Recommended Reading, Part One

A colleague in Sweden asked me to compile a list of “the ten most essential books on the American left (past and present)” for the magazine he edits. Shit. Below is a first attempt. Please weigh in. Keep in mind, these are books about the American Left. Next, I’ll work on an even more impossible list- the 10 essential Left books about America. These are in no particular order. This list is weak on Populism/Progressivism, Environmentalism and Feminism. Owing to my own biases and knowledge gaps, it centers around Social Democracy, labor and the civil rights struggle, though I’m happy to get some correctives from the “public” such as it is. Bring it on...

Making History
The American Left and the American Mind
By Richard Flacks

This book is both a history of the American left and an argument about political life itself. Flacks’ thesis is that people engage in politics because of a deep commitment to their own lives, not abstract notions of political truth. The Left’s overarching project, for Flacks, is to make it easier for people to have an impact on the forces which affect them- in essence, to “make history.” This reworking of the left’s role helps to explain it’s failed attempts at grand projects, as well as its often unsung success in democratizing and transforming social relations in America. This is a very good starting place.

The Next Left
By Michael Harrington

I struggled over which book by Harrington to include. I settled on this one because this is Harrington’s first attempt to sketch an outline of what an American left might look like- taking into account our peculiar political culture, electoral system, social movement history and distance from European notions of social democracy. His vision takes from both the old left and the new, but is built around a marriage of radical vision and pragmatic assessment of the possibilities of real politics. I’ve never encountered anything as insightful, grounded and powerful as Harrington in any other political tradition- liberal, social democratic or revolutionary. If you haven’t read anything by Harrington, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
By Nick Salvatore

Eugene Victor Debs, railroad labor organizer and Socialist Party founder, was a distinctly American voice- for equality, for the dignity of working people, and against the pull of war and empire. This incredible book rescues Debs as a pivotal figure in American history, and speaks of a time when the prairie was radical and the nation was young.

If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left
By Maurice Isserman

The 1950’s is an often overlooked period in the history of the American Left. After the boom of the CIO organizing decade and before the explosion of the 1960’s, the 50’s was an important time of transition. Isserman here discusses the transition from a labor-oriented mass left to a more culturally rooted cosmopolitanism would shape the New Left radicals. Also of note is his treatment of the question of whether the American left will be structured around an independent, traditionally-formed political party or a more organic, coalitional model. Well-written and highly recommended.

Labor Will Rule
Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor
By Steven Fraser

AND/OR

The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit
Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor
By Nelson Lichtenstein

The labor-liberal-civil rights alliance that formed in and around the Democratic Party from the ‘40’s to the ‘60’s was probably the closest the US has come to a popular social democratic movement. These two biographies of towering figures of labor do an excellent job of looking at the triumphs and missed opportunities of those important moments. It is often impossible to imagine that politics based on a democratic reordering of power in America was once so close to the mainstream. Why did it fail? Could it be replicated? Important questions as we look for a new strategy for regaining what has been lost since 1980.

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom
The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
By Charles Payne

This book corrects many of the popular myths about the civil rights struggle in the South. Far from being built around a few charismatic men, in Mississippi, the movement was largely woman-led, remarkably grassroots, surprisingly militant and far more heroic than can be explained here. This was a fight against unimaginable cruelty and injustice. We are often taught about the freedom movement as if it was a spontaneous moment in which blacks had enough and whites suddenly woke up to the problem. On the contrary, this was a hard-fought and well organized movement of ordinary people seeking freedom and justice. What is also important about this book is that it roots its understanding of the freedom struggle in the notion that people must achieve their own liberation. While white people play an important role, it is that of helper, not leader.

I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr
By Michael Eric Dyson

As history, this is a deeply flawed book. However, as a window into the radicalism at the hart of MLK’s vision it is quite useful. The mainstreaming of King as a figure has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the nation has be forced to recognize that black people’s history matters, on the other, his legacy has been twisted into a sort of brown Santa Clause, delivering niceties to all the good little girls and boys. The fact that his demand that people be “judged by the content of their character” has been twisted by conservatives into a purported opposition to Affirmative Action is appalling. Even more appalling is that his opposition to the war in Vietnam, his support for labor and endorsement of social democracy has been flushed down the toilet. See my next post for more on this topic.

SDS
By Kirkpatric Sayle

Students For a Democratic Society was not just the largest progressive youth movement in American history, it was also emblematic of the key dilemmas of the left in the United States. Begun literally as the youth organization of the labor-social democratic tradition, it turned its critical gaze both on the old left and on an increasingly soulless American culture. SDS began by offering a radical, and distinctly American alternative to the prevailing orthodoxies of politics, based on a profoundly democratic critique of power. The fact that the organization ended in a war of posturing orthodoxies and inane, dangerous dogmatism is also instructive.

Personal Politics
The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left
by Sara Evans

The women’s movement stands out as one of the major contributions of the US Left to progressive culture worldwide. Feminists throughout the world have been influenced by the analysis, tactics and organizing style of their American sisters. What is important to understand, however, is how much this movement grew out of struggles within other social movements. Evans’ book helps to contextualize feminism’s roots in the broader left, a lesson that both today’s feminist activists and their brothers should remember.

Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism
By bell hooks

More theory than history, hooks’ most incisive book complicates the issues of race and gender by asking why the women’s movement has been so dominated by white, middle class issues, language and analysis. It needn’t be so, claims hooks, who has devoted much of her intellectual life to discussing the interplay between gender, race, class and sexuality. You can’t understand the problems faced by the American left without understanding how our complex and overlapping power structures function.