Word: lader
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...take it--the struggles and reactions and hatreds and dirty deals to on and on. "Did we really do such terrible things to the Left?" Richard Heilbroner implores in his promotion blurb on the back of the book jacket. Yes, Richard, we really did, according to Lader, who has blended public records with personal interviews, oral histories, diaries, letters and unpublished reporters' notes to come up with what is probably the most exhaustive and exhausting chronicle of the Left in the United States since Senator Joe McCarthy first curdled the airwaves with his own personal version of the radical movement...
Unlike McCarthy, Lader is a qualified source, though he admits that his involvement disqualifies him as a purely objective source. From 1946 to 1950, he was district leader and public relations adviser to Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York's East Harlem-Yorkville district. Marcontonio was perhaps the most effective and controversial radical ever to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives--one of the only politicians ever to include the Communist Party in his coalition of supporters and still win elections. Lader also ran successfully on Marcantonio's American Labour Party ticket in 1948 and later organized a Reform...
...style alternately journalistic and academic, Lader traces well known and not-so-well-known radical episodes in this country's history since World War II. His attention to detail is remarkable: he lovingly reports not only the actions and goals of his subjects but their personal habits and histories and even what they were wearing. For instance, did you know that Henry Wallace always referred to President Truman as "that little fellow" or "the salesman" and that Truman usually appeared in a dark blue summer suit, a white shirt, and a tight jaw? Would you believe that Walter Reuther...
...BOOK is not merely episodic, however. One theme unites the whole: how much or how little did Marxist doctrine influence radical thought and action in the United States? Not very much, according to Lader. In 1948, the Communist party, with bases in organized labor and allies in the American Labor Party and a few other organizations, represented the Left. But from 1960 on, Lader says, the lines were not as clearly drawn as either Marxists or conservatives would have them. From that point on. Marxists are quick to point out. American radicalism no longer qualified as "leftism," and instead...
...Lader disagrees. The American Left, he says, originates from diverse ideologies rather than being dominated by the Soviet brand of Marxist Leninism. The Radical movement has been essentially pragmatic, nurtured by American needs and not by a closed system imposed from abroad. Though the Left since 1960 may appear disturbingly complex and even incoherent, it developed its own character by emphasizing immediate results and direct action, usually individual action. But what Marxists may label mere civil liberties or reformist movements, Lader cities as significant in that they "sowed the seeds of rebellion" that often led to far more radical organizing...