Gold’s January 1929 column “Go Left, Young Writers” began the “ proletarian literature” movement, one spurred by the emergence of writers with true working-class credentials. When Gold and Freeman gained full control by 1928 the “ Stalinist/ Trotskyist” division began in earnest. There was, however, eventual transformation: the editorial shift from a magazine of the radical left, with its numerous competing points of view, gave way to a bastion of Marxist conformity. Hoffman describes “among the fifty-six writers and artists connected in some way with the early issues of the New Masses, Freeman reports, only two were members of the Communist Party, and less than a dozen were fellow travelers”. The magazine adopted a loosely leftist position at its onset, and Frederick J. One of the foremost periodicals of this renaissance was New Masses. Infused with an oppositional mentality, this cultural front was a rich period in American history and is what Michael Denning calls a “Second American Renaissance” because it permanently transformed American modernism and mass culture. The vast production of left-wing popular art of the 1930s and 1940s was an attempt to create a radical culture in conflict with mass culture. Lewis, Jack Conroy, Grace Lumpkin, Jan Matulka, Ruth McKenney, Maxwell Bodenheim, Meridel LeSueur, Josephine Herbst, Jacob Burck, Tillie Olsen, Stanley Burnshaw, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, Crockett Johnson, Wanda Gág, Albert Halper, Hyman Warsager, and Aaron Copland. More importantly, it also circulated works by avowedly leftist, even “ proletarian” (working-class) artists: Kenneth Fearing, H.H. Many contributors are now considered distinguished, even canonical authors/writers, artists, and musical composers: William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O'Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, as well as Joseph Freeman, Granville Hicks (starting in 1934), Walt Carmon, and James Rorty. The editorial staff of New Masses included The Masses alumni Hugo Gellert, John F. The name of the new magazine was a tip of the hat to The Masses (1911–1917), forerunner of both publications. The magazine was established to fill a void caused by the gradual transition of The Workers Monthly (successor to The Liberator) into a more theoretically-oriented publication. New Masses was launched in New York City in 1926 as part of the Workers (Communist) Party of America's publishing stable, produced by a communist leadership but making use of the work of an array of independent writers and artists. The magazine has been called “the principal organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onwards." History Early years With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929 America became more receptive to ideas from the political Left and New Masses became highly influential in intellectual circles. New Masses was later merged into Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963). New Masses (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. Michael Gold, Walt Carmon, Whittaker Chambers, Joseph Freeman, Granville Hicks New Masses cover by Hugo Gellert, May 1926
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