Analyzes the attitudes of intellectuals, including Susan Sontag, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Mary McCarthy toward political systems and social conditions in communist countries

Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, 1928-1978

Travel

Hollander, Paul

Caribbean

Harpercollins

Soviet and American Society: A Comparison

Oxford University Press

Why is it that while millions of people all over the world dream about living in the United States, many American intellectuals believe that this is a uniquely deformed and unjust society? Why do college students today have greater pride in their country than many of their teachers? How did the radical beliefs of the '60s survive and become, for many Americans, the new conventional wisdom? How is it possible that while communist systems are collapsing and seek a market economy, critics in the United States remain convinced of the evils of capitalism? Why are there more Marxists on any handful of American campuses than all over Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union? How can we explain that for important opinion makers at home and abroad, the United States has become a symbol of waste, greed, corruption, social injustice, and arrogance? While anti-Americanism abroad has been often noted and sometimes lamented, until now it has not been closely examined nor compared to domestic social criticism. Paul Hollander's volume is the first systematic study of this phenomenon both in its domestic and foreign aspects. Making use of a vast amount of information (ranging from surveys, mass media, popular culture, novels, the literature of social criticism, and social scientific studies), Hollander separates the justified critiques of the United States from anti-Americanism, which he defines as a biased predisposition against American society, culture, or U.S. foreign policy, an attitude he compares to other hostile predispositions such as sexism, racism, or anti-Semitism. Domestic anti-Americanism is found mostly among academic and literary intellectuals, the left-leaning clergy, and people associated with the mass media--more generally among those who came of age in the 1960s. Despite more than a decade of Republican presidents, the author argues that many taken-for-granted beliefs of our times can be traced back to the adversarial spirit of the '60s. What once was daring social criticism has become the new orthodoxy, or what has come to be known as "politically correct behavior." The latter also finds expression in the increasingly widespread "multicultural" or "cultural diversity" studies, which combine hostility toward American society with aversion toward Western culture as a whole. Also symptomatic of these attitudes was the love affair of the American left with Marxist-Leninist Nicaragua reminiscent of the political pilgrimages of the past which the author has also written about in his widely praised Political Pilgrims. Born in Hungary and educated in Hungary, England, and the United States, the author has written extensively about the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the United States. In this study he seeks to balance a critical analysis of anti-Americanism with the recognition that the modernity the U.S. spreads and symbolizes can sometimes be viewed with justified apprehension. Anti-Americanism is a lively and provocative volume which will elicit some impassioned responses, much discussion, and controversy.

Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990

History

Americas

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Univ of Chicago Pr

In this unique analysis of the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, sociologist Paul Hollander focuses on the human aspects of the country`s demise. Drawing on autobiographical writings and interviews with members of the political elite, the author shows how leaders who experienced a loss of faith in their ideals and an eroding sense of legitimacy fatally undermined the political system they had once upheld.

Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism

Russia

Yale University Press

In The Only Superpower: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism, Paul Hollander examines anti-Americanism (including the relationship between the foreign and domestic varieties), American culture (especially mass culture), the lingering political and cultural influences of the 1960s, and the controversial relationship between the realms of the personal and the political. He also revisits the part played by hatred, and especially the scapegoating impulse, in social and political conflicts. The essays range widely, from Michael Moore's political celebrity, the American love for SUVs, and getting old in America to Islamic fanaticism and the aftermath of the fall of Eastern European communist systems.

The Only Super Power: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism

Lexington Books

The Only Superpower: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism

Discontents

What ails people at the present time in Western and especially American society is an inexhaustible subject. Discussion of these discontents in the United States in the last decade of the twentieth century leads to an obvious question: How much and what kind of discontents are possible in a society that has experienced over a decade of economic growth, close to full employment, hardly any inflation, falling crime rates, declining teenage pregnancies, and other good things? Is there anything to worry about in a country that has become the undisputed superpower of the world and no longer faces another hostile superpower such as the Soviet Union used to be? Paul Hollander wrestles with these and other questions in seeking to understand conditions and developments within American culture and society in the context of their relationship to political systems, movements and ideas critical of the United States and Western values. Hollander examines disparate phenomena, such as the O.J. Simpson case, the banning of West Side Story in Amherst, Massachusetts, the popularity and exposÚ of Rigoberta Menchu, and the appeal of sports utility vehicles, which shed light on the major themes of the volume. Topics include conflicts among American intellectuals (including disputes over the Kosovo intervention), the impact of postmodernism on higher education, the persisting appeal of victimhood in American society, the flaws of American sociology, academic specialists' failure to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the new anti-Americanism in postcommunist societies. Among topics of historical interest are a survey of Western judgments and misjudgments of the communist systems; examination of the relative neglect of political violence in communist states, and analysis of officially enforced, secular-religious cult of communist rulers. Many of these writings are linked to the author's longstanding interest in why people accept or reject particular political systems and in the contradictory human needs and desires which condition and limit the pursuit of social and political ends. Sociologists, political scientists, and the general reader will find this book of great interest.

Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist

Routledge

Why have noted Western intellectualsófrom George Bernard Shaw to Jean-Paul Sartre to Susan Sontagóembraced the vision of various "revolutionary" societies, often in their most repressive historical phase, while downgrading (and yet enjoying) the benefits of Western liberal pluralistic political cultures? How have the delusions and dreams of many Western observers of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other socialist states contributed to a moral and political double standard? Paul Hollander explores these crucial questions in a remarkable study of travel reports on socialist countries written by Western visitors. Observing that political pilgrims represent a tradition of seeking alternatives to flawed social arrangements at home, Hollander also suggests that underlying these visits is a quest for meaning, purpose, and sense of community that intellectuals feel increasingly deprived of in secular and individualistic societies in the West. Political Pilgrims, listed among "The Notable Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review, is a provocative study of the relationship between political commitment, perception, and moral sensibility. Originally published by Oxford University Press in 1981.

Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba

University Press of America

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