Max Eastman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Max Eastman

American activist

Date of Birth: 04-Jan-1883

Place of Birth: Canandaigua, New York, United States

Date of Death: 25-Mar-1969

Profession: writer, poet, journalist, literary critic, essayist, opinion journalist, peace activist, suffragist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

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 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, he co-founded in 1917 The Liberator, a radical magazine of politics and the arts. While residing in the Soviet Union from the fall of 1922 to the summer of 1924, Eastman was influenced by the power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and the events leading to Stalin's eventual takeover.
As a witness to the Great Purge and the Soviet Union's political shift towards a totalitarian state, he became highly critical first of Stalinism and then of communism and socialism in general.
While remaining atheist, he became an advocate of free market economics and anti-communism.
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.