the novel, Midcentury, published Induring the early years of John F. Kennedy's presidency, Dos Passos is as explicit in his critique of the political left as he had been in his incisive dissection of the counterproductive effects of capitalist greed on the American economy during the Roosevelt administration. For this reason, many critics who have leftist leanings have regarded Dos Passos as a betrayer of ideological causes, and have therefore questioned his value as a cultural commentator.

Although Midcentury is a chronicle of the tempestuous years after the end of the Second World War, the book addresses the American labor movement's corruption of its promise. In all his technical innovations, the author portrays organized labor as a movement that has betrayed the very principles it was organized to defend. Labor, Dos Passos implies, has become a force of equal power with management; more importantly, the driving...