The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take sides either with Capitalism or Communism. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck famously attempted to respond to this ideological choice and would differ in their political leanings: Sartre was an outspoken critic of American capitalist hegemony, whereas Steinbeck – although by no means blind to the shortcomings of Western democracy – was ultimately an avid opponent of the Communist bloc. They nonetheless shared a dedication to engaging with the social issues of their time, becoming arguably the pre-eminent proletarian writers of the period and eventual Nobel Prize winners. Sartre believed Steinbeck to be ‘the most rebellious, perhaps’ of American writers, whilst Steinbeck so admired the French intellectual scene typified by Sartre that he spent nearly a year in Paris writing for Le Figaro.

As such, both writers tellingly found themselves caught in the same fundamental paradox. Their pivotal promotion of individual freedom nudged them towards both ends of the political spectrum respectively; yet their emphasis on the changeability of human existence constantly destabilised any position they approached. ‘Ce va-et-vient’ of existence, what Steinbeck calls ‘the vast confusion’ of the human condition, confronts both writers with the prerogative of acting first and foremost in the interests of human liberty rather than in those of a political party – the particular or personal takes precedence over the general and impersonal. As such, their interventions often appear to diverge rather than converge. The war correspondent who chastises the Vietnam peace protesters in 1964 seems a far cry from the Steinbeck who proclaims a decade earlier that ‘I am a revolutionary’; whilst the travelling companion of the Communist Party in the early 1950s who defends Stalinism bears little resemblance to the Sartre who lectures Paris on the importance of endeavour ‘au nom de la liberté’

In this paper I will clarify both writers’ reactions to the problems of post-war engagement by making a productive return to their writing. In their novels Les Chemins de la Liberté (1945-49) and East of Eden (1952), as well as in their journals, we can observe how their mutual emphasis on man’s indeterminism as an autonomous subject inevitably dissolves the foundation of any normative political ethos. Therein lies the ‘anguished yet imperative nature of moral choice’ that Richard E. Hart has marked as the common ground between Steinbeck’s humanism and Sartre’s existentialism. In what is a crucial gesture for both, man’s freedom resists the drive for totalisation and systemisation implied in the strict allegiances of the Cold War political terrain. The complications and alternations both encounter when seeking to put the libertarian ideal of individuality into political practice promise to amplify discourse on dilemmas of the Left’s direction post-1945.