Irving Howe

Irving Howe (June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary critic, social commentator, editor, and democratic socialist. Born to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York City, he graduated from City College in 1940 and served in World War II before pursuing a career in academia and journalism.

Howe co-founded the quarterly magazine Dissent in 1954 with Lewis Coser, serving as its editor for nearly four decades and using it as a platform for anti-Stalinist socialist thought that emphasized democratic values and opposition to totalitarianism on both the left and right. His early involvement in Trotskyist circles at City College shaped his lifelong commitment to socialism as a critique of capitalism while rejecting authoritarian communism, as evidenced in works like Socialism and America (1977). He taught literature at institutions including Brandeis University, Stanford University, and Hunter College, where he retired as Distinguished Professor in 1986.

Irving Howe was born Irving Horenstein on June 11, 1920, in New York City to David Horenstein and Nettie Goldman, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who anglicized their surname to Howe upon arrival. The family resided in the East Bronx, a densely packed working-class enclave of recent Jewish arrivals from regions like Bukovina and Bessarabia, where poverty and communal solidarity defined daily life.

Howe's father initially operated a modest grocery store in the neighborhood, catering to the immigrant community, but the business collapsed amid the economic collapse of the Great Depression around 1930, when Howe was ten years old. Following the failure, David Howe took up work as a door-to-door salesman, while the family navigated severe financial hardship typical of the era's urban Jewish proletariat, including reliance on extended kin networks for survival. This instability instilled an early awareness of economic vulnerability, reinforced by the pervasive influence of garment industry labor disputes in the surrounding Bronx tenements.

The Howe household was steeped in Yiddish language and cultural traditions, with everyday conversations and communal gatherings reflecting the transplanted customs of Eastern European shtetl life amid America's industrial grind. Street scenes of picket lines, union organizing among Jewish needle trades workers, and shared tales of old-world pogroms fostered a nascent sense of class antagonism in young Howe, distinct from later ideological commitments. Parents like Nettie and David, despite their own limited formal schooling, prioritized their son's intellectual development as a bulwark against recurrent destitution, urging diligence in a milieu where manual labor loomed as the default fate.