Encyclo of American Left

Book Overview

This is the throughly revised, updated and expanded edition of a groundbreaking reference source--the most comprehensive guide available to the history of radical and progressive movements in America.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252062507
• ISBN13: 9780252062506
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 928 Pages
• Weight: 3.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 7.2" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Building the Left today

This book is indispensable for any activist today. It is very helpful in the sense of going through the history of different figures and dynamics of the labor movement, women's struggle, gay rights struggle and the civil rights movement while also going into detail about their different publications and the overall collapse of the left. One of the most important tasks for activists today is the rebuilding of a weak left in this country which can actually challenge the political establishment and understand what are going to be the strategy and tactics that lead it forward. I would have to disagree with the reviewer above in two things. The RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) and the ISO (International Socialist Organization) are two fundamentally different political organizations. While the RCP was born directly out of the mass radicalization of the 60's in the New Left, which had Maoist politics at its core, the ISO is a genuine Marxist organization that sees the importance of the rebuilding of struggle from below through active work in the movements around us and fighting for the way to lead it forward. With that said I don't think the ISO is sectarian considering that has been one of the biggest weaknesses that has plagued the American Left, but more importantly, because we see the need for debating and discussing with allies and non allies on the left, what it is going to take to build stronger movements (immigrant rights, anti-war) that can actually lead to gains and end in a victory for the whole left.

An important tool that belongs in your shop. Yet....

The new Oxford edition is a big improvement on the first. At least the two major practicing bodies of Marxist-Leninist thought today (ISO & RCP) are at least mentioned by name this time! The context is informative and the critical edge is penetrating. Those of us who have marched with those groups will appreciate a little uninfatuated, academic, outside perspective. The RCP's fading post 70's glory is mercilessly skewered, and the ISO's sectarian hair-splitting is given necessary historical background. But there's something missing from the analysis. Any practicing worker or Marxist/activist will want to know what is GOOD about the parties that survive today. Shouldn't there be some forward thinking? We are still out here, organizing against police brutality, fighting the right-wing backlash, advocating workers' power, fighting for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. There is a vanguard of a real democracy we see only glimmers of in the history of the Left.