New York Intellectuals

New York Intellectuals. The New York Intellectuals were a prominent group of Jewish-American writers, critics, and academics who coalesced in the late 1930s and exerted significant influence on 20th-century American cultural and political thought. Centered primarily in New York City, they were characterized by their fierce commitment to modernist art, Marxist theory, and later, anti-communist liberalism, often debating these issues through influential little magazines. Their legacy endures in the realms of literary criticism, art criticism, and the development of neoconservatism.

Origins and formation

The group emerged from the radical political ferment of the Great Depression era, drawing many of its first members from the City College of New York and the Trotskyist wing of the American Left. A pivotal event was the 1937 reconstitution of Partisan Review, initially a publication of the John Reed Club, by editors Philip Rahv and William Phillips, who broke with the Communist Party USA over its doctrine of Socialist Realism and the Moscow Trials. This move established an independent platform that championed artistic modernism—exemplified by writers like James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Franz Kafka—alongside a critical, non-Stalinist Marxism. Their base was firmly within the Jewish immigrant communities of New York City, particularly Manhattan.

Key figures and publications

The core circle included formidable critics and essayists such as Philip Rahv, the powerful co-editor of Partisan Review, and Lionel Trilling, the first tenured Jewish professor in the Columbia University English department and author of The Liberal Imagination. Other essential voices were Dwight Macdonald, who founded his own journal Politics; Irving Howe, later the founder of Dissent; and Alfred Kazin, known for his critical work On Native Grounds. The art critic Clement Greenberg, who defined Abstract expressionism, and novelists like Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow were also central. Their primary organs evolved from Partisan Review to include Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, and the democratic socialist Dissent.

Political and ideological evolution

Initially aligned with various strands of the Marxist left, particularly the anti-Stalinism of Leon Trotsky, their politics underwent a profound shift during and after World War II. The revelations of Joseph Stalin's crimes, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the rise of totalitarian regimes prompted a disillusionment with Bolshevism and a gradual, often contentious, migration toward a robust anti-communist liberalism. This "move to the right" was crystallized by their support for the Cold War policy of Containment and the Truman Doctrine. By the 1950s, figures like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, editing Commentary, began articulating the ideas that would later form the foundation of the neoconservative movement, though others like Irving Howe remained committed to a social democratic vision.

Major debates and controversies

The group was defined by intense, often public, intellectual feuds. Early internal conflicts revolved around their stance toward World War II, with Dwight Macdonald opposing the war on pacifist grounds against the majority's eventual support following the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The 1952 symposium "Our Country and Our Culture" in Partisan Review highlighted their fraught relationship with mass culture and Americanism. Later, the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s caused a definitive schism, pitting older anti-communist intellectuals against the New Left, whom they often criticized as naive. The rise of postmodern theory and multicultural studies in academia during the 1970s and 1980s also drew fierce criticism from many in the circle, who saw it as a betrayal of universalist Enlightenment values.

Cultural influence and legacy

Their influence reshaped American cultural institutions, elevating the status of the critic and establishing the "little magazine" as a powerful force. Through academic appointments at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago, they professionalized literary criticism and helped canonize the modernist tradition. The art criticism of Clement Greenberg was instrumental in promoting the New York School and securing New York City's status as the postwar capital of the art world, centered on figures like Jackson Pollock. Their political journey from Trotskyism to anti-communist liberalism provided a crucial intellectual framework for the Cold War and directly seeded the neoconservatism that gained prominence during the Reagan administration. Their emphasis on high culture and skeptical, polemical style remains a enduring, if contested, model for public intellectuals.

Category:American literary circles Category:20th-century American writers Category:Jewish American history Category:Intellectual history of the United States Category:New York City culture