Henry F. Mins helped build Science & Society, an American journal of Marxist thought. Two early reviews of Gramsci appeared there under the name Giulio Muratore. Derek Boothman, who studied these reviews, says Mins used that name. The writer asked how Gramsci could renew Marxism and keep its basic claims. This account follows the journal's founding and the reviews through 1951.[1][2][3][4]
Early life and intellectual formation
Mins was born in Brooklyn on April 11, 1903. He attended Erasmus Hall and Townsend Harris Hall high schools. He earned a bachelor's degree from City College in 1922 and a master's from Columbia in 1925. In 1934, he submitted a study of materialism for a Columbia doctorate in philosophy. These details come from his own account of his education. His fellow editor David Goldway later recorded the doctorate and noted his study of math.[6][5]
Mins's own work gives that background more shape. In 1929, he reviewed books about the Greek thinkers Democritus and Epicurus. They had tried to explain nature through atoms and empty space. Mins praised the careful study of their texts. But he warned against reading modern science into ancient ideas. A sound account needed evidence for each step it claimed in the growth of thought.[7]
He also challenged a claim about morals. Cyril Bailey had treated Democritus's materialism as hard to square with his high moral aims. Mins objected to the claim that a view based on nature could not also explain right and wrong. He was already examining how accounts of the physical world related to human values.[7]
His 1934 study was called Materialism, the Scientific Bias [5]. By February 1935, the Journal of Philosophy was selling the book.[5][8] Its notice described a study of thinkers from Democritus to Santayana. The book treated materialism as a set of starting rules shared with science. In that account, those rules guided inquiry; they were not a result that science had already proved. The notice shows how the publisher presented his argument.[8]
By the journal's founding in 1936, Mins was taking part in a shared Marxist project. He later recalled scholars who wanted a place for serious debate across fields. They wanted to reach people beyond those who already agreed with them. His account explains an editorial aim rather than the date he first became a Marxist.[1]
Ideas and political aims
The 1949 review praised Gramsci 's range and his close attention to Italian culture. It explained why criticism required more than calling an idea foolish. A critic had to understand the argument on its own terms and answer its strongest claims. Gramsci's work on Croce offered the reviewer an example of that method.[2]
But the reviewer thought Gramsci's criticism of Bukharin went too far. He agreed that Bukharin's account could be rigid and mechanical. He objected when Gramsci appeared to cast doubt on materialism itself. Materialism, in this debate, meant that the world exists apart from our thought about it. The reviewer defended that claim as basic to Marxism.[2]
The 1951 review gave more space to the people who shaped thought and led groups. It read Gramsci as trying to explain how classes gained the power to lead. Ideas helped them do so. Teachers, writers, Church leaders and party workers could help give a class a shared view of its role.[3]
The reviewer also saw value for readers beyond Italy. Gramsci wrote about work in modern factories and the way it shaped people's lives. Such questions mattered elsewhere too. The writer hoped someone would put at least some of the work into English so more people could study it.[3]
Career and activities
In his later recollection, Mins described his role as the first business manager of Science & Society. At first, he handled that work from an alcove in his apartment. His own bank account served the journal. The editors supplied unpaid labor and sometimes money from their salaries.[1]
The work soon required a rented New York office and paid clerical help. Mins described the daily tasks behind a scholarly journal: securing subscriptions, finding articles, paying printers and sending out issues. These actions helped create a lasting place where Marxist readers could meet and debate new work.[1]
The reviews appeared in 1949 and 1951. Both were signed Giulio Muratore, Mexico City. Boothman later linked this name to Mins. The old pages let readers check what their writer said.[2][3][4]
Major works
His 1929 review joined close reading of Greek philosophy with questions about science and morals. The later notice for Materialism, the Scientific Bias shows him pursuing a wider account of materialism. These texts place his work on Gramsci within an older interest in how thinkers explain nature and human life.[7][8]
The 1949 review covered Gramsci's prison letters and his work on Marxism and Croce. The writer praised the books but challenged some of their claims. He thought Marxists should study Gramsci closely and should also question him.[2]
The 1951 review covered books on the people who shaped thought, the history of Italy, Machiavelli and politics. It linked Gramsci's study to his effort to explain why fascism had won. It called for English versions of his work so that more people could read it.[3]
Mins's later essay, “Science & Society: The Early Days,” supplies his account of how the journal began. Published in 1981, it is a memory of the earlier work. Its judgments about the journal's success belong to a participant looking back.[1]
Influence and criticism
These reviews told readers of an American Marxist journal about books still in Italian. They asked how culture, ideas and class power worked together. Readers could meet those questions before the English books came out in 1957.[2][3][4]
Their value to the American reception story lies in that documented act of reading and debate. The 1951 request for a translation also shows what this reader thought was needed next.[3]