Max Forrester Eastman

(January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969)

“Max Eastman is a name unfamiliar to most people today. Despite having been a prolific writer and journalist, almost his entire body of work is out of print. In particular his mid to late career works are hardly referenced or mentioned in popular culture and media. I have a particular interest in seeing that change. I’d like to introduce to a new audience, and perhaps those already familiar with his legacy, a bit of my distant family history.”

~Lucio Saverio-Eastman

Max Eastman Quotes

Lenin’s Methods

“I still regarded Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship as an enemy, rather than a result, of the policies of Lenin. It took me another two years to arrive at the knowledge that Lenin’s methods—bolshevik Marxism—were to blame.” ~Max Eastman

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Front Organization

“It was Marx, not Lenin, who invented the technique of the “front organization,” the device of pretending to be a democrat in order to destroy democracy, the ruthless purging of dissident party members…”

~Max Eastman

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Dialectic Thinking?

“Not only is there no such thing as dialectic thinking, but there is no such superintellectual knowledge of the exact nature of the universe as that to which an alleged dialectic thinking pretends to give access.” ~Max Eastman

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“Max Eastman spent the first half of his life trying to fit himself into larger frameworks: Christianity (provided, somewhat unorthodoxly, by his mother); feminism (promoted even more unconventionally by his sister); and then socialism (advocated by his uncompromising first wife). When each ideology appeared to fit Max into prescribed patterns of institutional behavior— of the church, the party, or any other organization—he balked. Max spent the second half of his life looking for an ideological home while trying to defend himself against those who seemed to know exactly what he was thinking and where he belonged.”
 
From Max Eastman: A Life by Christoph Irmscher
Claude McKay with Max in 1923, both of whom abandoned their socialist beliefs and became highly critical of Marxism.