On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:13:43 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
> Peter Lavelle wrote:
>
> >Sorry if this a stupid question, but who behind
> >Frontpagemag.com?
>
> The execrable David Horowitz, ex-new leftist (and editor of
> Ramparts)
> turned right-wing attack dog. A vicious hack, supported by
> right-wing
> foundations.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
Yes, David Horowitz. He's quite a character, isn't he? I have on my bookshelf in front of me two of his books that he wrote back in his commie left-wing days: *Marx and Modern Economics* and his *The Fate of Midas and Other Essays*. The first book is a collection of essays from assorted economists, both Marxist and bourgeois, which explored the relationships between Marxian political economy and what was then contemporary mainstream economics. Basically, Horowitz discerned a convergence between Marxian political economy and Keynesian economics, and he was also interested in the work of people like Oskar Lange who were attempting to synthesize Marxism with both neoclassical and Keynesian economics and were proposing market socialist models. That book had essays from people like Lange, Joan Robinson, and Paul Sweezy amongst others. And the book itself was published by Monthly Review Press, which I believe still keeps it on its back catalog.
The second book is a collection of essays by Horowitz, himself, many of them on that same theme. One of the theses of that book was the convergence between Marxian economics and Keyenesian economics (that I already in regards to the first book), a thesis that had been advanced earlier by people like Paul Sweezy and Joan Robinson. Other essays explore ideas derived from the great Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher, who had been one of Horowitz's mentors in the early 1960s when he was in London. Another essay was on Bertrand Russell, with whom Horowitz had worked with when he served a short stint as director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. (I imagine that Ralph Schoenman had something to do with that). Horowitz, during his leftwing commie days, wrote other books too such as *The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War* which was back in the 1970s an influential popularization of the "revisionist" understanding of the origins of the cold war.
It is said that back when he was a commie leftist, Horowitz didn't have a penny to his name, and spent years earning a poverty-level income at most. Then when he became a right-winger, all sorts of money began to flow in and he has now become quite wealthy. On the other hand, the one thing that he has failed to acquire is any real respect. After all, in his pilgrimage from the far left to the far right, he has been preceded by many better men like Max Eastman, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers etc. I get the impression that Horowitz thought he would be able to become sort of an intellectual leader of the right, the way he had been of the left. While, he has managed to acquire a certain notoriety, especially with his website, FrontPage, I don't think that he has gotten all that much respect. After all when he was on the left, he was very much a big fish in a small pond, whereas on the right he is just one voice within a crowded field. And how much self-respect can a man retain after he has sold out the way the Horowitz did?
Jim F.
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