ABSTRACT
History is never a simple description of the past, and the story of James T. Farrell's role in the debate over the relationship between literature and politics during the 1930s is no exception. Farrell's evolution through the 1930s from a champion of the working class and contributor to various Communist Party publications to a champion of literary independence and harsh critic of Communist dogma is a window into this important and complicated intellectual moment. By the early 1940s those writers and intellectuals had fled rather than face the Stalinist assaults on the Marxist movement. The developing Cold War bolstered the anti-Stalinist Left and increased the general public's intolerance of Party leaders and activities. Left anti-communist intellectuals moved outside the narrow confines of elite journals to educate both the public and foreign policy makers about the real nature of Stalinism and the dangers of the American Party.
