Famine, Trial, War: A Selected Review of Political Commentary in the New Masses from 1933 to 1939

Abstract

In 1956, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed playwright Arthur Miller, demanding that he testify about his political history. In the course of his testimony, committee member Gordon H. Scherer posed a question to Miller about his prior affiliation with the marxist literary magazine New Masses. “Do you consider,” he asked, “those things that you have written in the New Masses as an exercise of your literary rights?” From a modern perspective, it may seem strange that a sitting congressional representative would be asking an author whether his artistic production fit under his right to free expression. However, these were different times. “I wouldn’t call it especially an exercise in freedom,” Miller responded, “it was simply an effusion of mind.” An effusion is perhaps the best way to describe the magazine itself, whose influence continued long after its closing. In fact, by the time of Miller’s hearing it had been defunct for nearly a decade. Michael Denning, one of the foremost historians of the Popular Front movement, called the magazine “central” to that movement, and “the national magazine for young radicals” in the 1930s. Its contributors included men and women who were or would become some of the nation’s leading literary lights, including Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Dorothy Day. The federal government itself maintained an abiding interest in the magazine, keeping detailed records described by the New York Times as a “555-page content analysis,” which is now partially declassified and available online. This paper’s purpose, too, is to engage in an analysis of the New Masses. In the 1930s, it served not only as a literary hub for the marxist left in America but also as one of its major sources of political commentary. This commentary, which permeated the magazine – from its short stories, to its poetry, to its editorials, to its straight news, provides a fascinating firsthand insight into the thinking of a controversial and often misunderstood group of radicals. Writing for an audience desperate to make sense of an uncertain and chaotic environment, the magazine’s contributors and