Further notes on yesterday’s post.
1. I would not apply the three-axes model to the 1950s. Here is the history as I see it:
From 1917 through 1989, I would say that there was one major axis of intellectual disagreement: pro-Communist or anti-Communist.
If you will forgive the oxymoron, in the culture of the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet Union was Silicon Valley–the epicenter of progress, or so it was thought. In the West, the Communist Party was where you went to find people with dynamism, energy, and confidence that they were “in league with the future.”
Meanwhile, anti-Communism had its ups (“red scare”) and downs (“Uncle Joe”)*, until soon after World War II, when it surged again, probably because of renewed pride in American culture and institutions combined with shock at the Soviet atomic bomb and the “fall of China.” Then Stalin’s death in 1951 and the subsequent revelation of the horrors of his regime ended the left’s romance with Communism. Although Western pro-Communism appeared to die with Stalin, the McCarthy-ite bullying of the 1950s produced a backlash of anti-anti-Communism. Finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall made the issue moot, or ended history, as Francis Fukuyama famously put it.
*Note that in the 1940s it was not obvious that Stalin was a monster. From 1941-1945, he was our ally.
2. One reader commented that my father, who drew my mother away from Communism, should have been considered a hero. That is not how bullies think. They regarded him as suspect for being associated with her (and probably to a large extent for being Jewish). A friend reminds me that my father submitted his resignation to the political science department of Washington University, because his position seemed so untenable. It was by not accepting his resignation that the University stood by him.
3. As an aside, I don’t think my mother could have persisted as a Communist in any case. I suspect that she fell in with Communists because, coming to Missouri determined to escape her Pennsylvania small-town existence, she perceived worldliness and sophistication in her Communist associates. It was through them that she met my aunt, who in turn introduced her to my father.
My aunt was very intelligent. All through high school she outshone my father academically. She even had her exploits covered in a long feature story in St. Louis’ leading newspaper. But her temperament was austere and humorless, viewing the world in black-and-white terms. Communism fit her very well.
My father’s intellectual temperament was the opposite. He was comfortable with ambiguity and profoundly skeptical of absolutist thinking. One of his favorite sayings was “The first iron law of social science is ‘sometimes it’s this way and sometimes it’s that way.'” He was not suited to Communism at all.
Neither was my mother, because she cherished amusement. In my boyhood, she sought to amuse me, and she found me amusing.
For example, a couple of times a year she and my father would go to the race track over in Illinois and place small bets. A few times they took me. In the early 1960s, they were lent a small analog computer in which one could use dials to enter information from the Racing Form and get a recommendation for betting. I was the one who worked that computer (at home, not at the track), and it took about half an hour to enter a few pieces of information about each horse in a single race. We never used it to try to bet. But it was an amusing experience.
4. Another reader asked what became of Dr. Sol Londe professionally. It’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer. Apparently, he kept his medical license. But I doubt that he could have held any position with, say, the Missouri Medical Association. [UPDATE: It turns out that he had a long and distinguished career in medicine and political activism. See the comments on this post.]
5. A progressive friend of mine claims that bullying is a Trump-era phenomenon. I would refer him to the Larry Summers case. It was in 2005 when Summers made his infamous remarks that male dominance in math departments was not necessarily due to oppression of women, but instead might reflect the fact that in the very upper extreme of math ability, men are more prevalent. His enemies distorted this into a supposed claim that “women can’t do math.” A vote of the Harvard faculty, many of whom disliked Summers for other reasons (he is easy to dislike) went against him. His resignation, unlike my father’s, was accepted, effective in 2006.
The way it appears to me now, the bullying of Summers/Harvard became the template for today’s social justice movement. It is easy not to feel sorry for Summers personally (he is easy to dislike). But the success of the campaign against him was a tragic episode from the standpoint of the principle of free inquiry.
By the way, even though Summers is easy to dislike, I mostly like him.