LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Washington, DC August 6, 2020 Copyright 2020 by Benjamin Feldman All Rights Reserved ii LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Michael Kazin, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the full intellectual history of the Third World Turn: when theorists and activists in the United States began to look to liberation movements within the colonized and formerly colonized nations of the ‘Third World’ in search of models for political, social, and cultural transformation. I argue that, understood as a critique of the limits of New Deal liberalism rather than just as an offshoot of New Left radicalism, Third Worldism must be placed at the center of the history of the post-war American Left. Rooting the Third World Turn in the work of theorists active in the 1940s, including the economists Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran, the writer Harold Cruse, and the Detroit organizers James and Grace Lee Boggs, my work moves beyond simple binaries of violence vs. non-violence, revolution vs. reform, and utopianism vs. realism, while throwing the political development of groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Third World Women’s Alliance into sharper relief. Following developments in Third World thought beyond the end of the New Left, my dissertation further reveals the lasting impact of the Third World Left on academia, and recovers long-marginalized lines of economic inquiry not always associated with Third Worldism, including investigations into non-material economic iii incentives, and the various campaigns for welfare and Wages for Housework led by Marxist feminists in the 1970s. I argue that beyond solidarity, Third Worldism was a method of analysis through which Leftists sought to expand critical thought beyond the limits of political liberalism, economic liberalism, cultural liberalism, and racial liberalism. Armed with the conviction that American capitalism was sustained by cruelty, racism, and exploitation—but recognizing that no mass-revolutionary base existed in the United States—Third World Leftists studied revolutionary anti-colonial movements in order to try to break free from the ‘one-dimensionality’ of mid-century capitalism. Considering Third Worldism in this way heightens not only our understanding of a key moment in the history of the Left, but of the development of a series of critiques of the cultural, political, and economic contours of the ‘New Deal Order.’ vi Acknowledgements Research for this project was facilitated by grants from the American Studies Association, Georgetown University, The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Houghton Library, the Friends of UW-Madison Libraries, and Hoover Library’s Political Economy Workshop. While at Georgetown, I have been fortunate to write my dissertation under the guidance of a great committee. Angus Burgin has gone far beyond what is necessary for a committee member, welcoming me into a course at Hopkins, meeting with me weekly for intensive discussions in advance of my comprehensive exams, and editing dozens of application drafts. His incisive edits and suggestions have shaped my thinking in innumerable ways. Joe McCartin is a model of engaged scholarship. I am grateful for both his critiques of my writing—always delivered in a way which induced calm, rather than panic—and for his support of Georgetown’s graduate employees. I could not have asked for a better advisor than Michael Kazin. Michael’s encouragement and careful editing have made my writing much stronger than it might otherwise have been, and reminders to make sure that I could explain my project and why it matters in 50 words or less forced me to focus arguments that could easily have spiraled out of control. I am particularly glad to have worked with an historian whose attention to prose has ensured that this sentence is the only one in my dissertation to feature the word “problematize.” At Georgetown I am also indebted to Katie Benton-Cohen for giving me a stack of books on radical feminism, and to Michael David-Fox, Adam Rothman, and Anna von der Goltz. Through the Washington, D.C. consortium I was able to take two memorable courses with the late Leo Ribuffo. I am eternally thankful to Carolina Mandinaveitia and Maria Snyder for making sure that my family has healthcare through 2021. Among the graduate employees in the History Department, I am grateful for the camaraderie of Cory Young, Greg Brew, Chad Frazier, and especially Thom Loyd, and my first frond at Georgetown: Abby Holekamp. Outside of Georgetown, my work has benefited from conversations and email exchanges with Andrew Hartman, Stuart Schrader, Tim Barker, Tim Shenk, Quinn Slobodian, Paul Buhle, Howard Wachtel, Tom Weisskopf, Arthur MacEwan, Jamie Martin, Bill Horne, Nicholas Baran, John Bellamy Foster, Stephen Ward, Mike Koncewicz, Kurt Newman, Samir Sonti, Cody Stephens, Sam Klug, and in particular David Marcus; who I met on the second night of college and who has helped me figure out all the stuff about grad school that normally you don’t get to know until it’s too late. While writing, I have had the opportunity to present my work at the Tamiment Library, 1968—The Global and the Local at Georgetown, The Blacks on the Left Symposium at Emory, The Radical Sixties Conference at Brighton University, the American Historical Association in Washington D.C., The Society for US Intellectual History Conference in Washington D.C., the Futures of Intellectual History Conference at NYU, and the Beyond the New Deal Order Conference at UC Santa Barbara. Even with grants and scholarships, travelling for conferences and research can be very expensive. While working at Houghton I was hosted by my cousins Paul and Anna Maria Radvany. During the semester I spent at the Tamiment Library, Nick Carpenter abandoned his own home literally dozens of times so that I would have a place to stay. On the rare occasions vii when Nick insisted on sleeping in his own bed, Matt and Kristin Reynolds and Molly Laufman and Gavin O’Donnell lent me their apartments. Two chapters of my dissertation have been published in journals. Thanks to Tiago Mata for his help with “In Search of the Socialist Subject: Radical Political Economy and the Study of Moral Incentives in the Third World” in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (Vol. 37A, 2019), and to Jon Levy for his guidance on “A Capital for the Age of Growth: Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, and the Critique of Keynesian Civilization,” in Critical Historical Studies (Fall 2019). Traveling for conferences and archival research can be isolating and expensive. Prior to beginning my Doctorate, I earned a teaching credential at Sonoma State University, where working with Nancy Case-Rico and John Kornfeld helped to prepare me for my work in the college classroom. Universities cannot function without the labor of graduate workers. Yet too often, administrators and deans treat graduate students with condescension and contempt, extracting as much value as they can while belittling our work and misleading the community about our wages, our benefits, and our career prospects in fields which are increasingly defined by contingency and precarity. With a couple of notable exceptions, Georgetown’s administration was no different. I am eternally grateful to my brothers and sisters in the Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees (GAGE), who organized for years to force a hostile administration to the bargaining table. I am particularly pleased to have organized alongside Chad Frazier, Cory Young, Keyvan Shafiei, Deidre Nelms, Marya Hunnan, Abby Holekamp, Thom Loyd, Matt Shields, and Hailey Huget. I am also grateful to have studied in a department whose faculty went out of their way to express their unified support for the idea that graduate workers are workers. Thanks also to my mom for designing GAGE’s logo. I have a lot of friends to thank. I’ve been best friends with Matt Lowe for more than 25 years. I met Eric Lewitus before I met Matt, but as he will be the first to note, we really weren’t close until college. In and through high school in Annapolis I met Wiley Laufman, Sterling Schlegel, Danny Gotimer, Julie Boddorff, Annie Laufman, Adam Fligsten, Chris Yarrison, Kevin Madsen, Zach Lyons, Lucy Martin, and Billy Rosser. At one point or another, all of us moved to California. Visions of my return to life in the Golden State have sustained me during the punishing summers and bitter winters of the Mid-Atlantic. At Kenyon College I had the incredible luck to live mere inches away from Omari Washington, only feet from Aaron Berlow, not a dozen yards from Emily Morgan, and just one flight of stairs from Matt Reynolds. Though we have never lived in the same city, I have managed never to go more than seven months without seeing Matt and Omari. Through living in San Francisco, my cohort of transplanted east coast friends grew to include Morgan Peirce, Rachel Hart, Mike Keegan, Nick Carpenter, Laura Hannemann, Taylor Watson, Ross Allard, Kyle Miller, Thea Zajac and Talya Cooper. During the course of my studies, these friends have provided me with the most important thing that I could ever ask for: reassurance that I am funny. While I do not know him personally, I have spent more time alone with Tom Scharpling during the writing of this dissertation than anyone outside of my immediate family.