Michael Kazin - American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2011 by Michael Kazin

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Credit for illustrations goes to the following people and institutions: pages : Courtesy of University Library, Rare Book Collection, University of Illinois at Chicago

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kazin, Michael, [date]
American dreamers : how the left changed a nation / by Michael Kazin.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59670-3
1. RadicalismUnited StatesHistory. 2.Social changeUnited States
History. 3.United StatesSocial conditions. I.Title.
HN 90. R 3 K 39 2011 320.530973dc22 2011013886

Jacket images: Image Source / Getty Images
Jacket design by Jason Booher and Linda Huang

v3.1

In memory of Roy Rosenzweig

I hope this book, like its subject, invites plenty of argument and debatebe it passionate, reasonable, or both. In writing it, I have tried to follow the advice of one of my favorite historians, the late Richard Hofstadter: If a new or heterodox idea is worth anything at all it is worth a forceful overstatement This is one of the conditions of its being taken seriously.

Whats beyond dispute is how dependent I was on the accumulated scholarship and journalism of nearly two centuries of writing about the leftby partisans, opponents, and academics with smart things to say. That debt is acknowledged in the reference notes and in the indispensable sources listed near the back of the book.

But several individuals deserve more than collective words of praise. Gary Gerstle, Joseph McCartin, and Todd Gitlinthree good friends who are also superb historiansread the entire manuscript and made sound criticisms, most of which I tried to address. My sometime co-author and longtime comrade, Maurice Isserman, interrupted his pursuit of mountaineering history to help me understand the nuances of the American Communist Party. Eric Alterman threw a few necessary challenges and bits of encouragement my way. My agent, Sandy Dijkstra, was again a font of enthusiasm and common senseand suggested the title of the book.

Several audiences of scholars and activists helped me work out what I thought about the topic. Thanks to Ira Katznelson and Casey Blake at Columbia University, Lisa McGirr at Harvard University, the directors of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, and Jean-Christian Vinel at Paris Diderot University for their invitations and excellent suggestions. My colleagues in the history department at Georgetown did what they could to teach me to think beyond national boundaries. And my comrades at Dissent reminded me that, in good times and bad, the left can endure, even prosper, as an intellectual endeavor. And thanks to a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, I was able to spend a year writing and rewriting the manuscript.

The people at Alfred A. Knopf are masters at publishing a book well. I am grateful to Ash Green for accepting the original proposal and to my editor Andrew Miller for knowing how to combine praise with gentle suggestions for sharpening my ideas and refining my prose. Andrew Carlson passed along essential guidance on the illustrations and a good deal else; while Kathleen Fridella expertly managed the production, Jason Booher designed a jacket that turns metaphor into meaning, and Susanna Sturgis copyedited the manuscript with erudition, precision, and wit.

My son Danny and my daughter Maia let me work, or pretend to work, as much as I desired. On occasion, they even humored me into thinking that people of their generation might learn something from what I would write. Zoe sprawled elegantly next to my desk, snoring or barking as the spirit moved her. Beths intelligence, compassion, and beauty thrill me as much as they did when we began living together, one summer in 1978. Shes a damn fine editor, too.

This book is dedicated to a friend who died at the height of his powers, and those powers were very great indeed. Roy Rosenzweig was a brilliant organizer, researcher, writer, teacher, and the best sort of intellectualone who brought the public into the historical conversation and persuaded historians to think about how to explain their work to ordinary people. In a profession full of large and fragile egos, Roy was the soul of generosity and empathy. He epitomized what the left has been at its best and might become again. Live like him.

The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Marx and Engels

You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now. You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than one to which you wake up every morning.

Richard Rorty

In dreams begin responsibility.

William Butler Yeats

THIS BOOK WAS INSPIRED by

After the war, Seuss began to produce childrens books that used witty rhymes and fluid, fanciful drawings to convey the best principles and some of the fondest aspirations of the left. He kept this up until his death in 1989. The books, which have sold millions of copies, include The Sneetches, a brief for racial equality; Yertle the Turtle, a satire of fascist tyranny; The Lorax, a plea to save nature from corporate greed; The Butter Battle Book, a fable in support of nuclear disarmament; and Horton Hears a Who!, a parable about the need to act against genocide. His most famous book, The Cat in the Hat, while less overtly political, introduced a sublimely destructive feline who did his bit to inspire the counterculture of the 1960s.

Dr. Seuss at his desk, 1957. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Geisel, put forth the ideas of the left with great wit, hipness, and insightand his books remain popular, years after his death.

Seuss made great childrens literature out of the essential critique and vision of the left. He married the ideal of social equality to the principle of personal freedom. As the journalist E. J. Kahn Jr. put it: In his books, might never makes right, the meek inherit the earth, and pride frequently goeth before a fall, usually a pratfall. Seuss crafted messages with more wit, hipness, and color than any movement activist I have ever known. But he rarely took part in protests or campaigns, and

Seusss work was an underappreciated accomplishment in the long, if often difficult, history of the American left. Radicals in the U.S. have seldom mounted a serious challenge to those who held power in either the government or the economy. But they have done far better at helping to transform the moral culture, the common sense of societyhow Americans understand what is just and what is unjust in the conduct of public affairs. And that is no small thing. The most enduring aspects of a social movement, writes the historian J. F. C. Harrison, are not always its institutions but the mental attitudes which inspire it and which are in turn generated by it.