Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article uses the work of two New Masses editors, John Dos Passos, and Mike Gold, to examine the competing visions for the future of the then-new magazine, including the concepts of audience, contributors, and subject matter, within a framework of widespread anti-immigration sentiment in the United States and a large immigrant working class. This seemingly insular literary debate between early leaders of the magazine echoes in the culture-at-large, as Dos Passos' involvement in the Sacco-Vanzetti case reveals. Dos Passos' rhetoric works to assimilate recent immigrants to the prevailing discourse of American exceptionalism, while Gold's vision seeks to "internationalize" recent immigrants and the United States working class in general as part of a movement that breaks down national borders and national narratives. As editors and contributors to a magazine dedicated, rather loosely, to some representation of the working masses and analysis of labor issues, both Gold and Dos Passos also debate the role of the creative artist in the emerging cultures of labor unrest and proletarian revolution. I argue that Dos Passos' stance leads to an understanding of the artist as distanced observer, a position that leads to disconnection between the artist and the laboring masses, while Mike Gold's position involves artists as active participants, drawn – where possible – from the laboring masses themselves.
Repository Citation
Hancuff, Rich. "John Dos Passos, Mike Gold, and the Birth of the New Masses." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–13. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol8/iss1/6