Apollo Movie Guide's Review of Arguing the World

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Arguing the World

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Readers' Rating: 85/100

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Arguing the World

It is a truism that people become more conservative as they grow older. Whether it's because of wisdom or self-interest, I'm not sure. I tend to think the latter, but that may because I'm resisting the natural urge to the right, due largely, I'm guessing, to my lack of material wealth. That's why I respect older people of means who remain true to their youthful ideals of helping those less fortunate rather than leaving them to rely solely on the dictates of the marketplace.

Arguing the World is a documentary film about four New York intellectuals who came from the same place but wound up in various spots across the political spectrum. All four came from poor, working class Jewish families and all attended City College of New York in the 1930s. This was a university with free tuition, an undistinguished faculty, but a great atmosphere of intellectuality - if not in the classroom, then in the ghettoised lunchroom alcoves where the students would gather to argue the world. Our four protagonists were in Alcove 1, a group of Trotskyists diametrically opposed to the Stalinists in Alcove 2.

The film, through interviews with the four (Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol), their friends and critics, and archival footage and still photography, takes us on their intellectual journeys. We go from the 1930s to the '90s through such events as the 1932 U.S. presidential election, the 1936 Moscow trials of Trotsky, the forming of the Stalin's Popular Front, the McCarthy investigations of the '50s, the new young radicals of the '60s, the Vietnam war, and the elections of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

The four started out as leftist radicals but, with the exception of Howe, moved gradually to the right as they aged. Kristol went on to become a key founder of the neo-conservative movement. Glazer, an influential sociologist, eschews labels but admits an affiliation with the world of liberal policy. Daniel Bell, also a sociologist, defines himself as a liberal in politics, a socialist in economics, and a conservative in culture. Howe, a literary critic, was founder of Democratic Socialists of America and was a democratic socialist right up to his death in 1993.

Each man is an engaging personality despite the dense subject matter. Still, this documentary is not easy viewing. You've got to pay attention, but like anything that requires work, it pays off.

Guy MacPherson

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