Vincent Persichetti

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[by] Perry Anderson

This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this tradition - Lukácsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpean - are compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it. (Source: Verso Books)

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Marcia Rose

Four generations of successful women and the price they pay for their success. They are Leah, a 1920s radical writer; Jo, a World War II photographer; Sarah, a singer and songwriter; and Annie, a comedian. By the author of The Hospital.

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Ian Gordon

Contending that comic strips contributed to the expansion of a mass consumer culture driven by visual images, Ian Gordon shows how, in addition to embellishing a wide array of goods with personalities, the comics themselves increasingly promoted consumerist values and upward mobility. He details how "Gasoline Alley" advocated the enjoyment of cars and how 1920s working girl Winnie Winkle became an avid seeker of a middle-class lifestyle. Documenting the invention of the comic book in the 1940s, Gordon also describes the emergence of a super-licensed Superman, whose girlfriend Lois Lane even went on a shopping spree during a period of wartime rationing. Emerging just as Americans were beginning to define themselves less by what they made and believed and more by what they bought, comic strips were from the outset commodities sold by syndicates to newspapers nationwide. Ian Gordon demonstrates that the strips' most enduring role has been not only to mirror a burgeoning consumer culture but also to actively promote it.

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Paul Buhle

A crown jewel of New Left historiography, this overview of U.S. Marxism was hailed on its first publication for its nuanced storytelling, balance and incredible sweep. Brimming over with archival finds and buoyed by the recollections of witnesses and participants in the radical movements of decades past, Marxism in the United States includes fascinating accounts of the immigrant socialism of the nineteenth century, the formation of the CPUSA in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of American communism and of the hugely influential Popular Front in the 1920s and ʹ30s, the crisis and split of the ʹ50s, and the revival of Marxism in the ʹ60s and ʹ70s. -- Publisher description.