American Gandhi : A. J. Muste and the history of radicalism in the twentieth century / / Leilah Danielson

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910786890403321
• Autore: Danielson Leilah
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , 2014; ©2014
• ISBN: 0-8122-9177-8; 0-8122-9044-5
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (471 p.)
• Collana: Politics and Culture in Modern America
• Disciplina: 320.53092
• Soggetti: Pacifists - United States; Quakers - United States; Radicalism - United States - History - 20th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Includes index.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Calvinism, Class, and the Making of a Modern Radical -- Chapter 2. Spirituality and Modernity -- Chapter 3. Pragmatism and ‘‘Transcendent Vision’’ -- Chapter 4. Muste, Workers’ Education, and Labor’s Culture War in the 1920's -- Chapter 5. Labor Action -- Chapter 6. Americanizing Marx and Lenin -- Chapter 7. To the Left -- Chapter 8. Muste and the Origins of Nonviolence in the United States -- Chapter 9. Conscience Against the Wartime State and the Bomb -- Chapter 10. Speaking Truth to Power -- Chapter 11. Muste and the Search for a ‘‘Third Way’’ -- Chapter 12. The ‘‘American Gandhi’’ and Vietnam -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments
• Sommario/riassunto: When Abraham Johannes Muste died in 1967, newspapers throughout the world referred to him as the "American Gandhi." Best known for his role in the labor movement of the 1930's and his leadership of the peace movement in the postwar era, Muste was one of the most charismatic figures of the American left in his time. Had he written the story of his life, it would also have been the story of social and political struggles in the United States during the twentieth century. In American Gandhi, Leilah Danielson establishes Muste's distinctive activism as the ; work of a prophet and a pragmatist. Muste warned that the revolutionary dogmatism of the Communist Party would prove a dead end, understood the moral significance of racial equality, argued early in the Cold War that American pacifists should not pick a side, and presaged the spiritual alienation of the New Left from the liberal establishment. At the same time, Muste was committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community. His open, pragmatic approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought and practice in the twentieth century, including the adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence for American concerns and conditions. A biography of Muste's evolving political and religious views, American Gandhi also charts the rise and fall of American progressivism over the course of the twentieth century and offers the possibility of its renewal in the twenty-first.