Max Eastman

Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society; a poet, and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with liberal and radical circles in Greenwich Village. He supported socialism and became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance, and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. For several years, he edited The Masses. With his sister Crystal Eastman, in 1917 he co-founded The Liberator, a radical magazine of politics and the arts.

In later life, however, Eastman changed his views, becoming highly critical of socialism and communism after his experiences during a nearly two-year stay in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, as well as later studies. He was influenced by the deadly rivalry between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, in which Trotsky was ultimately assassinated, as well as the mass killings committed during Stalin's Great Purge. Eastman became an advocate of free-market economics and anti-communism, while remaining an atheist. In 1955, he published Reflections on the Failure of Socialism. He published more frequently in National Review and other conservative journals in later life, but he always remained independent in his thinking; for instance, he publicly opposed United States involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, earlier than most.

Eastman was born in 1883 in Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York, the fourth of four children. His older brother died the following year at age seven. His father Samuel Elijah Eastman was a minister in the Congregational Church, and in 1889 his mother Annis Bertha Ford joined him, one of the first women in the United States to be ordained in a Protestant church. They served together as pastors at the church of Thomas K. Beecher near Elmira, New York. This area was part of the "burned-over district," which earlier in the 19th century had generated much religious excitement, resulting in the founding of the Shakers and the Mormon movement. In addition, religion inspired such progressive social causes as abolitionism and support for the Underground Railroad. Through his parents, Max became acquainted in his youth with their friend, the noted author Samuel Clemens, better known as "Mark Twain".

...
Wikipedia