Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Friday 11 March 2011
Role-Modeling Socialist Behavior: The Life and Letters of Isaac Rab
For most of the twentieth century, Isaac Rab (1893 — 1986) was well known in the Boston area as a socialist soap-box orator, lecturer, and teacher. He was a founding member of the World Socialist Party of the United States and a central figure in its Boston Local for many years.
In this book, Karla Rab, who is the granddaughter of Isaac Rab, tells the story of his life and presents a large selection of his surviving correspondence as well as many photographs. She draws on her own reminiscences and on those of many others who knew her grandfather.
Isaac Rab was born into an immigrant socialist family on December 22, 1893. He devoted his whole life to the cause until his death on New Year’s Eve 1986. In 1916 he helped form the WSP from the left wing of the Michigan Socialist Party in Detroit. Later he settled in Boston, where he organized the Boston Local of the WSPUS in 1932. He also taught classes on Marxian economics for other organizations, including the Communist Party, the Proletarian Party, and various Trotskyist groupings.
Karla Rab’s book is, of course, about much more than her grandfather as an individual. It is the first history of the World Socialist Movement in the United States. Its importance is great but subtle. It is often said that history is written by the winners. Even the obscure history of North American left politics has its hierarchy. Credibility is given only to “winners” such as the International Workers of the World, the Communist Party, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations — even though many of the problems that plague the workers’ movement are the logical outcomes of their policies.
Social democrats and Leninists like to portray smaller groups like the WSPUS as “isolated sects.” And as the history of the working class movement has been written mainly by them, who is to challenge what they say? However, with the collapse of the left in the United States there has been a reassessment of what various political organizations actually accomplished.
This book demonstrates that the WSPUS, while small, was hardly isolated. Rab’s letters demonstrate involvement in the United Auto Workers and the Typographers’ Union (a model of democratic unionism) as well as discussions and debates among a wide range of left groups. Among the members of the WSPUS there were highly experienced class warriors. William Pritchard and Jack McDonald had helped lead the Western Labour Rebellion in Canada. Sam Orner had been an IWW organizer in the hard metal mines of the American Rockies as well as the leader of a famous strike of New York City taxi cab drivers in 1934. (He was the model for the character Lefty in Clifford Odett’s famous play, Waiting for Lefty.) The Detroit Local of the WSPUS had members who had helped form the United Auto Workers and played roles in the educational services of the most militant UAW locals (Irving Cantor, Joe Brown, David Davenport, Frank Marquart).
Another important thing about Karla Rab’s book is that it shows how Rab organized his political activity. His letters are a lesson of lasting value in how to approach the personal as well as the intellectual and educational aspects of building a movement for socialism.
Buy on Amazon (benefits WSPUS): Role-Modeling Socialist Behavior: The Life and Letters of Isaac Rab
Taken from a piece by FN Brill on the World Socialist Party (US) website
Friday 12 February 2010
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Seduced by an agent of the US National Security Agency by sex, money and power John Perkins became an economic hit man. In an interview of two parts John reveals the fascinating story of his involvement in profit-driven economic strong-arm tactics in countries across the globe and the part he played in building the "American Empire":
Part 1
Part 2
Thanks to Z3 from world socialist movement forum for the link.
Monday 14 December 2009
Joseph Heller's Catch 22
Joseph Heller's classic anti-war work was published in 1961. Click on the link below for the 1962 review of Catch 22 from the Socialist Standard.
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed. "
See 1962 review here
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