Lists of the best books of the year are an exercise in hubris. Even if I was to narrow things down to the relevant books for this site — most of the works published by independent left publishing houses like South End Press and AK, a sizable number of titles from academic publishers like Temple [...]
Looking back on our first year of blogging, we got some things right and some things wrong. Most notably, long before Occupy Wall Street exploded, we insisted on the prospect that the American left would revive itself. This didn’t seem particularly counterintuitive, but there were plenty of experts stating otherwise. We are also happy to [...]
Although labor unions and Occupy groups are beginning to work together, differences in their approaches and attitudes are creating tensions. Two months ago, we argued that Occupy movements were likely to trigger the next upsurge of working class strike activity. Since then, it has become easier to see some of the ways this is playing [...]
A recent panel discussing what is next for Occupy Wall Street was diverse in ethnicity and age of the panelists, but narrow in political perspective. The shared belief that legislative reforms would constitute victory for the movement was disappointing. Sponsored by the journals Jacobin and Dissent, the stated purpose of the panel was to reflect [...]
Beyond nostalgia for polyester leisure suits, disco and “Charlie’s Angels,” the ’70s are emerging as a subject of serious historical investigation. In paticular, a number of recent works have called attention to the troubles of the labor movement in that decade. Economic conditions worsened as the U.S. faced competition from European and Japanese industry and rising [...]
“The Barbarian Nurseries” is the second novel of Hector Tobar; he is author of “Translation Nation” and, according to his website, he is ”a novelist, a journalist, the son of Guatemalan immigrants and a proud native of the city of Los Angeles.” This tale of racial and class divisions within one Southern Californian household sounds promising. Publishers Weekly [...]
Tony Horowitz, author of numerous books including “Confederates in the Attic,” turns to a historical subject in his new book, “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.” The focus on an individual fighting for social change, rather than either the founding fathers or obscure individuals, is fairly unusual in mainstream [...]
In the aftermath of the rebellions of the sixties, efforts to produce enduring left structures proved frustrating. Reformist efforts tended to disappear into the bowels of the Democratic Party or similar parties elsewhere. Revolutionary groups quickly turned into sectarian cults. Numerous organizations and individuals continued to struggle, often around single issues, but the creation of [...]
Jennifer L. Pozner, author of “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV,” has a striking perspective on the much publicized divorce of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. In a piece for ”The Daily Beast,” she argues that it’s a good thing: “The disconnect between blissful on-air bride and off-screen divorcée offers viewers proof, [...]
A division exists within the leaderless communities at the heart of the Occupy protests. I would describe this as a split between Social Democratic Anarchists and Communist Anarchists. I use these two terms provocatively, knowing that most of those I refer to would not describe themselves as either. Neither the terms Social Democrat or Communist [...]
Union membership doesn’t increase much due to patient organizing work, as sociologist Dan Clawson explained in “The Next Upsurge : Labor and the New Social Movements”, published in 2003. Instead, it shoots up during upsurges of strike activity, and then levels off. According to Clawson, in the 1980s and ’90s, unions had slowly developed new [...]
Occupy Wall Street’s first “official” statement (the quotation marks are theirs) needs work. After about two paragraphs of generic boilerplate (“the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members”) we arrive at the key sentiment: “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, [...]
At first, I didn’t love Occupy Wall Street, the protest/encampment in New York City’s financial district, to be honest. When I went by in the afternoon on Sept. 17, the first day, it struck me as too counter-cultural, too white, too homogenous, too small and too unfocused. People demonstrating their support for libertarian presidential candidate Ron [...]
Reviewing historian Michael Kazin’s “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation” in The New York Times, Yale history professor Beverly Gage declares “the American left is dead.” She cites as evidence the fact that the Tea Party has been a more visible opposition force since the financial crisis than anything from the left, and [...]
The U.S. is in a deep economic crisis, with the job market looking more stagnant than ever. The notion that the U.S. can be at peace has seemingly become utopian. Vast numbers of citizens distrust their government, and the prospect of a collapse is widely discussed. So how are our most distinguished writers and publishing [...]
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