War And The Intellectuals

Although he died at the age of thirty-two, Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) left a body of writing on politics, culture, and literature that made him one of the most influential American public intellectuals of the twentieth century and a hero of the American left. The twenty-eight essays in this volume -- among them, 'War and the Intellectuals', the analysis of the warfare state that made Bourne the foremost critic of American entry into World War I, and 'Trans-National America', his manifesto for cultural pluralism in America -- show Bourne at his most passionate and incisive as they trace his search for the true wellsprings of nationalism and American culture.

"TB 3043." Bibliographical footnotes.

What did French intellectuals have to say about Gaullism, the Cold War colonialism, the women's movement, and the events of May '68? David Drake examines the political commitment of intellectuals in France from Sartre and Camus to Bernard-Henri Lévy and Bourdieu. In this accessible study, he explores why there was a radical reassessment of the intellectual's role in the mid 1970s-80s and how a new generation engaged with Islam, racism, the Balkan Wars and the strikes of 1995.

Although he died at the age of thirty-two, Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) left a body of writing on politics, culture, and literature that made him one of the most influential public intellectuals of the twentieth century, and a hero of the American left. The twenty-eight essays of this volume--among them, War and the Intellectuals, the analysis of the warfare state that made Bourne the foremost critic of American entry into World War 1, and Trans-National America, his manifesto for cultural pluralism in America--show Bourne at his most passionate and incisive as they trace his search for the true wellsprings of nationalism and American culture.

This volume considers intellectuals within the social history of World War I. It offers a reflection on intellectuals' stance toward militarism and the outbreak of war. It examines their reactions, thoughts, and predictions and the ways in which they interpreted the meaning of the war, as well as how they saw the possibilities of the postwar era.

For the past 150 years, Western intellectuals have trumpeted contempt for capitalism and capitalists. They have written novels, plays, and manifestos to demonstrate the evils of the economic system in which they live. Dislike and contempt for the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, industry, and commerce have been a prominent trait of leading Western writers and artists. Mind vs. Money is an analytical history of how and why so many intellectuals have opposed capitalism. It is also an argument for how this opposition can be tempered. Historically, intellectuals have expressed their rejection of capitalism through many different movements, including nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, fascism, communism, and the 1960s counterculture. Hostility to capitalism takes new forms today. The anti-globalization, Green, communitarian, and New Age movements are all examples. Intellectuals give such movements the legitimacy and leadership they would otherwise lack. What unites radical intellectuals of the nineteenth century, communists and fascists of the twentieth, and anti-globalization protestors of the twenty-first, along with many other intellectuals not associated with these movements, is their rejection of capitalism. Kahan argues that intellectuals are a permanently alienated elite in capitalist societies. In myriad forms, and on many fronts, the battle between Mind and Money continues today. Anti-Americanism is one of them. Americans like to see their country as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But in the eyes of many European and American intellectuals, when America is identified with capitalism, it is transformed from moral beacon into the "Great Satan." This is just one of the issues Mind vs. Money explores. The conflict between Mind and Money is the great, unresolved conflict of modern society. To end it, we must first understand it.

The War and the Intellectuals (1917) was published in the early 20th-century literary magazine The Seven Arts, by Randolph Bourne.