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The Rise and Fall of Marxist Perspectives: Eugene Genovese and the Fight for Hegemony in Radical American Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2021

Gabriel Raeburn*
Affiliation:
Religious Studies and History, University of Pennsylvania
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: raeburn@sas.upenn.edu

Abstract

In the spring of 1978, radical historians launched the academic journal Marxist Perspectives. Edited by the celebrated Marxist historian Eugene Genovese, the journal comprised one of the strongest collectives of radical historians that American academia has ever seen. However, Marxist Perspectives collapsed after only two years in print. This article charts the journal's origins and its premature demise as a lens to explore Genovese's intellectual career and examine how competing radical factions attempted to define the field. In analyzing how both personal academic rivalries and political divisions stunted and formed intellectual production, the article demonstrates that radical historiography was shaped by internal critiques over how to build a new American left within an advanced capitalist society.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Eric Foner to Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, 3 Sept. 1980, Folder 6, Box 1, MP Records (Marxist Perspectives Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library, New York).

2 For example, Peter Novick's study on the American historical profession dedicates under a dozen lines to Marxist Perspectives. See Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988), 460CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 “Subscribe Now!”, Marxist Perspectives 3/1 (1980), 4.

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14 The term “radical” changes depending on the historical and geographical context. Within this article I use “radical historians” to refer to the specific group of American historians and the Marxist and leftist scholarship they produced, from the early 1960s through to the late 1970s, that came to take the shape of what we now refer to as “radical history.” In this, I follow from Jon Wiener's use of the term. See Wiener, “Radical Historians.”

15 Ellen Schrecker, “The House Marxists,” Nation, 27 Jan. 1979, 81–4, at 82. See also Ollman, Bertell and Vernoff, Edward, eds., The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

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23 I use the terms “counterculture,” “new social” and “feminist” historians to avoid what Novick refers to as the misleading “lumping together” of individuals of the “most diverse orientation” when we discuss “New Left historians.” See Novick, That Noble Dream, 418.

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39 Susman and Genovese, “Editorial Statement,” 6–8.

40 Genovese, Eugene D., In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History (New York, 1971), 396404Google Scholar. Genovese argued that the journal should represent a collective effort of what Gramsci attempted to do in prison. See Eugene Genovese to Warren Susman, 7 Aug. 1971, Folder 13, Box 1, Susman Papers (Warren I. Susman Papers, R-MC 118, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, NJ).

41 Eugene Genovese to Warren Susman, 11 Aug. 1969, Folder 13, Box 1, Susman Papers.

42 Among counterculture historians, Jesse Lemisch was more willing to defend objective history and oppose present-mindedness than Zinn and Lynd. For background see Tyrrell, The Absent Marx, 127–8.

43 Wiener, “Radical Historians,” 413.

44 Novick, That Noble Dream, 431–2.

45 Van der Linden, A Revolt against Liberalism, 106.

46 Genovese, In Red and Black, 357–9, 369. In private correspondence, Genovese said that Intellectual Origins “incensed” him and was a “stupid and utterly dishonest book.” See Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 22 April 1968, Folder 240, Box 21, Woodward Papers (C. Vann Woodward Papers, MS 1436, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library).

47 Susman and Genovese, “Editorial Statement,” 5.

48 Genovese, In Red and Black, 4–10.

49 Ibid., 365.

50 James Weinstein, “Can a Historian be a Socialist Revolutionary?”, Socialist Revolution 1/3 (1970), 96–106, at 105.

51 Ibid., 99.

52 Miller, Eric, Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (Grand Rapids, 2010), 139Google Scholar.

53 Two thousand people attended the AHA business meeting in 1969, compared to 116 in 1968. For background see Wiener, “Radical Historians,” 422; Novick, That Noble Dream, 434–8. Genovese was not universally condemned by radical historians. Susman, for example, backed his position. See Murphy, Paul V., “The Last Progressive Historian: Warren Susman and American Cultural History,” Modern Intellectual History 14/3 (2017), 807–35, at 829CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 In one letter, Genovese referred to “our side” against Marcuse and Mills. See Eugene Genovese to Eric Foner, 31 Jan. 1973, Folder 8, Box 1, MP Records.

55 Ericson, Edward E. Jr, Radicals in the University (Stanford, 1975), 26Google Scholar.

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57 Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 136.

58 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, “The National Petition Campaign,” New York Review of Books, 4 June 1970, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1970/06/04/the-national-petition-campaign.

59 Frank Kofsky, reply by Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox Genovese, “An Exchange on Electoral Politics,” New York Review of Books, 13 Aug. 1970, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1970/08/13/an-exchange-on-electoral-politics.

60 Arnold Beichman, “Study in Academic Freedom,” New York Times, 19 Dec. 1965, SM14.

61 Wiener, “Radical Historians,” 416–18.

62 Genovese, In Red and Black, 14.

63 Cristopher Lasch and Eugene Genovese, “The Education and the University We Need Now,” New York Review of Books, 9 Oct. 1969, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/10/09/the-education-and-the-university-we-need-now.

64 Novick, That Noble Dream, 419.

65 Michael O'Brien, “A Retrospect on the Southern Intellectual History Circle, 1988–2013,” US Intellectual History Blog, 29 Jan. 2014, at www.s-usih.org/2014/01/a-retrospective-on-the-southern-intellectual-circle-1988-2013.html.

66 Genovese, Eugene D., “Reflections on the 1960s: Preface to the Italian Edition of In Red and Black,” Socialist Review 8/2 (1978), 53–71, at 63–5Google Scholar; “Two Views of Slavery Generate Controversy,” Home News, 12 Jan. 1975, 12.

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69 Eric Foner to Eugene Genovese, 15 June 1977, Folder 8, Box 1, MP Records.

70 George Rawick to Herbert Gutman, 14 Oct. 1976, Folder ’76, Box 4, Gutman Papers (Herbert George Gutman Papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, NY).

71 Dworkin, Dennis, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History: The New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Durham, NC, 1997), 45Google Scholar.

72 Herbert Gutman to Louis Harlan, 29 April 1980, Folder 1980—Correspondence, Box 20, Gutman Papers.

73 Eugene Genovese to Warren Susman, 25 Oct. 1968, Folder 13, Box 1, Susman Papers.

74 Christopher Lasch to Warren Susman, 26 Oct. 1970, Folder 32, Box 1; Warren Susman to Christopher Lasch, 5 Oct. 1970, Folder 23, Box 15, Susman Papers.

75 Herbert Gutman to Marie Hansen, 25 June 1977, Folder 1977—Correspondence, Box 19, Gutman Papers.

76 Herbert Gutman to Alfred Young, 10 Dec. 1977, Folder 1977—Correspondence, Box 19, Gutman Papers.

77 Eugene Genovese to Warren Susman, 10 Dec. 1970, Folder 25, Box 16, Susman Papers; Genovese, Eugene D., Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage (Wilmington, 2009), 43Google Scholar; Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 154–5.

78 Berlin, Ira, “Introduction: Herbert G. Gutman and the American Working Class,” in Berlin, ed., Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (New York, 1987), 3–69, at 47Google Scholar.

79 Background can be found in Folder 23, Box 15, Susman Papers; and Folders 240–41, Box 21, Woodward Papers.

80 Genovese to Susman, 7 Aug. 1971.

81 For an overview see Kolchin, “Eugene D. Genovese,” 54–7.

82 Sinha, Manisha, “Eugene D. Genovese: The Mind of a Marxist Conservative,” Radical History Review 88 (2004), 429, at 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Ibid., 8; Kolchin, “Eugene D. Genovese,” 54. The originally title for Roll, Jordan, Roll was Sambo and Nat Turner. See Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 11 Oct. 1972, Folder 241, Box 21, Woodward Papers.

84 James Surowiecki, “Genovese's March: The Radical Reconstruction of a Southern Historian,” Linguafranca, Jan. 1997, 38.

85 C. Vann Woodward to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, 29 Oct. 1974, Folder 221, Box 19, Woodward Papers.

86 William Chapman, “Marxist Scholars Plan New Journal,” Washington Post, 31 Dec. 1976, 1.

87 Genovese, In Red and Black, 233.

88 Levine, Bruce, “Horatio Alger in the Cotton Fields? Herbert Gutman and the Debate over Slave Consciousness,” in Gutman, Herbert G., Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross (Urbana, 2003; first published 1975), xi–xxGoogle Scholar.

89 Tyrrell, The Absent Marx, 147–9.

90 Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game, 3–11.

91 Berlin, “Introduction,” 53.

92 Ibid., 50.

93 Herbert Gutman to George Rawick, 6 May 1979, Folder ’79, Box 5, Gutman Papers.

94 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth and Genovese, Eugene D., “The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective,” Journal of Social History 10/2 (1976), 205–20, at 210–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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96 Bois, W. E. B. Du, Black Reconstruction in America (New York, 1935), 5583Google Scholar; for background see Robinson, Cedric J., Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill, 2000; first published 1983), 228–40Google Scholar.

97 For an example see Abram L. Harris, “Reconstruction and the Negro,” New Republic, 7 Aug. 1935, 367–8.

98 Hahn, Steven, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar. For challenges to Genovese's paternalism thesis see Sinha, “Eugene D. Genovese,” 16–17.

99 For background see Johnson, Walter, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37/1 (2003), 113–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyrrell, The Absent Marx, 203.

100 Eley, A Crooked Line, 11; Rodgers, Age of Fracture, 93. For background on recent rejections of teleology in the new histories of capitalism see Sklansky, Jeffrey, “The Elusive Sovereign: New Intellectual and Social Histories of Capitalism,” Modern Intellectual History 9/1 (2012), 233–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Eugene Genovese, “Solidarity and Servitude,” Times Literary Supplement, 25 Feb. 1977, 198.

102 Eugene Genovese to Jacques Marchand, 7 Feb. 1977, Folder 1, Box 2, MP Records.

103 Herbert Gutman to John Gross, 19 March 1977, Folder ’77, Box 4; Herbert Gutman to George Rawick, 15 April 1977, Folder ‘77, Box 4, Gutman Papers.

104 Herbert Gutman to Dorothya Thompson and E. P. Thompson, 19 March 1977, Folder 1978—Correspondence, Box 19, Gutman Papers.

105 Eugene Genovese, “A Reply to Criticism,” n.d., Folder 9, Box 1, MP Records; Genovese, Eugene D. and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeoisie Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (New York, 1983), 136–72Google Scholar.

106 Jacques Marchand to Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, 20 April 1977, Folder 17, Box 1, MP Records.

107 Jacques Marchand to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, n.d., Folder 1, Box 1, Subseries 1, Series 1, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Papers #4851, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.

108 Eric Foner to Eugene Genovese, 11 May 1977, Folder 8, Box 1, MP Records.

109 Alden Whitman to Eric Foner, 9 Sept. 1977, Folder 8, Box 1, MP Records.

110 Eugene Genovese to Eric Foner, 17 May 1977, Folder 8, Box 1, MP Records.

111 Michael Greenberg to Eugene Genovese, n.d., Folder 17, Box 1, MP Records.

112 Marvin Gettleman to Eric Foner, 3 May 1976, Folder 10, Box 1, MP Records.

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114 Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 7 April 1976; Marvin Gettleman to C. Vann Woodward and Warren Susman, 14 April 1976, Folder 30, Box 17, Susman Papers.

115 Eric Foner to Marvin Gettleman, 6 May 1976, Folder 10, Box 1, MP Records.

116 Foner to Genovese, 5 May 1976.

117 Eugene Genovese to Warren Susman et al., 8 Oct. 1976, Folder 10, Box 1, MP Records.

118 Foner to Genovese, 11 May 1977.

119 Alice Kessler-Harris to Eugene Genovese and Warren Susman, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch. The Flight from Feeling: Sociopsychology of Sexual Conflict’,” n.d., Folder 11, Box 1, MP Records.

120 Buhle, Marxism in the United States, 250.

121 For background see Lerner, Gerda, “A View from the Women's Side,” Journal of American History 76/2 (1989), 446–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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123 Van der Linden concludes that radical historiography ends in 1976. See Van der Linden, A Revolt against Liberalism, 3.

124 Alice Kessler-Harris to Ann Lane, Sarah Elbert, and Temma Kaplan, 13 Sept. 1977, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

125 Jacques Marchand to Ms Chubb, 11 April 1977, Folder 1977—Correspondence, Box 19, Gutman Papers.

126 Temma Kaplan to Alice Kessler-Harris et al., 18 Oct. 1977, Folder 15, Box 1, MP Records.

127 Eugene Genovese to Jordy Bell, 31 Oct. 1977, Folder 15, Box 1, MP Records.

128 Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 240.

129 Kessler-Harris to Lane, Elbert, and Kaplan, 13 Sept. 1977.

130 Kaplan to Kessler-Harris et al., 18 Oct. 1977.

131 Eric Foner, Mark Naison, and Paul K. Hoch, reply by Christopher Lasch, “Corrupt Sports: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, 29 Sept. 1977, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/09/29/corrupt-sports-an-exchange.

132 Foner to Genovese, 11 May 1977.

133 Blake, Casey and Phelps, Christopher, “History as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher Lasch,” Journal of American History 80/4 (1994), 1310–32, at 1320–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134 Barker, “War of Position,” 60.

135 Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 146–7.

136 Ibid., 115, 189, 209.

137 Blake and Phelps, “History as Social Criticism,” 1328.

138 Kessler-Harris to Genovese and Susman, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch’”; Temma Kaplan, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch. The Flight from Feeling: Sociopsychology of Sexual Conflict’,” n.d., Folder 11, Box 1, MP Records.

139 Kaplan, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch’.”

140 Kessler-Harris to Genovese and Susman, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch’.”

141 Kaplan, “Note on ‘Christopher Lasch’.”

142 Ibid.

143 Lane and Genovese had previously been married.

144 Ann Lane to Eugene Genovese, Warren Susman, and Jacques Marchand, 22 Nov. 1977, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

145 Ann Lane to Alice Kessler-Harris, 9 Nov. 1977, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

146 Ann Lane to Christopher Lasch, 10 Nov. 1977, Folder 12, Box 1, Lasch Papers.

147 Temma Kaplan to Eugene Genovese, 9 Dec. 1977, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

148 This is in a letter from Lane to Kaplan in the aftermath of Kaplan's resignation. Lane had cc'd in other women involved in Marxist Perspectives. Kessler-Harris's name is circled alongside the handwritten note. Ann Lane to Temma Kaplan, 13 Dec. 1977, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

149 Eugene Genovese to Amy Bridges and Heidi Hartmann, 18 Jan. 1978, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

150 Hartmann, Heidi I., “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union,” Capital & Class 3/2 (1979), 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

151 Lasch, Christopher, “The Flight from Feeling: Sociopsychology of Sexual Conflict,” Marxist Perspectives 1/1 (1978), 74–94, at 78, 84–6Google Scholar.

152 Sandi E. Cooper to the Editors of Marxist Perspectives, 6 May 1978, Folder 25, Box 15, Susman Papers.

153 Ehrenreich, Barbara, “What Is Socialist Feminism?” (1976), Monthly Review 57/3 (2005), 7077CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

154 Angela Y. Davis, “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation,” in Howard L. Parsons and John Somerville, eds., Marxism, Revolution, and Peace: From the Proceedings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Dialectical Materialism (Amsterdam, 1977), 139–71, at 140. Davis also critiqued both Gutman and Genovese's failure to understand the crucial role of black women within the slave community as both producers and reproducers of labor. See Davis, Angela Y., Women, Race and Class (New York, 1981), 329Google Scholar.

155 Interview with Linda Gordon in Abelove, Henry and Thompson, E. P., eds., Visions of History (New York, 1983), 71–96, at 92Google Scholar.

156 Gordon, Linda, “What Should Women's Historians Do: Politics, Social Theory and Women's History,” Marxist Perspectives 1/3 (1978), 128–36Google Scholar.

157 To the Editors of Marxist Perspectives, n.d., Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

158 Linda Gordon to Sarah Elbert et al., 1 Dec. 1978, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

159 Eugene Genovese to Alice Kessler-Harris, 27 Dec. 1978, Folder 13, Box 1, MP Records.

160 Letter does not include recipient. Eugene Genovese, n.d., Folder 7, Box 1, MP Records.

161 Eugene D. Genovese, “The Nat Turner Case,” New York Review of Books, 12 Sept. 1968, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/11/07/an-exchange-on-nat-turner.

162 Genovese, Eugene D., “Editorial Statement,” Marxist Perspectives 2/4 (1979), 56Google Scholar.

163 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, “The Personal Is Not Political Enough,” Marxist Perspectives 2/4 (1979), 94–113, at 113Google Scholar.

164 David Brion Davis to Warren Susman, 25 May 1978, Folder 24, Box 16, Susman Papers; Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 6 March 1980, Folder 241, Box 21, Woodward Papers.

165 Eugene L. Meyer, “U. of Maryland Rejects Marxist for History Post,” Washington Post, 12 June 1980, 1.

166 Warren Susman to Harold Woodman, 4 Dec. 1978, Folder 5, Box 16; Eugene Genovese to Mark Naison, 3 May 1976, Folder 30, Box 17, Susman Papers.

167 Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 18 Jan. 1980, Folder 241, Box 21, Woodward Papers.

168 Jack Womack to Charles Merrill, 1 Oct. 1978, Folder 17, Box 1; Cambridge University Press, “Marxist Perspectives,” 4 Aug. 1980, Folder 7, Box 1, MP Records.

169 Eric Foner to Victor Rabinowitz, 25 Feb. 1981, Folder 6, Box 1; Michael Greenberg to Eric Foner, 10 Oct. 1980, Folder 7, Box 1, MP Records.

170 Foner to Genovese and Fox-Genovese, 3 Sept. 1980.

171 Foner to Rabinowitz, 25 Feb. 1981.

172 Greenberg to Foner, 10 Oct. 1980; Michael Greenberg to Eric Foner, 9 Feb. 1981, Folder 7, Box 1, MP Records.

173 Greenberg to Foner, 9 Feb. 1981; Michael Greenberg to Eric Foner, 9 Dec. 1980, Folder 6, Box 1, MP Records.

174 Sean Wilentz argues that Fox-Genovese “probably did more for the conservative women's movement than anyone” because her voice came from “inside the academy” and “updated” their ideas. See “Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: Unorthodox Scholar,” Atlanta Constitution, 4 Jan. 2007, at www.legacy.com/obituaries/atlanta/obituary.aspx?n=elizabeth-fox-genovese&pid=85809329. For Genovese's own comments see Genovese, Eugene D., “Eugene D. Genovese and History: An Interview,” in Paquette, Robert Louis and Ferleger, Louis A., eds., Slavery, Secession, and Southern History (Charlottesville, 2000), 197210Google Scholar.

175 Eugene D. Genovese, “The Question,” Dissent, Summer 1994, 375. Also see Eric Foner, “Response,” Dissent, Summer 1994, at www.dissentmagazine.org/article/response-eric-foner.

176 On Genovese's conservatism see Fields, Barbara, “Eugene D. Genovese,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 98/4 (2014), 345–9Google Scholar.

177 Foner to Genovese, 11 May 1977.

178 Eugene Genovese to C. Vann Woodward, 19 March 1998, Folder 241, Box 21, Woodward Papers.

179 Tyrrell, The Absent Marx, 125.

180 Eley, A Crooked Line, 10.

181 Genovese, Eugene D., “Editorial Note,” Marxist Perspectives 3/1 (1980), 5–7, at 5Google Scholar.

182 Genovese, “Reflections on the 1960s,” 60.