Clocking in at a mere seven hundred pages, give or take, The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923, the eighth volume of John Riddell's awesome edition of documents from the Comintern in Lenin's time, will be out later this year. (As with everything in the Historical Materialism book series, it will then be issued in paperback … [Read more...]
Archives for 2017
Interview with Ceri Dingle, director of “Every Cook Can Govern: The Life, Impact and Works of C.L.R. James”
The word went around a few years ago that someone in England was working on a documentary about the West Indian historian, revolutionary political theorist and pan-African eminence C. L. R. James (1901-1989). Like the long-promised dramatic film based on The Black Jacobins, James's book on the Haitian revolution, this seemed to me an excellent idea -- and, like it, probably doomed. … [Read more...]
George Breitman, review of Richard Wright, “American Hunger”
The following review by George Breitman -- who among other things wrote and edited a number of books about Malcolm X -- appeared in August 1977 issue of the Socialist Workers Party journal International Socialist Review, which is now defunct. I post it here, under fair use, as a service to other scholars sharing my interest in Wright and the history of the American left. (The neglect of Breitman … [Read more...]
Selfie Abuse
One finding of a German study discussed in my column last week is that the subjects most involved in generating and posting selfies tended to want their social-media contacts to post something besides selfies. Not exactly counter-intuitive, of course, but interesting to have confirmed with all due statistical finesse. I thought about including a selfie with the piece (the best I've ever taken … [Read more...]