I have been on a project to discover articles on Hoffer online from various intellectuals, and sometimes their take on him is illuminating. At other times, they irritate me.
Below, I am going to write out and quickly, briefly repudiate a couple of putdowns on Hoffer which I came across, but I did not write down the source to credit the characterizations—or mischaracterizations as it seems to be—but these characterizations are not mine.
Some Leftist implied that Hoffer was a conservative who only had time to write as a laborer since his affluence and leisure time were guaranteed by a powerful, leftist union. There is some truth to this criticism, but Hoffer was no hypocrite that took full advantage of what Harry Bridges provided, all the time downgrading Communists and Leftists.
Hoffer was no hypocrite. He did his work; he was pro-union; he went to every union meeting, and he tried to sign up to fight in World War II for his adopted country. There have always been trade unionists—I am one of them—who were not purists, but that does not make us hypocrites, users, Management snitches, etc. I have been and currently am a union steward, but I am pro-individualism, pro-moderation, pro-capitalism (not monopolistic capitalism or corporate entities in bed with government agencies), but we need profits and bosses, and we need to fight then when we have to and cooperate with them in honorable compromise if it is honorable and can be arranged.
If this makes Hoffer (who likely had moderate union views similar to mine) and me traitors and hypocrites to labor unionists who are hardcore Marxist-Leninists, I will be damned if I will help them set up Soviet-style Communist totalitarianism here, as some kind of workers’ paradise.
Some of the intellectuals who likely never worked a day in their lives, let alone with their hands, sneered at Hoffer as The Right’s Working-class philosopher. He was conservative and liked capitalism and was an egoist moralist, but he also was for the masses running things, and for the masses to be left alone to run their own lives, to make something of themselves, and to be happy. He never wished any trade unionist anything but good.
He was the Right’s, the Left’s and the Centrist’s working-class philosopher, a great souled laborer, a man for all seasons.
Another writer wrote that Hoffer was pessimistic about the future, and he may have been such; that is one subject I have not researched enough to give a sufficient response. There is always a chance that humans will survive and be happy 80 years from now, but there is never a guarantee of anything.
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