Dwight Macdonald - Politics

Politics

Macdonald broke with Trotsky, by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism. He was opposed to totalitarianism, opposed both to fascism and to communism, whose defeat he viewed as necessary. He denounced Stalin's Soviet Union for first urging the Poles to rebel in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and then halting the Red Army outside of the borders of Warsaw as the German Army crushed the Poles, liquidating its leadership.

At the same time, he was critical of the methods that democratically elected governments were using to oppose totalitarianism. During World War II he complained of increasing fatigue and depression as he observed the progress of the war, particularly the commonplace bombing of civilians and whole cities. The fire bombing of Dresden and the dehumanization and mistreatment of German civilians horrified him. His political beliefs moved towards pacifism and individualist anarchism towards the end of World War II.

However, in 1952, Macdonald said in a debate with Norman Mailer that, if forced to choose, he "chose the west" and was opposed to Stalinism and Soviet communism as the greatest threats to civilization. He repeated this position in a revised version (published in 1953) of a 1946 essay, "The Root is Man." However, he later repudiated this sort of either/or position. In 1955 he became associate editor (for one year) of the magazine Encounter sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and participated in conferences sponsored by the Congress.