Frank A. Warren. Noble Abstractions: American Liberal Intellectuals and World War II. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. xxii + 330 pp. $40.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8142-0814-4.

Reviewed by Brett Gary

Published on H-Pol (June, 2000)

Frank A. Warren, historian at Queens College formance" (p. xiv). For Warren, those gaps be‐ and author of earlier studies of American leftists tween ideals and actions produced "political and in the 1930s, has written a valuable and learned moral dilemmas" that became irresolvable contra‐ study of left-liberal intellectual journalists and dictions within American liberalism at war's end. their unmet goals for US social, economic, and for‐ If the issues, debates, and terminological bat‐ eign policies during WWII. As Professor Warren tles vetted in Professor Warren's book were the makes clear in his acknowledgments, this is a sub‐ same ones sufusing his boyhood home, then his ject dear to him because the "noble abstractions" parents must have subscribed to a host of political espoused by his cast of writers and critics were journals, especially , the New Republic, those embraced by his parents. The book's sub‐ Common Sense, and PM, among others. Warren jects ofered a humane vision of social and eco‐ draws on these journals as his primary sources to nomic justice, and helped defne the larger mean‐ produce a tightly focused and wide-ranging intel‐ ing of WWII as a revolutionary struggle against lectual history of the left-liberal press from the be‐ , both in the US and across the globe. This ginning of US direct involvement in the war in vision, Warren argues, not entirely realistic to be‐ 1941 to the war's aftermath. Freda Kirchwey, Max gin with, was "betrayed" (p. xii) by the increasing‐ Lerner, Bruce Bliven, Reinhold Niebuhr, Michael ly limited notions of the war's purposes as defned Straight, James Loeb, , and a host of by President Roosevelt (in his incarnation as "Dr. other infuential left-liberal writers and editors Win the War") and by the State Department. The take center stage, as they provided the ideas and key to both the analytical and narrative tension at critical analysis for those publications. Warren be‐ the book's center is in Warren's assessment of the gins with his principles' "interpretation of World gulf between the reality of the war and those "illu‐ War II as a democratic revolution and an interna‐ sory" but "also noble" abstractions articulated by tional civil war between democracy and fascism" liberal intellectuals -- he refers to it as "the dis‐ -- the noble part of their aspirations -- and shows, tance between those abstractions and liberal per‐ H-Net Reviews in each chapter, how their ideals were invariably tablishes as mounting evidence of FDR's indifer‐ (for him, inevitably) unrealized because of "their ence to progressive liberal goals. For Warren this continued commitment to Roosevelt and the New points to the fundamental faw in liberals' exces‐ Deal" (p. xiv). In most chapters the same useful, if sive commitment to the Democratic Party, and somewhat predictable framework holds. consequent failure to adopt an available option -- Warren frst allows his main cast of charac‐ withholding all but "critical support" for Roosevelt ters to defne through richly textured debate some and the war efort. This was the policy profered political, economic, or diplomatic problem of the by Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party, and war. Then he examines the gulf between the left- the one Warren would have chosen. Critical sup‐ liberals' idealized rhetoric and goals and the war's port would have focused on the "administration's reality as defned by the Roosevelt administration. inequalities and failures" instead of justifying Thereupon he shows how this gulf produced Roosevelt's expedience by blaming others; it moral and political dilemmas for the liberal intel‐ would have positioned them to sustain their cri‐ lectual community and concludes most chapters tique of the capitalist system rather than acceding by showing how his journalists' inability to dis‐ to a policy of reforming large-scale consumer- tance themselves from their afliation with the based capitalism; it would have severed them Roosevelt administration (especially their tar‐ from any afliation with reactionary Democratic nished hero FDR) and the Democratic Party result‐ Party policies on racial justice questions, from in‐ ed in a weaker, increasingly compromised liberal‐ ternment of the Japanese-Americans, to poll-taxes, ism. Across a whole range of issues President Roo‐ thereby giving them the high moral ground; it sevelt failed to act upon their defnition of and might have allowed vociferous critics like Tom prescription for the war as a moral struggle Amlie to stay inside the liberal community be‐ against fascism; they in turn ofered trenchant cause there might have been a place for his orga‐ critiques of his inadequate social, economic, per‐ nizing energies were his colleagues not intent on sonnel, and foreign policy decisions, and yet he staying close to the exercise of power; and liberal remained their leader and they never broke from inefectuality in infuencing administration policy him. Had they made the break, Warren avers, and expectations for the war would not have been they might have had more infuence because they so pronounced. would not have been taken for granted and their As Warren writes, "What my reading of the ideas would have at least been understood as history of the liberal intellectuals during World "critical" analysis and not failed and disregarded War II suggests is that their goals would have policy prescriptions by unrewarded, cranky loyal‐ been better served if they had dropped their strat‐ ists. egy of building liberal infuence within the Demo‐ Warren is generally, but not entirely, sympa‐ cratic Party and devoted their energy to building thetic to the main cast of characters and their pro‐ a democratic left movement detached from the gressive world view, and he lukewarmly endorses Democratic Party" (p. xiv). Professor Warren's the "Union for Democratic Action-New Republic- democratic socialist aspirations frame the implicit Nation-PM circle's" (p. xvii) vision of the war as "what if?" questions that form the core of the global "civil war" between democracy and fas‐ book's overall assessment of left-liberal intellectu‐ cism. He also agrees with their repudiation of als' inefectuality and those dashed left-liberals as‐ Communism (both Soviet and American), but ex‐ pirations shape the arc of the book's narrative. In coriates their inability to cut their ties to the Roo‐ short, the book is a study of liberal idealism con‐ sevelt Administration, especially with what he es‐ strained by liberalism's political alliance with the Democratic Party. "Perhaps it was inevitable,"

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Warren argues, "that the desperate war situation Moreover, the liberal intellectuals in this study and the horror of fascism should have produced a are virtually all outside the policy-making and ad‐ political vision high on idealistic goals but minus ministrative apparatus. We never hear from a the power or the ability to implement the goals. whole generation of liberal intellectuals -- govern‐ But what the liberal intellectuals did was to invest ment ofcials, scientists, political scientists, jour‐ in Roosevelt as the leader and in the as nalists, historians, sociologists, lawyers, writers the administration that represented progressive and others -- who threw themselves into the fray forces that could achieve those idealistic goals" as government policy-makers, researchers, intelli‐ (p. 36). That was fatal thinking, he argues, by gence ofcers, propagandists, mid-level bureau‐ those who should have known better. crats, and so on. We hear from policy-makers As an intellectual history of war-era journal‐ (many of whom were also liberal intellectuals) ists' ideas and moral fervor, the book captures the only as their decisions are interpreted by War‐ hothouse atmosphere of political journalism in a ren's cast, and much of the book's discussion is time of extraordinary crisis. Warren ofers a about frustrated responses to good ideas gone un‐ broad sampling of debates and pronouncements heeded and in reaction to ill-formed decisions and about highly specifc time-bound issues that policies implemented by powerful men at the cen‐ quickly became ephemeral due to the rapid suc‐ ter of power but at the periphery of the book's at‐ cession of events and new crises to be managed, tention. and he succeeds in drawing larger patterns of This is not to diminish the importance of jour‐ thought and analysis out of that atmosphere; at nalists as intellectuals, intellectual history, or the same time, he shows how quickly changing Warren's particular history. I learned a great deal events often caught his cast of writers in cycles of about dozens of issues as they were discussed in overstatement, tendentiousness, backpedaling, the Nation, the New Republic, PM, Common Sense and retrenchment, illustrating how they were also and war-related works produced by writers for trying to discern larger patterns and hang onto those publications. The intellectual community their moral bearings. As an intellectual history of comprised by Bruce Bliven, James Loeb, Freda the era, it ofers a valuable, focused lens on an im‐ Kirchwey, Robert Bendiner, Reinhold Niebuhr, portant group of left-liberal journalists and their Max Lerner, Louis Fischer, I.F. Stone, Michael responses to policies with which they often dis‐ Straight, Alfred Bingham, and Tom Amlie (and agreed. At moments Warren's nuanced, careful re‐ others) is indeed compelling, and I learned much counting of passionate debates is stunningly re‐ about how they thought and argued about the warding, such as his discussion of the exchanges war and its aims and the excuses they made for between Kirchwey, Fischer, and Niebuhr over So‐ FDR. But I did not learn much at all about them as viet needs and intentions in the postwar era. thinkers -- where they came from, how their Yet, as a political history of US liberals and lib‐ mindsets were formed, what their political educa‐ eralism at war, the "internalist" reading of left-lib‐ tion had been, and how they arrived at their posi‐ eral journalists' responses to the decisions of po‐ tions of considerable (but limited) infuence as litical leaders is limited. We are infrequently pro‐ leading left-liberal writers and opinion-makers. vided larger contexts for understanding ofcial More critically, I felt thrown into the middle of an policy-making beyond how Warren's journals and ongoing argument in this book, encountering a journalists responded to those decisions. There‐ full cast of characters who themselves are aware fore we get only a second or third-hand under‐ of the fault lines and fssures and ruptures in the standing of ofcial perceptions and rationale. history of this so-called liberal community, but whose author is largely silent about those fssures

3 H-Net Reviews and the recent past. Warren begins in media res, Their absence limits the claims that can be made and the sense of beginning in the middle of de‐ for the centrality of the book's main fgures. bates suggests a potentially limited audience for That said, Warren does provide a nuanced, this work -- namely, those already well familiar provocative, insightful history of the "Union for with the history of left-liberal intellectuals in the Democratic Action-New Republic-Nation-PM cir‐ popular front era, the war years, and the early cle" at war, and a quick list indicates some (but cold war, or the serious student of US policies in not all) of the issues that he addresses in two hun‐ World War II. dred and ffty six pages of text. The book's overall Such an audience is likely to be impatient narrative moves from the articulation of the pro- with the absence of any discussion of pre-war de‐ war liberal intellectual community's vision of bates among left-liberals, liberals, Popular Fron‐ what the war was about to the eventual rupture ters, Communists, and others about US entrance of that community because of shattered dreams into the war. On occasion Warren's own immense and difering perceptions of what dreams were knowledge of the fault lines of 30s radicals, pro‐ still salvageable as Cold War fears descended over gressives, socialists, social democrats, liberals, the republic. Along the way we get many work‐ popular fronters, anti-Stalinist leftists, ex-Commu‐ manlike discussions about particular issues: the nist popular fronters, Communists, and so on, is uses of the keywords that defned the war as a clear in how precisely it informs his understand‐ democratic revolution; Freda Kirchwey's and Max ing of wartime alliances, but all of that back‐ Lerner's rebukes of Henry Luce's "American Cen‐ ground and clarifcation stands outside of his text. tury" essay; debates over curbing monopoly capi‐ That those profound and deeply antagonistic con‐ talism versus full employment as a sufcient post‐ ficts from 1937-1942 all exist outside this book's war goal for radical democracy; debates over US discussion of liberal intellectuals at war is a prob‐ policies toward fascist neutrals in France, Italy, lem, at several analytical levels. First, it actually and Spain and the State Department's perfdy in makes the formation of the wartime "community" these policies; how US policies toward our allies, of liberal intellectuals less extraordinary than it especially England and the USSR, were complicat‐ was -- because there were so many wounds and so ed by their relations with each other; the forma‐ much distrust the relative wartime amity and tion of the UDA as a center for liberal action and agreement would be more telling set against the activism, and the limits on the UDA's efectiveness backdrop of the liberal-left's own "civil" war. Sec‐ because of its proximity to the New Deal; Henry ond, it fails to account for earlier and arguably far Wallace's apotheosis as the liberal idealist in the more important articulations of the "noble ab‐ Roosevelt administration and the liberal anguish stractions" by people such as Archibald MacLeish at his being left of the ticket in 1944; the absence and Robert Sherwood, who began defning the of liberals' moral outrage over the internment of war as a moral confrontation between democratic Japanese-Americans, civil liberties abuses in gen‐ ideals and fascism years before Warren's book be‐ eral, racism in general, and their virtual silence gins. Thus, while Warren's cast of characters and on the dropping of the atomic bomb; liberals' in‐ left-liberal journals provide him with clear adequate organization and action on racial and archival and textual focus for his study, and gender injustice in the US; the declining fortunes makes it possible to manage discussion of a wide of Tom Amlie as a spokesman for liberal idealism; range of issues in some depth, it does exclude oth‐ the British Labour Party's successes in forming an er key liberal intellectuals who were probably efective critical and political power bloc, com‐ more central in defning the war's meanings. pared to US labor; the perception of Socialist pre‐ war isolationism as evidence of its irresponsibility

4 H-Net Reviews and non-viability as a third party alternative; and central role in his causal framework. Neverthe‐ the road not taken by liberal intellectuals, or how less, I no doubt will return to this book again and supporting Norman Thomas would have saved again for instruction and insight on a host of liberal intellectuals from fatal compromises and wartime issues. contradictions, and a fatal optimism that belied On a completely diferent issue, having noth‐ the war's tragic realities. ing to do with the quality of Professor Warren's Such a broad canvas permits Warren to hear work, and having to do with editorial decisions, I from a good many writers and to explore a range want to utter a complaint: The editors at Ohio of problems at the heart of left-liberal intellectual State University Press have somehow agreed on culture as the US struggled to win a war on two an endnote system for this book that is thorough‐ fronts and to envision itself as a more democratic ly annoying. The use of initials and abbreviations place. Warren's assessment of the intellectual ten‐ for proper names and journal titles in the end‐ sions and failures are explained by his perception notes means that the reader must constantly re‐ that the liberals misunderstood how limited re‐ turn back to the list of abbreviations (I wanted a form would be if it was going to take place within little tear-sheet I could use as my bookmark), im‐ a capitalist framework -- as he writes, "What tri‐ posing a time-consuming burden upon the reader, umphed, for better or worse, was liberal capital‐ making the endnotes far less useful than they ism^Å[and] it was a far cry from the high, if should be. This would appear to be further evi‐ vague, hopes for a new democratic revolution" (p. dence of the publishing world's decision that the 36). But even more fatal was their inability to end-of-the-book scholarly apparatus is superfu‐ think past FDR as the leader of progressive forces ous. It is not, and the specifc decision here dimin‐ and the resulting diminution of the power of pro‐ ishes this work of scholarship. gressive ideas in American political life, he ar‐ Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights re‐ gues. served. This work may be copied for non-proft Warren has performed an important job in educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ this study, helping to open up WWII to the neces‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ sary reexamination of the idea of liberal consen‐ tact [email protected]. sus. He has a commanding knowledge of his mate‐ rials, has done yeoman's work organizing and clarifying the debates that left-liberal intellectuals engaged in so passionately, and his sense of the sadness of lost opportunities to make a better world gives the work its passionate, moral center. Yet the constant recurrence of Roosevelt's implicit duplicity gives a more one-dimensional overall analysis to these complicated matters than they deserve. Professor Warren chastises the liberals for their seizing upon "liberal persons" rather than movement building (p. 254), but himself seizes upon the same liberal person to explain too much. Throughout the book his judgment of ideas is scrupulous and tough-minded, so it is therefore surprising that FDR as bogeyman plays such a

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