Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment

by Fink, Leon

• ISBN13: 9780674713901
• ISBN10: 0674713907
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-11-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

How to lead the people and be one of them? What's a democratic intellectual to do? This longstanding dilemma for the progressive intellectual, how to bridge the world of educated opinion and that of the working masses, is the focus of Leon Fink's penetrating book, the first social history of the progressive thinker caught in the middle of American political culture. In a series of vivid portraits, Fink investigates the means and methods of intellectual activists in the first part of the twentieth century--how they served, observed, and made their own history. In the stories of, among others, John R. Commons, Charles McCarthy, William English Walling, Anna Strunsky Walling, A. Philip Randolph, W. Jett Lauck, and Wil Lou Gray, he creates a panorama of reform of unusual power. Issues as broad as the cult of leadership and as specific as the Wisconsin school of labor history lead us into the heart of the dilemma of the progressive intellectual in our age. The problem, as Fink describes it, is twofold: Could people prevail in a land of burgeoning capitalism and concentrated power? And should the people prevail? This book shows us Socialists and Progressives and, later, New Dealers grappling with these questions as they tried to redress the new inequities of their day--and as they confronted the immense frustrations of moving the masses. Fink's graphic depiction of intellectuals' labors in the face of capitalist democracy's challenges dramatizes a time in our past--and at the same time speaks eloquently to our own.

Author Biography

Leon Fink is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Progressive Reformers, Social Scientists, and the Search for a Democratic Public	p. 13
Defining the People: The Wisconsin School of Labor History and the Creation of the American Worker	p. 52
The People's Expert: Charles McCarthy and the Perils of Public Service	p. 80
Joining the People: William English Walling and the Specter of the Intellectual Class	p. 114
A Love for the People: Anna Strunsky Walling and the Domestic Limits of Democratic Idealism	p. 147
A Voice for the People: A. Philip Randolph and the Cult of Leadership	p. 184
The People's Strategist: W. Jett Lauck and the Panacea of Plenty	p. 214
Teaching the People: Wil Lou Gray and the Siren of Educational Opportunity	p. 242
Epilogue: The Once and Future Career of the Public Intellectual	p. 275
Notes	p. 289
Index	p. 363
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