A MORAL TEMPER: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald
Dwight MacDonald, . . Ivan R. Dee, $35 (481pp) ISBN 978-1-56663-393-2
"Flattered you think my political philosophy worth a thesis—and hopeful you will be able to define it more clearly than I ever have!" wrote critic and philosopher Dwight Macdonald to a graduate student in the 1950s. He then delivered a cogent précis of his political philosophy—drawing on anarchists such as Kropotkin, rejecting both British and Russian collectivism and decrying war—that negates the last part of his statement and stunningly exhibits his intelligence, wit and moral giantism. Born in 1906, Macdonald attended Exeter and Yale, and became by turns a Marxist, a Trotskyist, a pacifist, an anarchist, a prominent anti-Stalinist and a leading opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Along the way he edited the
Reviewed on: 09/10/2001
Genre: Nonfiction