Howard Fast
From Philosopedia
Fast, Howard (11 November 1914 - 12 March 2003)
Fast, a novelist who wrote Citizen Tom Paine (1943) and Spartacus (1952), won the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953 but later returned the money he received. A member of the Communist Party, Fast served a prison term (1950) for refusing to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
In The Naked God (1957, he describes his political experiences. Asked about humanism in 1951 after his term in prison, Fast responded to Warren Allen Smith:
- I find myself somewhat bewildered by the various categories of humanism. It would seem to me that humanism is an expression of action rather than fancy thinking. The only kind of humanism I know is that kind which has a regard for the dignity and the lives of human beings. I don’t know what you would call it nor do I think it is important to give it a label. But I do know that in terms of such humanism, very few people are humanists. By no stretch of the imagination can any humanism I might conceive of fit into the political expression which has turned Korea into a graveyard and turned the Korean cities into piles of ashes and rubble. This may be the expression of what Mr. [Sidney] Hook likes to refer to as democracy as against his hatred for bolshevism. You see, I don’t even consider Mr. Hook a candidate for the school of humanity.
(Fast wrote many books, including novels, short stories, and an autobiography - The Naked God - in which his interest in Marxism and communism is described [[]]; also, see the entry for Sidney Hook.
