The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s (review)

Reviews 205 Freiré, who has been a major figure in radical education throughout North and South America. In the U.S. he is a central inspiration for Ira Shor, Henry Giroux and other theorists of left pedagogy. In Nicaragua, some of Freire's ideas were adapted to Nicaraguan conditions by the government-sponsored literacy crusade following the 1979 revolution. It is also well known that Freiré promotes the unity of theory and practice as a central concern in his writing and life; yet the peculiar way in which he does this may help explain why his influence in the United States does not result in the kind of political practice one normally expects from committed Marxists in advanced industrial societies. As Martin Carnoy observes about Freiré in his contribution on "Marxism and Education " to The Left Academy: "AU pedagogy, for him, is a poUtical and social issue, aU poUtics is pedagogy, and all educational theories are political theories. In Freire's method, teaching and learning are inseparable from the social ahd poUtical context of the educational process . Learning to read, for example, is a political act ..." (Volume Two, p. 84). One problem with this appraoch is that, ifvirtually every instance of teaching and learning represents "political action," then there seems to be no distina category of political practice that distinguished revolutionary socialist commitment (as described at the outset of this review) from other forms of poUtical action. The Politics of Education, of course, is derived from a poUtical and cultural experience far removed from that of advanced industrial capitalism. Yet even taken in its own terms, Freire's coUeaed writings seem to be more inspirational work than writings with clear practical impUcations. Like Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed (1973), it is briUiantly suggestive and highly partisan on behalf of social Uberation. Yet much here is highly repetitive of itself and earUer books. Also, it is organized around a series of vague concepts, making it appear at times that Freire's contribution is reducible to a set of admirable but abstraa maxims: one must respea the poor; illiteracy is not a disease but a social condition; speech and work are transformative acts; "critical consciousness" must be opposed to "banking education"; etc. In other words, what we have here are only the preUminary stimulae for a revolutionary practice; there is no clear route for effective transformation into an emancipatory practice in the U.S., especiaUy without the elaboration of a mode of implementation. In a favorable but not uncritical study of Freire's method, Henry Giroux aaually cites a New York Times report that Consolidated Edison was using Freire's methods "to teach 'skUls' to the uneducated so they might become 'employable and promotable' " (Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981], p. 140). The "missing link" in the three books — that of activist and collective implementation — is by no means an abstraa desideratum of the future. Throughout this century we have seen radical educators and scholars participate in the formation of unions of professionals, educators, jounalists.and teachers. We have also seen them work for the transformation of these and other unions into instruments of genuine social reform; for the construction of revolutionary poUtical organizations uniting workers and inteUectuals in the common task of preserving the legacy of the struggles of oppressed groups and elaborating programs for social transformation; and toward the development of publications and other cultural forms expressing the vision of these unions and organizations, etc. Since the 1930s traditional socialist poUtical organizations have justifiably come under considerable attack — for top-down bureaucratization and the stifling of inteUectual freedom, not to mention racist and sexist praaices. Unfortunately, the tendency of New Left academics in recent years has been more to junk this legacy entirely, without the semblance of an alternative , than to build upon what is viable in that legacy and create safeguards against the repetition of past errors. ALAN WALD The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline ofthe Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s by Alan WaId. Chapel Hill: University of North CaroUna Press, 1987. pp. xvi + 440. $12.95 (paper); $32.50 (cloth). 206 the minnesota review Alan Wald's The...