed from dogmatic adherence to Moscow's line rather than American conditions.^[102]^[103] The work, assisted by Julius Jacobson, totaled 593 pages and highlighted episodes like the party's support for the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939, which led to membership hemorrhaging from 75,000 to under 20,000 by 1940, underscoring Howe's critique of Stalinist authoritarianism as incompatible with genuine socialist principles.^[104] Howe edited Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963; revised 1982), compiling the novel's text alongside Orwell's essays, contemporary reviews, and critical analyses to contextualize its warnings against totalitarianism, with Howe's introduction emphasizing the book's roots in Orwell's experiences of Soviet purges and the psychological mechanisms of power.^[105]^[106] This anthology, spanning over 300 pages in its editions, included contributions from figures like Lionel Trilling and Dwight Macdonald, positioning 1984 not as mere dystopian fiction but as a prophetic dissection of bureaucratic conformity and thought control, themes Howe linked to mid-20th-century ideological excesses on both left and right.^[107] As co-founder and long-time editor of Dissent magazine from 1954 until his death, Howe curated essays critiquing post-World War II intellectual complacency, including his own "This Age of Conformity" (Partisan Review, 1954; reprinted in Dissent collections), which lambasted liberals and ex-Trotskyists for abandoning dissent in favor of liberal anti-communism, arguing that McCarthyism's excesses mirrored the conformity it ostensibly opposed, with both stifling independent socialist thought.^[108]^[109] He also edited The Radical Imagination: An Anthology from Dissent Magazine (1967), selecting 40 pieces on labor, civil rights, and cultural critique to demonstrate independent leftism's viability amid Cold War binaries, featuring contributors like Michael Harrington and Seymour Martin Lipset who challenged both capitalist inequities and Stalinist orthodoxies.^[110] Howe's editorial selections in Dissent totaled thousands of articles over four decades, prioritizing empirical scrutiny of power structures over ideological purity.^[111]^[62]

References

[1]
Irving Howe, 72, Critic, Editor and Socialist, Dies
May 6, 1993 · Irving Howe was born on June 11, 1920, in the East Bronx, a community, he said in his autobiography, that "formed a thick tangle of streets ...
[2]
Irving Howe - MacArthur Foundation
Irving Howe was a literary and social critic whose work was committed to the principles of moderation, rationality, and civility.Missing: reliable | Show results with:reliable
[3]
Irving Howe - National Book Foundation
Irving Howe (1920-–1993), a leading New York intellectual, founded Dissent magazine and was regarded as one of the most influential American literary critics.Missing: major | Show results with:major
[4]
'Irving Howe' - The New York Times
Mar 2, 2003 · IN ONE OF those odd coincidences of "Jewish geography," David Horenstein and Nettie Goldman, Irving Howe's parents, had lived as teenagers ...<|separator|>
[5]
Irving Howe (1920-1993) - Find a Grave Memorial
Birth: 11 Jun 1920. Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA ; Death: 5 May 1993 (aged 72). Manhattan, New York County, New York, USA ; Burial. Burial Details Unknown.
[6]
Irving Howe (Horenstein) (1920 - 1993) - Genealogy - Geni
Feb 26, 2025 · Collection: U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI) · Birth: June 11 1920 · Death: May 5 1993 · Last residence: New York, New York 10028, USA.
[7]
The Worlds of Irving Howe - jstor
He grew up in a working-class, Yiddish-speaking family. His father, a small grocer, went bankrupt in 1930, when Irving was ten, and then became a door-to-door ...
[8]
Steady Work: Sixty Years of Dissent
Given the political climate, Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, co-editors of the new magazine, found it easier to explain in that first issue just what it was that ...
[9]
Irving Howe and Secular Jewishness
May 4, 2016 · Irving Howe rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in the Depression-ridden East Bronx of the 1930s to become one of the most important public thinkers in America.
[10]
A Margin of Hope by Irving Howe | Research Starters - EBSCO
Born in New York City in 1920 to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Howe reflects on his formative years and the impact of his family's economic struggles ...Missing: modest circumstances<|control11|><|separator|>
[11]
Irving Howe's Socialist Reflections on Jewish Life in the US - Jacobin
Jan 6, 2025 · Irving Howe was the child of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. He helped to forge the democratic socialist tradition in the US.Missing: biography sources
[12]
Memoirs of a Trotskyist - The New York Times
Jan 23, 1977 · The first alcove on the right, as you entered the lunchroom, was Alcove No. 1, and this soon became most of what City College meant to me. It ...
[13]
Arguing the World -- The New York Intellectuals | Irving Kristol - PBS
Alcove No. 1 was located in the City College lunchroom, a vast ground-floor space which even we, who came from slums or near-slums, judged to be an ...
[14]
Irving Howe | Research Starters - EBSCO
Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. An intellectual biography that gives prominence to Howe's Jewishness. ...Missing: reliable | Show results with:reliable
[15]
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.18574/nyu/9780814708842.003.0017/pdf
[16]
Abandoning hope | Workers' Liberty
Dwight Macdonald retained a far greater radicalism). Though no ...Missing: activism Labor
[17]
IRVING HOWE: A Life of Passionate Dissent - The Wilson Quarterly
$$32.95... Howe to the Young People's Socialist League in 1934. Principle kept him there. Socialism, Howe found, reflected the "ethic of solidarity" pervading the ...
[18]
Irving Howe's "Margin of Hope": "World of Our Fathers" as ... - jstor
The ethic of solidarity was reinforced for Irving Howe by his parents' values and behavior and by the Jewish labor movement which, Howe said, exerted. "an.
[19]
Howe, Irving | Encyclopedia.com
Howe, Irving(b. 11 June 1920 in New York City; d. 5 May 1993 in New York City), literary critic, historian, socialist, editor, and translator of Yiddish ...
[20]
Workers Party/Independent Socialist League, 1940–1959
Nov 7, 2020 · Independent Socialist League 1940–1959. The Workers Party was founded ... Irving Howe (R. Fahan, R. Fangstone) Julius Jacobson (Julius ...
[21]
Labor Action [New York] - Contents by Issue (1942)
Published weekly by the Labor Action Publishing Company in New York City. MANAGING EDITOR: Irving Howe. OPM Bungling Causes National Crisis – 400,000 Workers ...
[22]
Irving Howe and the Holocaust: Dilemmas of a Radical Jewish ... - jstor
Howe became managing editor of Labor Action just days before Pearl. Harbor and American entry into the war, an action stridently opposed by the paper both at ...
[23]
Labor Action [New York] - Contents by Issue (1946)
Jul 21, 2020 · Welcome, comrades, to Workers Party! [Albert Goldman with Leon Trotsky] (photo). Fight Strikebreakeers with a Labor Party! by Irving Howe. Same ...Missing: activism | Show results with:activism
[24]
The New International - Contents by Issue (1947-1958)
Jan 16, 2020 · How Partisan Review Goes to War, by Irving Howe. Discussion of a ... The Fourth International and the Saar, Document. DISCUSSION ARTICLE ...
[25]
Alan Wald on Irving Howe
May 31, 2007 · A socialist activist even before he entered the City College of New York, Howe gravitated quickly to the Trotskyist wing of the Young Peoples ...
[26]
Irving Howe: A Socialist Life - Dissent Magazine
In Socialism and America (1985), Howe called for “articles of conciliation” between liberals and socialists. He rejected “get rich quick” versions of socialism— ...
[27]
The New York Intellectuals - Dissent Magazine
... anti-antiCommunists who kept repeating that Communism was a serious problem only in the minds of anti-Communists. In the American Committee for Cultural ...
[28]
Liberalism, the Left, and the Lessons of Irving Howe - Liberties Journal
and later Howe himself — believed that his focus on “the worst excesses of the worst,” distorted Howe's political compass. On the one ...
[29]
From the Archives: Irving Howe and Stanley Plastrik, "After the ...
In 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, Irving Howe and Stanley Plastrik wrote a short article for Dissent addressing the new importance of Israel.
[30]
An Interview with Irving Howe - jstor
Howe: First, I should say that for almost ten years, I was away from literary criticism and, indeed, from literary life-these were the years I was writing ...
[31]
Selected Writings: 1950-1990 by Irving Howe. Harcourt Brace ...
Feb 18, 1991 · Meanwhile, on the strength of his freelance literary criticism in Partisan Review and Commentary, he was offered a job teaching at newly founded ...
[32]
[PDF] Irving Howe - New Left Review
Howe's engagement with Jewish culture was a labour of love and of rescue, culminating in 1976 with World of Our Fathers, his rich evocation of the experience ...
[33]
Irving Howe-The Socialist Imagination - Commentary Magazine
This is the Howe who also appears in journals as diverse as the New Republic and Hudson Review : his crisp, meticulous prose, his skill at literary description, ...Missing: reliable | Show results with:reliable
[34]
Irving Howe | The New Yorker
May 10, 1993 · He grew up in the Bronx working class, which was a classic childhood for a New York intellectual; and the Bronx gave him drive. The language of ...Missing: labor struggles
[35]
Disciplined Hope: A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe
May 8, 2015 · ... socialism, and at the age of fourteen he became a member of the Young People's Socialist League, the youth arm of the Socialist Party of America ...
[36]
On the New York Intellectuals - Crooked Timber
Jul 26, 2015 · The European socialist intellectual ends his political engagement by breaking with theÂ Communist Party; the New York IntellectualÂ begins his ...
[37]
Politics and the Novel - Irving Howe - Google Books
The classic investigation of the role of revolutionary ideas in fiction. Mr. Howe establishes the role of the political novel and traces its growth into the ...
[38]
Politics and the novel : Irving HOWE - Internet Archive
Sep 25, 2023 · Politics and the novel. by: Irving HOWE. Publication date: 1957-01-01. Publisher: Horizon Press. Collection: internetarchivebooks; inlibrary ...
[39]
Politics and the Novel. By Irving Howe. (New York: Horizon Press ...
$$3.50Politics and the Novel. By Irving Howe. (New York: Horizon Press. 1957. Pp. 251. $3.50.) - Volume 51 Issue 4.
[40]
William Faulkner : a critical study : Howe, Irving - Internet Archive
Jul 17, 2019 · William Faulkner : a critical study. by: Howe, Irving. Publication date: 1952. Topics: Faulkner, William, 1897-1962 -- Criticism and ...Missing: 1970 | Show results with:1970
[41]
William Faulkner: A Critical Study - Irving Howe - Google Books
Title, William Faulkner: A Critical Study Vintage book · Vintage books, V-213 · Vintage international ; Author, Irving Howe ; Editor, Irving Howe ; Edition, 2.
[42]
William Faulkner: A Critical Study - Amazon.com
In this fourth edition of his celebrated study of Faulkner, Irving Howe analyzes all of the great author's works, emphasizing the themes that run throughout ...
[43]
Thomas Hardy - Irving Howe - Google Books
About the author (1967) ... Irving Howe was born in the Bronx, New York on June 11, 1920. He became a socialist at the age of 14. He graduated from City College ...
[44]
https://www.biblio.com/book/thomas-hardy-howe-irving/d/436826866
[45]
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5539303M/Thomas_Hardy
[46]
A treasury of Yiddish stories : Howe, Irving, 1920 - Internet Archive
Dec 23, 2020 · A treasury of Yiddish stories ; Publication date: 1954 ; Topics: Short stories, Yiddish -- Translations into English, Short stories, English -- ...
[47]
A Treasury of Yiddish Stories - Google Books
Mar 11, 2025 · A Treasury of Yiddish Stories Volume 13 of Meridian books. Editors, Irving Howe, Eliezer Greenberg. Edition, 5. Publisher, Meridian Books, 1954.
[48]
A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES. Edited by Irving Howe and ...
A Story To Tell; A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES. Edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg. With drawings by Ben Shahn. 630 pp. New York: The Viking Press.
[49]
A Treasury of Yiddish Stories: Revised and Updated Edition
Fifty-two Yiddish short stories describe life in the shetl and other aspects of the Jewish experience, and include works produced by Jewish writers during ...Missing: 1954 | Show results with:1954
[50]
A Treasury of Yiddish Stories - Posen Library
Modern Yiddish literature focuses upon the shtetl during its last tremor of self-awareness, the historical moment when it is still coherent and self-contained.Missing: 1954 | Show results with:1954
[51]
A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry. Edited by Irvin Howe and Eliezer ...
A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry. Edited by Irvin Howe and Eliezer Greenberg. Front Cover. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969 - Yiddish poetry - 378 pages ...Missing: translations | Show results with:translations
[52]
Avrom Reisen - Save The Music Archives
He was born in Minsk but emigrated to the United States in 1914. His poems express the feelings of the exploited Jew and the sufferings of the Jewish community.
[53]
Yiddish Stories Old & New Edited and Translated By I. Howe & E ...
30-day returnsYiddish Stories Old & New Edited and Translated By I. Howe & E. Greenberg ... Abraham Reisen The Last of the line by I.D. Berkowitz White Feet by Isaac ...Missing: Irving | Show results with:Irving
[54]
Proletpen and American Yiddish Poetry - Jewish Currents
Nov 14, 2006 · In producing a sophisticated anthology, A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, in 1954, Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg did for the study of Yiddish ...
[55]
Leaving the Sect: Reflections on Irving Howe's Portrayal of His ...
Feb 1, 2017 · Howe's argument for why it was necessary for Yiddish literature to be injected into the American bloodstream was that Yiddish literature could ...Missing: Fourth | Show results with:Fourth
[56]
World of Our Fathers - The Ted K Archive
The journey of the East European Jews to America and the life they found and made. Author: Irving Howe. SKU: ZAF03. Plain PDF EPUB (for mobile devices).
[57]
A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe 9780300210583
Man of letters, political critic, public intellectual, Irving Howe was one of America's most exemplary and embattled wri ... permanent revolution of twentieth- ...
[58]
David Bezmozgis: The End of American Jewish Literature, Again
Sep 16, 2014 · Irving Howe conceded a similar point at the end of his essay. He writes: “Younger Jewish writers grow impatient with the view I have expressed.
[59]
About Dissent Magazine
Dissent is a magazine of politics and ideas published in print three times a year. Founded by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser in 1954.
[60]
Starting Out in the Fifties - Dissent Magazine
The accent of Dissent will be radical. Its tradition will be the tradition of democratic socialism. We shall try to reassert the libertarian values of the ...
[61]
A Word to Our Readers: Winter 1954
Irving Howe and Lewis Coser. Winter 1954 the purpose of this new magazine is sug- gested by its name: to dissent from the bleak atmosphere of conformism that.
[62]
Dissent Magazine Records - Archival Collections - NYU
Aug 20, 2023 · Irving Howe served as Dissent's first editor from 1954 until his death in 1993. Following Howe's death, Mitchell Cohen and Michael Walzer served ...
[63]
Irving Howe at 100 - Dissent Magazine
Jun 11, 2020 · He came out of the Trotskyist sects, together with a few friends, to forge a new kind of democratic socialism. His commitment, and theirs ...Missing: achievements | Show results with:achievements
[64]
The Mission and the Movement | Issue 21 | n+1 | Maxine Phillips
Howe and his cofounders thought the magazine would put out a few issues and then “go bankrupt,” having made a “heroic effort.” The historian Stanley Plastrik ...Missing: financial | Show results with:financial
[65]
[PDF] NEW STYLES IN "LEFTISM"* - Dissent Magazine
With this issue DISSENT opens up a discussion of the "new leftism," in which, as always in our pages, a wide range of opinion will be welcome and each ...
[66]
The Vietnam Protest | Irving Howe, Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin
As critics of the current U. S. policy in Vietnam, we wish to make some proposals and comments about the protest movement that is beginning to appear in.Missing: views anti- institutionalism
[67]
New Course for the New Left by Irving Howe 1970
May 30, 1970 · The New Left has become an important force, but only in certain limited segments of American society. It has made no impact on such major ...Missing: criticism | Show results with:criticism
[68]
An Exchange on the Left | Irving Howe, Philip Rahv
Irving Howe seems to be very angry. Too bad. In my piece “Left Face” I tried to express myself as tactfully as I possibly could under the circumstances. But ...
[69]
Irving Howe, "Black Boys and Native Sons"
May 31, 2007 · Native Son assaulted the most cherished of American vanities: the hope that the accumulated injustice of the past would bring with it no lasting penalties.
[70]
Irving Howe, Black Boys and Native Sons
Many times he had come into a hotel room carrying luggage or food and seen naked white women lounging about, unmoved by shame at his presence, for "blacks were ...
[71]
Arguing the World -- About the Film | Behind the Scenes - PBS
... City College of New York. City College, a school of mainly poor immigrants ... Irving Howe, a lifelong socialist whose fight with the neo-conservative Irving ...Missing: education 1
[72]
Socialism and America - Irving Howe - Google Books
A searching review of American socialism--its past, present, and future. The essays deal with the promise of the Debs era (1912-1920), the disaster of 1936.Missing: 1980s | Show results with:1980s
[73]
Socialism and America by Irving Howe, Harcourt Brace ...
Dec 31, 1985 · ... failure, and speculates about what, if anything, socialism may ... Commenting on one of the Socialists' innumerable tactical failures, Howe ...Missing: critique | Show results with:critique
[74]
Socialism and America by Irving Howe
The Scandinavian countries, loosely called "socialist", are really welfare states, with most commerce and industry in private hands. Americans, for the most ...
[75]
In the American Grain | Irving Howe | The New York Review of Books
Nov 10, 1983 · Those of us who, in recent decades, suffered the repeated failures of socialism in America have searched for ways to escape the rigidities of ...
[76]
From Sweden to Socialism: A Symposium | Dissent Magazine
Sweden has a large and generous public sector. Its purpose, however, is to provide the amenities needed in a capitalist economy, not those of a socialist ...
[77]
Inventing Irving Howe - Boston Review
Howe inadvertently picked up the story where Fiddler had left off—with the arrival of the Jews in the New World—offering his mass Jewish-American audience what ...
[78]
From Rebel to Bureaucrat | Irving Howe
Oct 24, 1991 · Behind Hillman's double role as insurgent and bureaucrat there was both a keen intelligence regarding the nature of the modern state and a deep ...
[79]
How the Sixties Mass Movement Revitalized Unionization 1
But as the old left declined, the labor movement lost much of its social ... Irving Howe (1970, p. 4) was even more emphatic in his observation that ...
[80]
Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew (review) - Project MUSE
... Irving Howe is just what one might expect from Edward Alexander. His ... Later, of course, Howe would admit that position was "a serious instance of moral failure ...
[81]
IRVING HOWE: Socialist, Critic, Jew - The Wilson Quarterly
He attended City College of New York, became involved in sectarian, anti-Stalinist politics, and as late as 1947 was still railing at the "imperialist ...
[82]
Jewish condition, 'new' anti-Semitism observed in Edward ...
Dec 14, 2012 · Irving Howe later called this “a serious moral failure on our part.” Saul Bellow confessed that “We should have reckoned more fully, more ...Missing: oversight | Show results with:oversight
[83]
Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew (review) - ResearchGate
Aug 9, 2025 · This essay reconsiders the category of "Holocaust denial" as the marked indicator of ethical transgression in Holocaust historiography within ...
[84]
Irving Howe—Socialist, Critic, Jew - Edward Alexander - Google Books
Apr 22, 1998 · Through a clear and eloquent study of Howe's politics, writings, and thought, Edward Alexander constructs a sympathetic yet critical ...<|separator|>
[85]
In Memoriam: Nicholas Howe (Feb. 17, 1953 – September 27, 2006)
Sep 27, 2006 · Howe was born in Princeton, NJ, son of the writer and critic Irving Howe and the classicist Thalia Phillies; he grew up in Belmont, MA, and ...
[86]
Thalia Feldman (Phillies) (1916 - 1993) - Genealogy - Geni
Apr 15, 2021 · Ex-wife of Irving Howe Mother of Nicholas George Howe and Nina Howe ... Thalia Phillies in Connecticut, Marriages. Thalia Phillies.
[87]
Nicholas Howe - the Academic Senate - University of California
His survivors include his wife Georgina Kleege, a member of Berkeley's English faculty, his sister Nina Howe, of Montreal, and his stepmother Arien Mack, ...Missing: children | Show results with:children
[88]
A more intimate view of Irving Howe: critic, socialist and man of letters
Jan 12, 2015 · ... army during World War II (he spent two years in Alaska). Nor did he share a great deal about his work with me. During the 1950s and 60s ...Missing: draft | Show results with:draft
[89]
Obituary: Irving Howe | The Independent
May 7, 1993 · Irving Howe, writer and critic: born New York 11 June 1920; staff, Brandeis University 1953-61, Stanford University 1961- 63; Professor of ...
[90]
Irving Howe; Writer, Critic, Chronicler of Immigrants
May 6, 1993 · He is survived by his wife, a son, Nicholas, and daughter, Nina. Books. Sign up for our Books newsletter. Get the latest news, events and more ...Missing: children | Show results with:children<|control11|><|separator|>
[91]
Literary critic Irving Howe dead at 72 - UPI Archives
May 6, 1993 · ' He is survived by his wife, Llana, two children, Nicholas and Nina, and two grandchildren.<|separator|>
[92]
The Rise of Dissent | Brandeis Magazine
The idea for the magazine, in fact, was born in the university's faculty lounge as Howe chatted with friend and colleague Lewis Coser, a sociologist. Coser ...
[93]
The Socialist Who Loved Keats - The Atlantic
Jan 1, 1998 · IRVING Howe, who died in 1993, holds a unique and still oddly ... democratic socialism." As might be expected, a magazine so earnest ...
[94]
Socialism as a Regulative Idea: Irving Howe's Politics
Irving Howe opened A Margin of Hope, his autobiography, by recalling a conversation in which Ignazio Silone asked him when he first became a socialist.Missing: achievements | Show results with:achievements
[95]
I. The New York Intellectuals - Commentary Magazine
Howe knows, and as his critics on the New Left know. Mr. Howe today is considerably less radical than he was twenty years ago. Indeed, from the vantage point of ...
[96]
Irving Howe | Penguin Random House
Irving Howe (1920–1993) was distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City of New York and coeditor of Dissent magazine.Missing: key | Show results with:key
[97]
Politics and the Novel - Irving Howe - Google Books
Politics and the Novel clarifies the role of revolutionary ideas in fiction, establishing the role of the political novel, and tracing the growth of this ...
[98]
IRVING HOWE: Books - Amazon.com
World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made · by Irving Howe.
[99]
The Seven National Book Award Winners - The Washington Post
Apr 12, 1977 · ... Irving Howe's "World of Our Fathers" won in the history category. ... Richard-Eberhart won the National Book Award for poetry this year for " ...
[100]
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/margin-of-hope-an-intellectual-autobiography_irving-howe/589588/
[101]
Socialism And America | Irving Howe | Work | LibraryThing ...
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. ... Picture of author. Irving Howe. 82+ Works 4,265 Members. Irving ... Link: Work. Author. Picture of author.Missing: 1982 | Show results with:1982
[102]
The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919–1957). By ...
30-day returnsThe American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919–1957). By Irving Howe and Lewis Coser. (Boston: The Beacon Press. 1958. Pp. x, 593. $6.75.)
[103]
THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY: A Critical History (19191957 ...
The Party's Public Face; THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY: A Critical History (19191957). By Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, assisted by Julius Jacobson. 593 pp.
[104]
The American Communist Party A Critical History (1919 - 1957 ...
In this vivid, scholarly, full-scale history of the American Communist Party from 1919 to the present, the authors are primarily concerned with the relationship ...
[105]
Nineteen Eighty-Four | SpringerLink
See extracts in Irving Howe (ed.) Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963) pp. 163–8. Google Scholar. On 'estrangement ...
[106]
Browse Editions for Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources ...
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism by Irving Howe ... Edition Pub Date: 01 April 1983 ... Edition Pub Date: 01 April 1983. Publisher ...
[107]
The Dynamics of Terror in Orwell's 1984 - BYU Studies
For various interpretations, see Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism, ed. Irving Howe (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963); Samuel ...
[108]
This Age of Conformity - Dissent Magazine
It is not my purpose to berate anyone, for the pressures of conformism are at work upon all of us, to say nothing of the need to earn one's bread; and all of us ...Missing: statement | Show results with:statement
[109]
This Age of Conformity {1954} | Yale Scholarship Online - DOI
Jan 22, 2015 · This chapter presents Irving Howe's 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” in which he attacks American intellectuals, particularly Lionel ...
[110]
The Radical Imagination; an anthology from Dissent Magazine by ...
In stock $5.98 deliveryThe Radical Imagination; an anthology from Dissent Magazine (Hardcover). Howe, Irving ... essays on political and social America from Dissent Magazine. 416 ...
[111]
Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks - Project MUSE
1. A Man of the Left · 2. Journey of a Social Democrat · 3. An Ex-Maoist Looks at an Ex-Trotskyist: On Howe's Leon Trotsky · 4. Our "Uncle Irving": Howe's ...