Between Marxism and Between Marxism and Pragmatism Christopher Phelps, Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, New York, 1997. 257 pp. and illustrations. $35. By Alan Wald Young Sidney Hook is Christopher Phelps brilliantly lucid portrait of the one-time Marxist philosopher and revolutionary activist, adversarial by temperament, who turned his extraordinary powers of analysis and polemic successively against capitalism, Stalinism and the New Left.
Although Hook (1902-1989) ended up receiving the "Medal of Freedom," the highest civilian honour in the US, from President Reagan, he started out life as the son of a poor tailor in Brooklyn, New York. The son's first name was changed from Saul to Sidney in an effort to shake off the Jewish immigrant past when he began public school.
A radical student at the City College of New York, Hook became totally devoted to philosophy while doing graduate work at Columbia University. In 1927 he was hired by the Philosophy Department at New York University, becoming its chair in 1934. This remained his home base until his 1973 retirement, after which he took up residence at the conservative Hoover Institute in Palo Alto. When Hook died at age eighty-seven, he left a confused, and variously appropriated, legacy that demands the attention of all those who seek to extend the revolutionary socialist tradition into the twenty-first century.
Any leftist who tries to understand Hook's political and philosophical trajectory will be haunted by questions such as the following: How could someone who set out to rescue the democratic, activist and self-emancipatory elements of Marxism end up in the camp of reaction? Was his anti-Stalinist critique flawed from the outset? Was Hook's goal of redeeming the experimental features of pragmatism for the Marxist project the scratch that evolved into full-blown gangrene?
Partisans of the Cold War and the "neo-conservative" Hook have explained his evolution as the triumph of American pragmatism over Marxist dogma. Those who wrote sympathetically of the early Hook from the radical generation of the 1960s, such as Paul Buhle (Marxism in the USA, 1987) and myself (The New York Intellectuals, 1987), have seen Hook's pragmatism as the vehicle by which he facilitated his political transmogrification. Phelps now argues compellingly, and with reviews *
Booknotes a wealth of documentation, that the emancipatory features of Hook's 1930s Marxism were made possible by the influence of pragmatism, and that his pragmatism suffered when Hook progressively abandoned Marxism in the late 1930s.
Hook's own efforts to ensure the memory of his version of this legacy have added to the confusion. Not only did he actively suppress the republication of his most extraordinary Marxist study, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (1933), which will finally be reissued next year by Prometheus Press with an introduction by Phelps. Hook also issued a long autobiography, Out of Step (1987), that is misleading about his political record-—although more along the gardenvariety technique of omission and select emphasis than through outright falsification. The autobiography also fails to fully address the complexities of his philosophical thought and its development over the decades. Thus Phelps' study is an indispensable correction as well as fresh contribution in these areas.
In five chapters of forty or fifty pages each, Phelps demarcates key moments in Hook's career. From the Russian Revolution until 1930, Hook was clearly sympathetic to the international and US Communist movements. In these years he carried out studies under philosophers Morris Cohen and John Dewey, polemicised against the heretical Max Eastman (who held that Hegel corrupted Marxism), and conducted research on Marxist philosophy in Europe and the USSR.
The struggles and
For the next three years, 1930-33, Hook attempted to establish his own original Leninist viewpoint, culminating in Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx. This brought down on his head the wrath of orthodox members and leaders of the Communist Party, especially the future "cultural commissar," V. J. Jerome, and coincided with Hook's growing attraction to Trotskyism.
From 1933 to 1936, Hook fomented a revolutionary Marxism independent of the Party, and he personally sought to develop new revolutionary organisations. This is especially evidenced in his championing of a fusion between J. Muste's American Workers Party and the Communist League of America (Trotskyist), followed by his promotion of the entry of the new organisation into the Socialist Party. Simultaneously he wrote a second Marxist classic, From Hegel to Marx (1936), to which Phelps provides an illuminating introduction for the 1994 paperback reprint by Columbia University Press.
After that time, a new and distinct kind of political evolution was in progress, somewhat characteristic of a trend in the late 1930s, but not of intellectuals properly subsumed under the aegis of the Popular Front. While Hook devoted himself to defending Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Purge Trials and excoriating Popular Front reformism, his ties to the revolutionary socialist movement itself progressively unravelled. Phelps theorises 1938 as the year of Hook's "turnabout," in the sense that he made an unacknowledged shift to debates of the
Fourth International...
François Moreau
Combats et débats de la IVe
Internationale
Only available in French, this historic, political and polemical text is a unique overview of the history of the organisation, and the wider labour and solidarity movements.
Joining the Fourth International in 1975, François Moreau became a leader of the Québec and pan-Canadian
1 Trotskyist movement, and editor of La Gauche newspaper, until his early death in 1993.
Introductions by Richard Poulin and Daniel Bensaid
Price: 130 FF • 695 FB • 31 FS • C$29.95 • US$25 • £15
Vents d'Ouest (1994) ISBN 2-921603-09-8 (334p.)
Available by mail. Cheques in any of the above currencies, made out to A.Novak, d/o
International Viewpoint, BP 85, 75522, Paris cedex 11, France
33
* reviews the defence of capitalism and imperialism as the only alternatives to the threats of Stalinism and Hitlerism.
From then until 1973, when Phelps' narrative ends, Hook's story is the depressing tale of a tenured ex-radical devoting his position and talents to developing liberal-sounding arguments to rationalise conservative causes. His most famous polemic, which eclipsed his contributions to philosophy among the broader public, was Heresey, Yes-Conspiracy, No! (1950). This was aimed at purging teachers who, like his younger self, were sympathetic to the Communist cause. Phelps' argument focuses convincingly on the transformation of the concept of "democracy" in Hook from a legitimate critique of bureaucratised socialist movement (as well as capitalism) into an increasingly abstract weapon of polemic that masked his growing alliances with some of the very social forces he once opposed.
Phelps' focus on the "young" Sidney Hook is a compelling choice. The problem in Hook scholarship to date is that it is driven too often by those who assess the early and most important writings according to their opinions of his later evolution. Conservatives downplay Hook's Leninist critique of the Communist movement and the revolutionary Marxist principles to which he attempted to assimilate pragmatism. Radicals fixate on his redbaiting career and some make the mistake of confusing his Marxist anti-Stalinism with Cold War liberalism.
Phelps takes us through the maze of Hook's evolution with even-handedness and attention to detail. Indeed, the illuminating explanation of Hook's political and philosophical journey takes the form of nearly a sub-chapter on each year between 1927 and 1940. This attention to nuances and subtleties pays off impressively when Phelps passes judgement on alternative claims, not only on intellectual matters but personal ones, too. For example, he seems eminently fair-minded in handling contradictory stories about Hook's alleged Party membership, and the role of Hook's first wife (a minor Party functionary from whom he separated as he departed from Stalinism). In treating Hook's later years, Phelps use of restraint rather than vitriol sets a high standard, and is probably more effective in getting the point across. His treatment of Hook's complex relation to Trotskyism is a model for explaining how intellectuals can relate to ideologies and organisations along a changing spectrum of possibilities. The same approach surely needs to be applied to many intellectuals in relation to the Communist Party.
Equally impressive is the answer Phelps offers to the charge that pragmatism was the cause of Hook's downfall. The book aims to clarify Dewey's use of "instrumentalism" and "science" to show how, in fact, pragmatism was helpful in Hook's rescue of the emancipatory features of Marxism from Stalinist and Social Democratic trends. In a masterful conclusion, Phelps returns Hook to the tradition of Western Marxism, albeit as a unique variant distinguished by his period of activism, his internationalism (connected with his rejection of the leadership of the USSR as synonymous with the Left, the "crystalline clarity in his prose" (which can be said of Phelps as well) and his attempt to rescue rather than redefine classical Marxism. Hook's flaws are addressed as well, especially his overemphasis on "plans of action" as the explanation for success or failure in history. This aided his rightward evolution as he turned toward a moral condemnation of Lenin and Trotsky as the ones responsible for the degeneration of the Kussian Kevolution into a dictatorship.
Thus, political narrative of Young Sidney Hook is also a fine addition to the literature of deradicalisation, and a welcome alternative to those relying on the simplistic theme of "selling out." * Alan Wald is a member of the US socialist organisation Solidarity, and of the editorial boards of Against the Current and Science & Society. This review is adapted from a longer version that will appear in Monthly Review. Thinking fuzzy Fuzzy Logic: Dispatches from the Information Revolution, Matthew Friedman, Vehicule Press, Montreal (1997). Reviewed by Sam Scott Matthew Friedman writes about the "Information Revolution" from a critical, yet pro-technology, standpoint. He plays up the positive potential of the new technologies while criticising the corpor ate agenda that drives their development. For the general reader, Fuzzy Logic is a good antidote to the self-serving hype of Bill Gates and the legions of utopian futurists. But, for activists who want to organise against the corporate agenda, the book is not so helpful.
Although Friedman views technology as a social product, he rejects any notion that resistance to the corporate agenda should involve resistance to its techno-
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
Factory committees and workers" control in Petrograd in 1917
David Mandel
• £4.00/$5.00/35FF. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, HRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands
34
International Viewpoint #302 logies. He treats all opposition to technology with contempt. For him, there is no middle ground between utopian futurism and hippie technophobia, and although he is sympathetic to the plight of workers in the Information Revolution, he ultimately judges resistance to be futile. Instead, we are encouraged to accept information technology as a new battleground upon which we can engage in a kind of "information activism"
In fact, Friedman is so impressed with the use of the Internet by the likes of Zapatistas and anti-Nazi crusader Ken Mc Vay that he tends to view social struggle in highly idealistic terms. He uses phrases like "information guerrillas" and "virtual street fighting" to describe the battle of ideas on-line. For him, the Internet has surpassed the role of communication medium, and has become a whole new arena of struggle. He gives the work of activists in the real world a back seat to their on-line communication strategies, and suggests that organising demonstrations and strikes may no longer be necessary in the information age.
Granted, information technology has provided a suite of powerful new tools for activists. New communications and publishing potentials are something that all activists should take seriously. However, whether we are organising against neoNazis or against a repressive government the root of a successful strategy remains our ability to engage large numbers of people in radical actions. We also need to remain open to the idea that not all technology is necessarily a good thing, especially in the workplace. In some circumstances it is appropriate to take advantage of new technology in our organising, while in others, it is more appropriate to make new technology the target of our organising efforts.
If you are tired of over-hyped futurist predictions about information technology, Friedman's approach will be a welcome relief and will help arm you with new arguments to burst the futurists' bubble. But, if you want a book that addresses the information technology concerns of socialists and activists in the real world, you will need to look somewhere else. * This review first appeared in New Socialist (Canada) Mexico Motors Maria Cristina Bayon, El sindicalismo automotriz mexicano frente a un nuevo escenario: una perspective desde los liderazgos. Mexico: FLACSO and Juan Pablos Editor, 1997. 207 pages.
Reviewed by Dan La Botz
Mexico's auto industry is central to the country's economy. In 1994 Mexico ranked 12th among 15 countries which produced 92 percent of all cars. Mexico has 20 assembly plants in 11 states, 500 autoparts plants, and 1,000 distributors.
Between 1990 and 1995 the auto industry invested more then seven billion dollars in
Mexico. The industry represents 10% of the gross national product, and in 1994 generated 35% of manufacturing export and 18% of total exports. Auto exports arr second only to petroleum in their impor tance to the economy. The Mexican auto industry is dominated by foreign multinational corporations such as Ford,
General Motors, Volkswagen and Nissan.
The only important Mexican company is
Dina.
Bayon explains that Mexican auto workers have no national auto workers' union, but rather find themselves divided into company or plant unions which keep workers isolated. Bayon delivers a scathing criticism of Mexico's "corporative"
labour unions such as the Confederation of
Mexico Workers (CTM) which are controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary
Party and the Mexican government.
Bayon shows how these authoritarian unions, working with the government and the employers, made it nearly impossible for Mexican workers to resist the restructuring of the national economy and of the auto industry during the 1980s and
90s.
During those years employers in
Mexico introduced new technologies, and new forms of work organisation such as quality circles and team concept. But without genuine labour unions to negotiate these issues, Mexican workers found that they were expected to work harder, for longer hours, and at a faster pace while accepting lower wages.
The few more democratic or independent unions could not fight alone, nor did they have an adequate strategy to do so. The result has been that the auto workers remain weak, divided, unable to win higher wages and with unions that have little presence in the plant.
Bayon describes how the old, authoritarian unions allied with the PRI declined during the 1980s, and how the corporations succeeded in imposing a unilateral relationship, dictating terms to the unions. Her alternative is the creation of a new more democratic union movement, with both national and international ties; strong independent unions which take up the issue of productivity, and negotiate cooperation in improving productivity, as a way of creating a really bilateral relationship between the corporations and the workers.
While having learned much from Bayon's description, we reject her prescription. We would suggest there is another alternative: a radical, democratic labour movement which fights to suppress competition through national and international co-operation, while at the same time striving to take control over production, quality and decision making away from management.