From Old Left To New Right

Abstract

John P- Diggins. Up From Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History. New York: Harper & Row, Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd., 1975. 522 + xvii pp. One of the more intriguing phenomena in recent American intellectual history is the startling transformation of men and women who had been ardent political radicals during the 1930's into conservative stalwarts after World War II. While the large majority of those who embraced Marxism or other forms of radicalism in the depression years continued to think of themselves, at least in some vague sense, as men of the left, a significant, if rather small, minority grew so disenchanted with their earlier positions that they moved all the way to the political right. Frank Meyer, Whittaker Chambers, Max Eastman, Eliseo Vivas, John Chamberlain, William Henry Chamberlin, James Burnham, Willi Schlamm, Henry Hazlitt, Suzanne La Follette, John Dos Passos, Ralph de Toledano, Eugene Lyons, Freda Utley and Will Herberg are only some of those who made the journey. In their new guise, such people had a strong and often decisive impact on the conservative intellectual movement which emerged in America after 1945, providing the right with a hard-nosed understanding of Soviet intentions and reinforcing already powerful anti-Communist impulses. Their imprint on the National Review in particular, the journalistic center of the movement, has been deep and enduring.