"First published in 1956 from the author's experiences in three of the now infamous Smith Act trials, this book remains the most comprehensive discussion of the basic doctrines of Marxist ideology as a whole in their relation to democracy and to revolutionary "force and violence."". "The U.S. government's interpretation of these issues threatened the very existence of civil liberties in our country for a generation. Dr. Somerville's testimony and the Court record herein is a key document not only for U.S. history and the future but wherever there is concern for the status of individual freedom or the meaning of "Marxist" revolution. In the course of some ten days on the witness stand, under intensive examination by several teams of defense and government counsel, as well as three judges, Dr. Somerville went into every aspect of Communist teachings in relation to the issue of forcible overthrow of government, the heart of all the trials."--BOOK JACKET.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraContemporary / Future
Protagonist / CoreThe Communist trials and the American tradition Lead Character
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Maxime Rodinson's Marxist analyses of contemporary politics and economics in the Muslim world are more salient than ever. In this collection, Rodinson emphasizes the economic and political, rather than religious, characteristics of Islam, covering topics like the history of the Marxist movement in the Islamic Middle East; the dialogue between socialism and Islam, and Marxism and Arab nationalism; the relationship between national conflicts and class struggle, and the history of communism in Arab states such as Syria and Egypt. Unashamedly political and polemical, Rodinson offers an insightful picture of political Islam and Marxism, and their profound implications for the Arab working class and the future of the region.--
"This text demonstrates how the government of China has been significantly affected by attempts to harmonize the unique nature of its indigenous culture with a variety of influences and ideas from the outside world." "China faces many challenges to its traditional economic, legal, social, and cultural structures. China's Political System: Modernization and Tradition provides students with a clear sense of how this transition is taking place, what its effects on current leaders and policies are, and how the system might evolve in the future."--Jacket.
From a height of almost 100,000 members during the Depression, when politicians, workers, and intellectuals were drawn into its orbit, the American Communist Party has descended into irrelevance and isolation, failing even to run a presidential candidate in 1988. Indeed, as Guenter Lewy writes in this critical account of American Communism, despite decades of feverish activity and ferocious discipline, it was a cause doomed to fail from the very beginning. In The Cause that Failed, Lewy offers an incisive narrative of the American Communist Party from the days of John Reed to the advent of glasnost. He traces its origins and development, underscoring how its devotion to Moscow and inflexible Marxist ideology isolated it from the American scene--in fact, most of its first members were Eastern European immigrants. During the left wing tide of the Depression the Communist Party reached the peak of its influence, as it joined labor unions and progressive organizations in a "Popular Front." But Lewy reveals the deceptive, antidemocratic, self-defeating tactics the Communists pursued even then, as they manipulated front organizations, seized control of political parties, peace groups, and labor unions, and enforced political conformity among members and sympathizers. He follows the Party through its inexorable decline in the succeeding decades, up to its current position as one of the last Stalinist parties left in a world of glasnost and perestroika. Lewy also provides a sharply critical discussion of the encounter between Communism and liberal and mainstream America. He examines such groups as the ACLU and SANE, arguing that the years when these organizations were tolerant toward Communists were also the times when they neglected their original purpose in favor of partisan causes. He shows how Communists have manipulated well-meaning citizens in the peace movement and in Wallace's 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign. One of the great ills Americans suffer, he writes, is an overreaction to McCarthyism--an atmosphere of anti-anticommunism--which blinds them to the wrongs wrought by international Communism and makes them ignore the deceptive role played by the American Communist Party, which even today still keeps eighty percent of its membership secret. The Cause that Failed presents an intensively researched and trenchantly argued historical analysis of Communism in America. Guenter Lewy's provocative account provides a new understanding of Communism's machinations in U.S. politics, and how Americans from across the political spectrum have responded to its challenge.
Exploring the politics and morality that pulled the United States into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this collection of essays, stories, and satirical pieces lambasts the highest officials in the executive branch for incompetence and moral blindness. Analyses of both wars and the crisis following 9/11 portray the conflicts as opportunities for special interests to entrench themselves in the U.S. government at the expense of U.S. citizens' civil liberties and tax dollars, and the lives of numerous Afghan and Iraqi non-combatants. Pulling no punches, this work holds George W. Bush and members of his cabinet accountable for acts that would have been prosecutable were the defendants in question not government entities.
The Communist trials and the American tradition by John Somerville | Literally Just Books
