Randolph Bourne, Fierce WW I Critic, Dies
Randolph Bourne, probably the most articulate critic of World War I and the role of liberals and progressives who supported President Woodrow Wilson. died on this day.
Bourne was especially outraged because the target of his criticisms included his friends and colleagues as progressive reformers. accused them of ignoring the massive violations of civil liberties by the administration in the belief that if they remained on good terms with the administration they could play an influential role in the eventual peace treaty. In short, they sold their consciences for political influence.
In his sharpest attack, he said the pro-war intellectuals “had put themselves in a terrifyingly strategic, ic position,” where they told themselves “if we obstruct [that is, oppose the war], we surrender all power for influence. If we responsibly approve, we then retain our power for guiding [public policy]. In the current atmosphere of repression of dissent, he continued, “Dissenters are already excommunicated.”
His most famous statement was an article entitled “War and the Intellectuals” (1918, see below). The criticisms were directed in particular at his former teacher, John Dewey, at the time the most famous American philosopher, who wrote a notorious essay on the “social benefits” of war. See Dewey’s essay at June 22, 1918. In the end, the pro-war progressives failed to influence the peace treaty, which many historians argue set the stage for World War II, and they were also unable to persuade the U.S. to join the League of Nations.
Bourne suffered from many chronic illnesses and died on this day at age 32.
Bourne’s sharp criticisms of the role of intellectuals in wartime lived on long after he died. It reappeared in both World War II and the Vietnam War, notably in Noam Chomsky’s 1967 essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” criticizing the role of intellectuals in formulating American policy regarding Vietnam and in supporting the Vietnam War.
Bourne is also important as one of the first two intellectuals to affirm the idea of the U.S. as a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. (The other was his contemporary Horace Kallen.) Bourne’s made his argument in the essay “Trans-National America.”
Read Bourne’s famous essay, “War and the Intellectuals”: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4941/
Read: Randolph Bourne (author), Carl Resek (Ed), War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915–1919 (1999)
Learn more about Randolph Bourne: Jeremy McCarter, Young Radicals in the War for American Ideals (2017)
Read Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19670223.htm
Read Bourne’s “War is the Health of the State”: http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/bourne.htm
Learn more at the Randolph Bourne Institute: http://randolphbourne.org/