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International Socialist Review, Winter 1965

 

Recommended Reading

 

From International Socialist Review, Vol.26 No.1, Winter 1965, p.29.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Revolution in Seattle
by Harvey O’Connor
Monthly Review Press, 1964. 300 pp. $5.00.

An excellent account of the 1919 Seattle General Strike written by a participant, who as a youth freshly imbued with the ideas and ideals of socialism – and who still remains a rebel – actively engaged in the great events now set down in the form of a “memoir.”


The Seattle General Strike
by Robert L. Freidheim
University of Washington Press, 1964. 224 pp. $5.50.

A professorial commentary which seeks to bolster the author’s thesis that the general strike was an unmitigated catastrophe for the American labor movement. Freidheim strains to maintain a posture of fine impartiality but his prejudice keeps peeping through his academic veneer. Recommended for its basic factual material.


Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
by Joyce L. Kornbluh
University of Michigan Press, 1964. 419 pp. (8½ x 11 inches) $10 through Dec. 21 then $12.50.

A handsome volume containing a fine collection of Wobbly songs, poems, articles from representative leaders, stories of many historical labor struggles, cartoons and drawings from the IWW press, etc. Culled from the extensive Labadie Collection of Labor Materials in the University of Michigan Library. Every student of the American labor movement will be delighted with this volume.


The Accumulation of Capital
by Rosa Luxemburg
trans. A.F. Schwarzwald
Monthly Review Press, New ork, 1964. 485 pp. $7.50 cloth. $3.95 paper.

A classic of Marxist economics first published in 1913, Luxemburg’s study is a critical examination of Marx’s theory of capital accumulation. Reprinted with a new introduction by Joan V. Robinson, British economist, it is required reading by every student of Marxist thought.


German Social Democracy: 1918-1933
by Richard N. Hunt
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1964. 292 pp. $7.50.


The Social Democratic Party of Germany: From Working-Class Party to Modern Political Movement
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1964. 257 pp. $6.50.

The two volumes taken together constitute a study of the evolution and degeneration of the German Social Democratic Party from the post-World War I Weimar Republic to the present day. The counter-revolutionary role of the Social Democrats led ineluctably to the victory of Hitler in 1933 and then, following World War II, to the jettisoning of any trace of Marxism. Valuable as a study of bureaucratic degeneration of what was once the largest and strongest party in the Second (Socialist) International.


American Socialism: 1900-1960
edited by H. Wayne Morgan
Prentice-Hall, Englewood, N. J., 1964. 146 pp. $1.95 paper.

A compilation of brief articles, comments and statements gathered from the Socialist press, books, magazines, etc., including fugitive selections from leading spokesmen beginning with Eugene V. Debs to Norman Thomas.


The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval
by Almont Lindsey
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964. 385 pp. $2.95 paper.

Account of an important event in American labor history. Out of the crucible of this great event, in which the federal government ganged up with the railroad tycoons to smash the strike there emerged the most prominent figure of the American Socialist movement, Eugene V. Debs. The strike and its aftermath had a profound effect on the future development of unionism in the railroad industry.


Communism in Europe: Continuity, Change and the Sino-Soviet Dispute, Vol.I
edited by William E. Griffith
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, 1964. 406 pp. $12.50.


The Sino-Soviet Rift
by William E. Griffith
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, 1964. 508 pp. $2.95 paper.

Both books present detailed accounts of the ideological disputes which have characterized, since their beginnings, the evolution of the Communist parties in Europe. The first work contains separate essays on Yugoslav, Polish and Hungarian communism, and an essay on the Italian Communist Party; to Griffith’s work on the Sino-Soviet dispute is appended a helpful and representative collection of recent Soviet and Chinese documents.


Brendan Behan’s New York
by Brendan Behan with drawings by Paul Hogarth
Bernard Gels Associates, distributed by Random House, New York. 1964. 159 pp. $5.95.

The many drawings by Paul Hogarth are admirable. However, it is not the guide book you would choose to give your old grandmother, coming to visit New York for the first time. The text is too unorthodox.


The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
by Karl Kautsky
with an introduction by John H. Kautsky
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1964. $1.75 paper.

This is Kautsky’s pamphlet of August, 1928, against which Lenin polemicized in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, and Trotsky in Terrorism and Communism. It remains one of the significant early polemics against the Bolshevik Party.


The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality
Text by Lorraine Hansberry
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1964. 127 pp. $1.95.

This is a photographic essay, compiled with the aid of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. A large number of Danny Lyons’ photos capture the essence of the Southern struggle, from the viewpoint of a participant – and they comprise a collection otherwise not available to the public. The book can be obtained from SNCC, 6 Raymond St., Atlanta, Ga.

 
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