Our Romantic Image of the 1930's

There are those who consider today's political activism a rebirth of the 1930's. On a schoolbus traveling to the Washington March for Jobs and Freedom, I sat behind a curious father and son team. A Brooklyn printer, the man had been a socialist in the 1930's. He was glad to be active once again. His 17 year old son is already a member of the Young Peoples Socialist League. Together their enthusiasm for the march for its own sake reminded me of the days when my father used to take me to see the Yankees play ball. But there they were, Socialist of the 30's and Socialist of the 60's.

About two weeks later I encountered the image once again. It was at a Town Hall rally in New York for the 59 students who went to Cuba. Town Hall was packed with young and middle-aged radicals. One of the last speakers of the afternoon was Maxwell Geismar. I was surprised to see him there. He had been, I knew, an important liberal critic in the 1930's, and his literary criticism remains founded in social comment. Still, I had never seen him at a rally before.

"This is the most exciting group of people I have seen in years," Geismar told his audience. There was good reason: "In fact," he went on, "yours is the first meeting like this I've been to since the late 30's, I'm delighted to see you all here."

Of course the Town Hall meeting was not the first--nor the most exciting--political meeting since the 1930's. But Geismar may be right in guessing that there had taken place in the last few years an American political reawakening.

In any case, the memory of the 1930's is very much with us. Perhaps because of the abuse heaped on radicals during the McCarthy period, and because of the culturally lean full years which followed the "full leans years" of the 30's, their writers and music appeal to us now. Never before have the recollections of writers like Edmund Wilson, James Agee, and Alfred Kazin been more in vogue. Never before has the music of Woodie Guthrie, the Weavers, and untold "lost" folk blues singers been more popular. We are hungry for news of that era. When Writers on the Left, Daniel Aaron's scholarly study of the period, was published, it received widespread attention. When Mary McCarthy announced publication of a novel about a liberal group in the 1930's, it was anxiously awaited. Americans even find romance in the battles of the 30's--no conflict today seems so glamorous or honest as the Spanish Civil War. We wish things could be so simple once again.

Nevertheless, the political movements students join today make an impact. Though activists are impatient, progress is being made in civil rights. Though peace groups actually want disarmament, a test ban has been concluded, and never before have Cold War negotiations, seemed more possible. The Peace Corps is an international success. And when a National Service Corps is recommended, a Harvard senior, who for two years ran the mental hospitals program at Phillips Brooks House, is asked to testify before a Senate Committee.

For revolutionaries, the pace may seem too slow and the changes too shallow. But it is characteristic of the 60's--not so true of the 30's--that constructive activity is more important than radical philosophy. If our projects are ahead of the nation, they are not unnoticed.

Today most liberal students, indeed a mood throughout the country, find inspiration in the faith of the 1930's. That are remains for us a romantic myth. We love its writers, its thoughts, its courage. In the 1960's we have developed a living political activism which itself may one day--perhaps after the next McCarthy period--be remembered in poem and book and song.