Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883-March 25, 1969) was a leftist American writer.
He was born in Canandaigua, New York; both his parents were members of the clergy. Eastman attended Williams College in 1905, two years later moving to Columbia University to work toward a Ph.D. in philosophy. Settling in Greenwich Village with his sister, Crystal Eastman, he became involved in political matters, helping to found the Men's League for Women's Suffrage in 1910. While at Columbia he was an assistant in the philosophy department as well as a lecturer with the psychology department. After completing the requirements for his degree however he refused to accept it, leaving in 1911.
Eastman had become a key figure in the left-leaning Greenwich Village community, and combined this with his academic experience to explore varying interests including literature, psychology and social reform. He published Enjoyment of Poetry, an examination of literary metaphor from a psychological point of view, in 1913, the same year becoming and editor for The Masses, a magazine combining socialist philosophy with the arts.
By 1918 The Masses was forced to close under the Espionage Act passed by Congress the preceding year, due to its frequent explicit denunciations of U.S. participation in World War I. Eastman subsequently stood trial twice under provisions of the Sedition Act, but was acquitted both times. In 1919 he and his sister Crystal founded a similar publication titled The Liberator; this however was taken over by the CPUSA in 1924, and Eastman quit working there.
Eastman embarked in 1923 on a fact-finding tour of the Soviet Union in order to get a feel for how Marxism worked in practice. He stayed for over a year, and during that time observed the power struggles and fanaticism which were to culminate in Joseph Stalin's dictatorship. Upon returning to the United States he wrote several essays, beginning with Since Lenin Died in 1925, which were highly critical of the Soviet system. These treatises were unpopular with American leftists of the time, many of whom were still infatuated with the idea of the U.S.S.R. being a utopian socialist ideal. In later years, however, Eastman's writings on the subject would be cited by those on both the left and right as sober and realistic portrayals of the Soviet system.
Although Eastman's view of the Soviet Union in particular was drastically altered by his experiences there and by subsequent study, his commitment to left-wing political ideas continued unabated. While in the Soviet Union Eastman began a friendship with Leon Trotsky which would endure through the latter's exile to Mexico; Eastman translated several of Trotsky's works into English during this time.
During the 1930s Eastman continued publishing critique of contemporary literature, publishing several controversial works in which he criticized mainstream novelists, whom he claimed belonged to "the cult of unintelligibility." This work began in 1931 with the publication of The Literary Mind and continued through 1936's Enjoyment of Laughter, in which is also criticizes some elements of Freudian theory. Eastman was also an active traveling lecturer on various literary and social topics throughout the 1930s and '40s.
By 1941 Eastman had largely abandoned his former communist and socialist beliefs. He was hired that year as a roving editor for Reader's Digest magazine and remained in the job for the remainder of his life, writing articles critical of socialism and communism, and actively supporting McCarthyism. In his later years he produced a number of autobiographical works, culminating with 1965's Love and Revolution. He died at his summer home in Bridgetown, Barbados at the age of 86.
Selected works by Max Eastman
- Enjoyment of Poetry, 1913
- Child of the Amazons, 1913
- Journalism Versus Art, 1916
- Color of Life, 1918
- The Sense of Humor, 1921
- Since Lenin Died, 1925
- Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution, 1926
- The Literary Mind: Its Place in an Age of Science, 1931
- Artists in Uniform, 1934
- Art and the Life of Action, 1934
- Stalin's Russia and the Crisis in Socialism, 1939
- Enjoyment of Laughter, 1936
- Marxism: Is It a Science?, 1940
- Heroes I Have Known, 1942
- Enjoyment of Living, 1948
- Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, 1955
- Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends, 1959
- Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch, 1965
- Seven Kinds of Goodness, 1967