Some of the neocons came from the ex-Troskyist tradition. What a strange set of bedfellows -- Straussians and ex-Trots! In any event, I wouldn't blame Strauss or Trotsky or Schactman (or any specific intellectual leader). These ideas wouldn't have gone far if they didn't fit with the interests of powerful political-economic forces
Jim Devine --------- Thanks for reading. Half the time I never know, unless somebody objects. I've tried to study this US intellectual history transition, which took place mainly in NYC and among the New York Intellectuals which were a combination of natives who went to a City College I forget the current name, and German Jewish immgrants getting out Germany and Austria who were in the academic systems in some capacity. In some ways it was a great combination, because it introduced the highly refined intellectual european history traced through political philosophy to the US. Arendt and Strauss are the two wings left and right of that tradition. But the key turning point was Stalin's policies in the 1930s which were much more closely followed in Germany and France than in the US. If you wanted to stay essentially communist inspired rather than depressed, you had to switch backward to some sort of Marx influenced work. Also there was the sharp propaganda rise in anti-communism just after the war. This was the era when Arendt wrote her study in totalitarianism and Strauss wrote some obscure study on tyranny. He was also writing not very good book reviews and essays for the New School of Social Research Journal. The NYC trots were caught in a strange position. They were afterall communists, but by then communism was associated with Stalin, and Stalin with political dictatorship carried out by vast party aparatus. There was also the continued occupation of Eastern Europe where a lot of USers trace their family heritage. There was also traditional Russian antisemiticism. And you had to tone down that commie stuff cause you could lose a career over it. If you were Jewish, antisemitism in the hands of state power in Russia was obviously bad idea. How Strauss fits in is he was a stauch anti-communist, anti-Marxist, anti-Hegelian and on the surface appeared to be a sort of tough minded liberal combined with a firm decidedly Jewish patriarch of the old style. He had not doubt zero women intellectual followers. So he appealed to the men of similar persuasion. Mansfield's Manliness, which I just watched a video on brings this side of Strauss out. I'd have to really go back and trace most of the names of the period and study what they wrote, who they knew and socialized with and what kinds of jobs they had. I know some about Irvine Kristol, some about Lionel Trilling and literary criticism. Arendt was an oppositional figure, but she also socialized with many of other wing, except Strauss who she despised. Podoretz brings out some of the social intellectual engagement of the period in his Ex-Friends. David Horowitz Radical Son also bring out a political psychological element, as his trouble with an intellectually domineering father figure. In this autiobiography he traced out his own journey from left to right, in very similar terms to the earilar generation. I had to read some real Schitt to find some of this out. (Yes, it was a funny typo.) This is complicated cultural history to sort out. Your right of course Strauss and others don't get much credit. The ideas that were developed found very fertile ground in the US power elite mainly because these works are tailor made for elites in power of just about any era. That they are passed off as theories of liberal democracy is ludicrous. Notice nobody in this tradition uses the words social democracy. CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
