Left History (E-Journal - York University)

Phelps, Christopher

Reviews 117 
Congdon only hints at the complex (and in this last case, truly Oedipal) ties 
between the two generations. These, along with the differences in their respec- 
tive defining experience vis-a-vis communism might offer a clue to their very 
different stand on it. While the first generation encountered communism in its 
brief Hungarian incarnation as the utopian episode of the 1919 Republic of 
Councils, the second generation had come of age during the feverish post-war 
years of a new, democratic Hungary, followed by the Soviet-controlled comrnu- 
nist takeover. And despite the anti-democratic nature of the new communist 
regime, they deeply identified with the large-scale social and cultural revolution 
it brought about, not to mention that they owed it their own ascendance to the 
political and academic elite. This may be the reason why all three representa- 
tives of the second generation remained committed to the idea of a democratic 
socialism. 
In this book, as before, Lee Congdon displays a mastery of his subject, 
including the most arcane details of Hungarian political and intellectual history 
in the twentieth century. His insistence, however, that intellectuals worthy of 
that name are driven solely by the desire to find faith is curious, given the degree 
to which it limits the freedom of the intellectual historian to draw his own con- 
clusions. It feels artificially drafted onto this multi-generational and multi- 
dimensional study whose rich biographical and intellectual details and loose 
ends alike provide much food for thought and will hopefully generate further 
debate. 
Judith Szapor 
University of Ottawa 
Lee Congdon, Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany 
and Austria 1919-1933 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 
1991), xi. 
Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 
1930-41 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 1 1 1. 
Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and 
Che (London: Verso, 2002). 
Revolution in the Air is a first-rate contribution to the recent history of radical- 
ism in the United States. Max Elbaum tells the story of the "new communist 
movement" and its role in the organized revolutionary left's climax and near- 
complete disintegration over the past thirty years. After its birth in the 1960s, 
the new communist movement reached its greatest density (numerical and intel- 
lectual, sad to say) in the 1970s, entered into profound crisis in the 1980s, and 
118 Reviews 
disappeared from view in the 1990s. Elbaum identifies important lessons for 
contemporary oppositional activism in the collective history of the many thou- 
sands of revolutionaries who sought to create a mass socialist movement in the 
centres of advanced capitalism while drawing inspiration from Third World rad- 
ical thought. 
Filled with plausible observations, interesting insights, and organizational 
wisdom, Revolution in the Air helps fill a yawning gap in the literature on North 
American radicalism: the rise and fall of the 1970s far left. Its defense of revo- 
lutionary politics is a correction to a sixties literature otherwise focused exclu- 
sively on the romance of the early new left. Elbaum stands apart from many 
writers on the Students for a Democratic Society, including James Miller and 
Todd Gitlin, who pit a "good" participatory early 1960s against a "bad" revolu- 
tionary late 1960s. He capably articulates the logic of the revolutionary turn 
taken in the late 1960s and 1970s by the most conscious anti-war and anti-racist 
activists emerging out of student-centered radicalism. 
Revolution in the Air supplies a strong narrative history of the "antirevi- 
sionist," Marxist-Leninist, more or less Maoist parties and activists. Virtually 
the only secondary source available on some of the groups that it covers, the 
book is invaluable for anyone seeking to trace their ideological trajectories and 
relative strengths and weaknesses. Subjects include the Progressive Labor Party 
(as forerunner) and Revolutionary Union (as pioneer), the Guardian newspaper, 
local collectives, and such rival national formations as the Communist Workers 
Party, the October League, the League of Revolutionary Struggle, and Line of 
March (last of which Elbaum helped lead). 
Some omissions affect the coverage. Elbaum has a precise milieu in mind, 
but it is not clear why he de-emphasizes or excludes some revolutionary groups 
of the period, such as the Weathermen, the Black Liberation Army, or the 
Symbionese Liberation Army, which had comparable Marxist-Leninist politics 
but adopted strategies of terror. Even the "armed struggle" actions of the groups 
he does cover, such as the Revolutionary Union, are left untold. There is no cov- 
erage of the delicate topic of police infiltration and provocateurs. Some of the 
most cerebral groups of the movement, like the Sojourner Truth Organization, 
get little ink. Canadian readers may wish there were something on the Canadian 
Marxist-Leninist left, which was more coherent than the American Maoists at 
their peak, but the histories of the groups that Elbaum does cover tend to be pre- 
sented straightforwardly and reliably. 
Elbaum takes pride in and repudiates the particular form of revolutionary 
left he describes. Elbaum cornmends the movement for its uncompromising 
combating of racism and involvement of people of color, its principled opposi- 
tion to imperialism, and its disciplined organization, with a "cadre" or round- 
the-clock activist membership committed to forging common thought and 
action. At the same time, he seeks to explain the many errors in thought and 
Reviews 119 
action that came from adopting a Maoist-Stalinist model of Leninism: ideolog- 
ical dogmatism and sterility, the illusion of tiny groups being the vanguard, sec- 
tarian fratricide, voluntarism and ultraleftism, infighting and burnout. While 
Elbaum's combination of admiration and reprimand can be disconcerting, he on 
the whole succeeds in his dual project of substantiating the revolutionary social- 
ist turn of the 1970s while drawing up a frank and useful list of the catastroph- 
ic errors of this section of the far left. 
Revolution in the Air charts strategic and tactical debates on the left as they 
interact with external national and international events, from the May events in 
France and Mao's Cultural Revolution to Khmer Rouge butchery and the 
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. The author's descriptive ability to situate 
different factional positions in relation to one another is considerable, compar- 
ing to Kirkpatrick Sale's classic SDS (1973). Elbaum is also excellent on ideol- 
ogy and doctrine. He is superb on Lenin and Leninism, their draw for radical 
activists and their possible dangers. The book contributes in the process to a 
rethinking of the theory and practice of socialist revolution. 
The book is strongly multiracial in focus, especially concerning African 
Americans and, to a lesser extent, Asian American, Puerto Rican, and other rad- 
icals of color. However, Elbaum does not often explain how such activists came 
to be attracted to their specific politics or what campaigns or activities they 
mounted. Elbaum does articulate successfully that anti-racism is central for 
socialist strategy in the United States, that radicals should support independent 
movements of people of color, and that the left should at the same time place 
high importance on developing multiracial socialist organizations. In thls and 
other ways, Elbaum writes with a conscious eye toward how to better generate a 
revolutionary movement the next time around. 
The major deficiency in the book is its lack of specificity about the involve- 
ment of its subject groups in trade unions and the labor movement in the 1970s. 
In a provocative, interesting passage, Elbaum holds a "weak class anchor" 
accountable for much of the failings of the movement - that is, he argues, the 
movement failed in part because a wider working-class radicalization did not 
materialize in the 1970s. Ironically, however, his book does not tell us what the 
groups of the new communist movement actually did in factories, offices, and 
unions. The protagonists talked loudly about the "proletariat," a term other- 
worldly to American workers. But what kinds of workplaces did they go into? 
Did they work as leftists within existing unions or create "red" dual unions? Did 
they concentrate on selling their papers or build rank-and-file caucuses? Did 
they cooperate with other tendencies in the factories or excoriate them? What 
was their attitude toward union officials, toward running for office? What kind 
of political resolutions did they motivate? Did they try to provoke wildcat 
strikes, or not? Were they open, selectively open, or closed about their commu- 
nist affiliation? Did the labor approaches of the different sects change over time 
120 Reviews 
as they came up against the reality of the workplace? What did they have to 
show for their efforts? 
In this way, the title seems apt in a sense other than intended. Revolution in 
the Air describes people who envisioned themselves as the vanguard of a prole- 
tarian revolution but who were ungrounded in basic matters of labor organiza- 
tion and strategy. A paragraph on divisions over the Ed Sadlowski reform cam- 
paign in the Steelworkers shows that the October League opposed Sadlowski for 
absurd reasons, and there is a bit about early Revolutionary Union strike sup- 
port. Nothing adds up to a coherent picture. Related areas of theory and prac- 
tice remain hazy. Many of the groups under Elbaum's scrutiny sent former stu- 
dents into working-class jobs and communities, a process known as colonization 
or industrialization, but Revolution in the Air provides no conclusions. 
Likewise, Elbaum expresses favor for "cross-class" alliances, including within 
the Democratic Party, but he does not synthesize such statements very well with 
his lasting opposition to social democracy or his basic affinity for the worlung 
class and oppressed. For Elbaum, race is decisive; he seems unwilling to com- 
bine that outlook with consistent commitment to class independence in politics. 
Elbaum reveals very little about individual actors or the quality of internal 
group life. His citations tend to be published items - not internal documents, 
interviews, or correspondence with other participants in the movement. As a 
result, the groups' relations with one another, as well as their ideas and actions, 
seem a little disembodied from the actual participants. Bob Avakian, mentioned 
several times, is never identified as the son of a prominent Bay Area judge; noth- 
ing at all is said about his character or history. Little or no background is pro- 
vided about Mike Klonsky, Car1 Davidson, Nelson Peery, General Baker, or 
Lynn Wells. AI ~Gmanski  is mentioned several times; his suicide is not. 
Elbaum says in his conclusion that he refrained from treatments of individuals 
because of ongoing anti-radical prejudices in the society, but this reticence 
leaves the reader's curiosity unsatisfied and halts the history short of a full reck- 
oning. Any historian who was not an insider like Elbaum would have seen per- 
sonal background as an absolutely indispensable aspect of the history. 
Elbaum supplies little data, though it must be very hard to obtain, on the 
composition of the groups in question. Were they drawn primarily from ruling- 
class families, as Avakian was, or middle-class families? Did they have much 
success in recruiting and retaining working-class members? Were the organiza- 
tions of people of color formed by students, or did they emerge out of comrnu- 
nity struggles? Perhaps the kind of extreme proletarian fundamentalism to 
which the movement was prone, its workerism, had special psychological appeal 
for rebellious (particularly male) youth from highly privileged homes, like 
Avakian. One senses an arc, with greatest family privilege concentrated in the 
Weatherman and least in some of the Chicano formations. These are specula- 
tions; they could only be explored if more data on the composition of the spe- 
Reviews 121 
cific groupings were available. 
While Elbaum is very candid about the movement's errors, some of his crit- 
icism could be even more extensive. Elbaum now rejects single-party rule and 
command-style economies. However, he continues to refer to the Soviet Union 
and China as "socialist countries" or "socialist states," casting some doubt on the 
consistency of his new understanding of socialism. Elbaum emphasizes the 
democratic appeal of Leninism (which certainly was real, since democratic cen- 
tralism, properly practice4 can provide a discipline for leadership as well as 
ranks) so much that he underplays the way in which Stalinism gained steam not 
because it was democratic but because its hardline talk and authority appealed 
after the semi-anarchism of the campus left. And while he is very clear about 
the tragedy of rigid hierarchical structures in small revolutionary groups, 
Elbaum is not as clear about secretiveness as a method ostensibly to prevent 
infiltration and exposure. There is no evidence that clandestine revolutionary 
groups have been any more effective in preventing governmental surveillance of 
their activities. There is much evidence that such practices inhibit democratic 
functioning, alienate contacts, and foster creepy and manipulative behavior. 
Finally, while Elbaum evinces understanding that Trotsky was a dissenting 
revolutionary and not a fascist wrecker, while he upholds Leninism (of a spe- 
cific lund) and criticizes Stalinism and Maoism, and while he is committed to a 
pluralist politics of the left and a vision of socialism that includes multiple par- 
ties and freedom of expression, his book is entirely unreliable in its characteri- 
zations of revolutionary socialist organizations of the anti-Stalinist or "socialism 
from below" variety of the same period, such as the Socialist Workers Party 
(SWP) and International Socialists (IS). These disappointing flaws apparently 
stem more from a result of lingering historical prejudice combined with lack of 
knowledge and sustained contact, rather than malice. 
Elbaum would have been advised to cast these pages of his book, which 
draw a highly negative balance sheet on "Trotskyism," as a reprise of what 
Maoist activists thought of the IS and SWP rather than leave the distinct impres- 
sion that the characterizations were accurate and astute. In actuality, the IS and 
SWP were saying in the 1970s what it took Elbaum and his fellow Marxist- 
Leninists two more decades to understand. They did not call the Cultural 
Revolution's great purge "liberation," imagine a Marxist paradise in Pol Pot's 
Cambodia, or champion the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. The anti- 
Stalinist groups' criticisms of bureaucratic regimes in the Soviet Union, China, 
Eastern Europe, and Vietnam from the standpoint of revolutionary internation- 
alism and socialist democracy have worn much, much better over time than the 
various new communist movement enthusiasms. Furthermore, the labor strate- 
gy developed by the IS in institutions like Labor Notes and Teamsters for a 
Democratic Union has lent much more concrete support to rank-and-file work- 
ers' movements than the "proletarian" forces at the center of Elbaum's narrative. 
122 Reviews 
Setting aside tired old canards against the main alternative current to the "anti- 
revisionists" would have allowed for the more useful and interesting observation 
that these groups, despite their better analysis and political outlook, also suf- 
fered from many of the same tragic distortions of theory and practice that affect- 
ed Elbaum's trend. 
Despite its flaws, this is one of those very rare books that contains so many 
interesting reflections, explores the unknown underbrush of political history 
with such meticulousness, that it simply cannot be adequately conveyed in a 
short review. Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air is radical history at its best - 
an informative, strongly argued treatment of a neglected strand of the American 
revolutionary socialist left. It proves that the growth and implosion of the new 
communist movement holds many lessons, both good and bad, for a new gener- 
ation of anti-capitalists coming to terms with familiar problems of globalism 
and war. 
Christopher Phelps 
Ohio State University 
Randy Martin, On Your Marx: Relinking Socialism and the Left (Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 
Randy Martin's On Your Marx: Relinking Socialism and the Left will be 
received by some readers as a late contribution to a genre of academic studies 
on the fate of Marxism in the postcommunist world, studies which enumerate a 
standard set of challenges to the relevance of Marxism today - the rise of "new" 
social movements, the fall of the USSR, the decline of the "traditional" Left in 
advanced industrial states, and the emergence of poststructuralism - only to 
insist, in view of the theoretical or political inadequacies of some or all of the 
above, that Marxism is needed today more than ever. What now appears prob- 
lematic about such studies is less the predictability of their conclusions than the 
impossibly broad range of phenomena that they seek to address. A wide swath 
of social, political, and philosophical trends are too often assimilated to one 
another or otherwise treated summarily, at too general a level of analysis to pro- 
duce much more than an affirmation of entrenched positions. The same is true, 
certainly, of parallel postmodernist tracts in which Marxism itself serves as the 
bogey. 
On Your Marx is presented as precisely this kind of postcommunist perora- 
tion, from its punning title and pop art cover (featuring an off-center lithograph 
of Marx irreverently overlaid with hipster sunshades) to Martin's argument, 
which addresses questions surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union, the the- 
oretical challenge of postmodernism, and the political ambivalence of identity 


Max Elbaum — Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che

Anastakis, Dimitry

Reviews 133 
dents looking for a general overview of how unions work, Taylor's study is a 
highly detailed examination of the specific topic of the development of labour 
education. Despite their differences in focus and method, both provide indica- 
tions of the significance of unions in Canadian society, and make insightful sug- 
gestions as to the future possibilities for Canadian labour. 
Mark Thomas 
York University 
Katherine Barbieri, The Liberal Illusion: Does Trade Promote Peace? (Ann 
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002). 
During World War 11, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull stated most clearly 
one of the central beliefs that came to define the international liberal order after 
1945: "If goods can't cross borders, armies will." The idea that interdependence 
based on increased trade flows would avoid a repeat of the destruction caused by 
depression and war was institutionalized in the General Agreement on Tariffs 
and Trade, which, along with the United Nations (security) and the International 
Monetary Fund and World Bank (fiscal stability), became one of the pillars of 
the postwar multilateral world. 
Barbieri poses fundamental questions that challenge this long-held shibbo- 
leth, and reconsider the entire field of trade-conflict studies: Does interdepend- 
ence based on trade (if that notion actually exists) really prevent war? If so, what 
are the conditions that actually allow trade to promote peace? How does the lib- 
eral idea of interdependence hold up against critiques of that theory, which argue 
that trade's consequences vary depending on whether interstate relationships are 
equal or unequal in terms of relative power, or those who claim that trade inter- 
dependence actually increases conflict? What of the ''null theory" that trade has 
no impact on interstate conflict whatsoever? In trying to answer these questions, 
her purpose is to "underscore the differences that exist in trading relationships 
and the manner in which these differences might produce outcomes that differ 
from the liberal model of commercial peace." 
The methodology employed is expansive. A very usehl literature and the- 
oretical overview in which Barbieri helpfully conceptualizes trade relationships 
as a continuum, is followed by the core of the book: By analyzing more than 
100,000 observations of pairs/dyads of states from 1870 to 1992, Barbieri aims 
to better assess the "generalizability of hypotheses related to the trade-conflict 
relationship." Employing a number of charts and graphs to simplify her detailed 
and complex evidence, Barbieri finds that the notion that trade promotes peace 
is erroneous, and that interdependent countries are actually more likely to 
engage in military conflict than countries with less extensive trade relationships. 
134 Reviews 
Yet this does not mean that dependency theorists argue that conflict grows from 
a power imbalance. Barbieri concludes that instead of power imbalances result- 
ing in greater conflict between states, states with symmetric ties were in fact 
more likely to experience conflict. In the end, while Barbieri has made a signif- 
icant contribution to the field, she is willing to admit that while her findings are 
useful, questions still remain, and more research is needed to understand the 
exact nature of the interaction between trade and conflict. It is a noble admission 
from a scholar who has provided a spirited insight into this complex and impor- 
tant field. 
Z%e Liberal Illusion is not without its shortcomings, however. Although it 
is very dense, the book is, in fact, rather short, running to only 137 pages of text. 
There are sections in the book which provide some excellent analysis on how the 
Great Powers related to each other in terms of conflict and trade over the last 
century: The reader would appreciate more of this insight. Moreover, although 
it is brief, the book devotes considerable detail to explaining the nuances of 
Barbieri's methodology. While important, readers would likely have traded the 
extensive equations for more examples that actually address real world relation- 
ships and conflict. As a result, the books reads like a dissertation (it was), which, 
while brilliant, could have been expanded and refined somewhat. It also might 
be appreciated more by political theorists than historians, who will find the rig- 
orous methodology and extensive data somewhat removed from historical 
events. 
Nonetheless, the book provides a dynamic contribution to an important dis- 
course that has far reaching implications. In the light of recent debates over the 
utility of bodies such as the World Trade Organization, or the nascent Free Trade 
Area of the Americas, Barbieri forces the reader to reconsider fundamental 
assumptions about the very nature of trade and conflict in our world. While 
Barbieri does not necessarily disprove Secretary Hull's dictum that "If good 
can't cross borders, armies will," she has certainly cast doubt on what so many 
have held as conventional wisdom. This is the essence of good scholarship. 
Dimitry Anastahs 
Michigan State University 
Jennifer A. Delton, Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the 
Transformation of the Democratic Party (Minneapolis: University of 
Minnesota Press, 2002). 
Minnesota produced an array of leaders in the civil rights movement including 
Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP; Clarence Mitchell, Jr., lobbyist 
for the NAACP; Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban 


Katherine Barbieri — The Liberal Illusion: Does Trade Promote Peace?

Eaton, Mark A.

182 Reviews 
Smallman is opening up a potential new pathway for research. (Although, as his 
own book reveals, such social histories can be blocked by the non-cooperation of 
the military itself?) 
Some aspects of Smallman's argument are demonstrated better than others. 
For example, Chapter 7 is very good in showing the deveIopment of an intelli- 
gence and terror apparatus that was used inside the military itself to root out dis- 
sent. Smallman is also insightful on the programmatic preferences of the inter- 
nationalist officers who won the internal battle by 1954. However, he is less illu- 
minating about the link between internationalist military officers and the Uniiio 
Democratica Nacional (UDN or Democratic National Union), the chief civilian 
party in favor of the internationalists, and he also has little direct evidence of cor- 
ruption. One also wishes that he had provided a few more links between 1954, 
when he essentially ends his story, and the coup of 1964 - to posit a general con- 
nection is plausible, but a lot happened over those ten years, and the direct impact 
of the events he analyzes on the coup is left rather unexplored. In addition, some 
words about the endurance of nationalism within Bwzil's military might have 
been useful. For example, the ESG was widely seen as a center of intellectual 
resistance to neoliberal economic reform in the 1990s, and the majority of mili- 
tary personnel apparently voted for Lula in the presidential elections of 2002. 
This suggests that the internationalistfnationalist split that Smallman diagnoses in 
the 1950s still exists, in a different form, in the Brazilian military today. 
This reader found several minor errors in the text - for example, it should be 
Delegagia (not Delegacion) Especial de Seguranqa Politica (3); Ilha Grande is an 
island offshore of Angra dos Reis, and is not in the bay of Rio de Janeiro (93); 
and it should be Escola Superior de (not da) Guerra (107). Nevertheless, this 
book is well researched and written and offers suggestive insights to scholars 
interested in the origins of authoritarian rule, civil-military relations, and 
Brazilian political history. Smallman engages with a variety of other scholars in 
defense of his own lively interpretation of the development of the Brazilian army, 
and the book deserves a wide readership and careful attention. 
Anthony W. Pereira 
Tulane University 
Anthony Chase, Movies on Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen (New 
York: The New Press, 2002). 
For those of us who are not trained legal professionals, habitual criminals, or seri- 
al plaintiffs, films and television series about the law and its processes provide 
most of the images that shape our understanding of these issues. This is particu- 
larly the case in American theatres and households, where motion pictures and 
Reviews 183 
legal dramas appear at times to be continually informing the viewer, accurately 
and inaccurately, about the rules and procedures of the legal system that affects 
his or her daily behaviour. Viewing the law as "a moral and political system, not 
just a regime of rules,'' Anthony Chase's analysis of the so-called "legal genre" of 
film in Movies on Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen includes not just 
the run-of-the-mill courtroom drama, but the entire legal system as presented on 
the silver screen in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The author's 
general aim is to determine how these films fit into American history and poli- 
tics, and in particular, how they influence the legal values and assumptions of the 
American people. 
Like other scholars interested in film as a socio-cultural source of legal 
knowledge, Chase is troubled by the lack of a clearly defined legal genre. His 
attempt to formulate a less ambiguous definition is one of his central preoccupa- 
tions. Is it possible to inventory films that deal with legal issues using a distinct 
genre similar to science fiction, horror, mystery, or melodrama? The problem, 
according to Chase, is that unlike these genres, there are few rules or boundaries 
accepted by legal scholars that set the parameters for such a category. This has 
produced a sub-discipline of legal scholarship where some scholars, including 
J.L. Breen and T.J. Hams, require the presence of a trial for a film to be consid- 
ered part of the legal genre, while others, like D.A. Black, prefer a definition so 
broad that one is hard-pressed to name a film that would be excluded. Falling 
somewhere in the middle, Chase believes that "a definition of the legal genre 
should be located . . . between trial films (too narrow) and every commercial film 
ever made (too broad)" (1 69). Thus, the films analysed in Movies on Trial include 
those focused on a central trial, as well as many that depict lawyers and clients, 
the average citizen, the courts and other institutions "grappling with legal issues 
and conflicts, cases, and statutes, or the politics of the rule of law itself" (170). 
The result, an admirably broad sample of films organised in themat~c chapters 
addressing such areas as liberal constitutionalism, criminal law and its processes, 
civil law, and international law. 
The most interesting and thought provoking chapters address themes that 
have remained relatively untouched by American filmmakers. Why, for example, 
have so few films been produced dealing with the foundational history of the 
United States, and in particular, the American Revolution? One of the few expla- 
nations Chase offers is that the Anglo-American "special relationship" presents a 
challenge filmmakers cannot overcome, that being, the portrayal of one of 
America's staunchest allies as the primary villain or antagonist of the story. He 
cites British filmmaker Hugh Hudson's Revolution (1  985) as one of the only seri- 
ous treatments of the event, whereas most American films contribute "little to our 
understanding of American political and constitutional foundations"(35). 
Chase mentions other possible explanations without elaborating on them. 
For example, the heroes and the mythology that surround the American 
184 Reviews 
Revolution, and the institutions created in its wake, are not questioned to any 
great extent by the American people, filmmakers included. Instead, subsequent 
events, such as the civil war between the states, are measured against the ideals it 
is believed the Revolution represents. It is also possible that revolutionary move- 
ments in general are considered too politically sensitive. While the events and 
the principles that spawned the United States were themselves intensely ideolog- 
ical and revolutionary, American society throughout its subsequent history has 
been intensely counter-revolutionary, particularly during the twentieth-century 
characterised by relentless confrontations between the American-led western 
world and other opposing and seemingly incompatible political systems. 
Imagine, for example, an American filmmaker in the late 1940s or early 1950s 
summoning the nerve to address seriously - critically or even sympathetically - 
the ideological foundations of American society. 
Likewise, international law has not been as popular a cinematic subject as 
criminal or civil law. Why is this? Certainly the popular culture of a given coun- 
try is usually focused inward rather than outward. Yet it is curious that American 
filmmakers, citizens of one of the most forceful national advocates and architects 
of international law and its structures, have had so little interest in its portrayal 
through film. Chase offers little in explanation here except to remark, "The tena- 
cious survival of the doctrine of sovereignty and its accompanying list of rights 
exclusive to states . . . has prejudiced many against the idea of international law 
as law" (126). It is also possible, however, that the plethora of interpretations of 
international law held by Americans, including liberal-internationalism, conser- 
vative-internationalism, humanitarian-internationalism, unilateral-international- 
ism, and so on, makes the concept a difficult and confusing one for filmmakers 
to address. One should also remember that filmmakers and the studios employ- 
ing them want to make money with their films, and it has yet to be shown that 
American audiences are clamouring for features uncovering the workings of the 
World Bank or UNESCO. 
Are the "righteous" and even "cathartic" deaths of murderers and rapists at 
the hands of Dirty Harry Callaghan the images that inform audience conceptions 
of the average American police officer, or is it the more benign character present 
in other films? Both appear to have an equally significant influence on most 
viewers, leading to what lawyer and best-selling novelist Lisa Scottoline 
describes is an "almost complete merger of fiction and reality when it comes to 
the law" (159). Chase deals with the issue of cinematic realism in the book's 
closing section, asking: "What does realism mean within the context of legal cin- 
ema?'(l71) It is impossible to expect audiences to gain a realistic picture of the 
legal system through film, he insists, firstly, because the films themselves are 
often inaccurate in their portrayal of the issues, and secondly, because audiences 
lack a basic understanding of the legal system and remain "within a shadowy half 
world of legal knowledge and legal ignorance." "Movies are made, exhibited, and 
Reviews 185 
experienced by audiences within that half world, a universe of light and dark" 
(1 73). Through his examination of many films dealing with constitutional, crim- 
inal, civil, and international law, Chase concludes that while they provide a legal 
narrative to the audience, it is "a different kind of narrative, a different impres- 
sion of the legal system than conventional legal narrative, the language of lawyers 
and courts." The "visualization of legality" can be more or less true, but it is 
impossible to "argue that movies are simply a mirror held up to a system of blind 
justice, providing one more authorized account . . ." (1 80). 
Whether or not a realistic image of the American legal system is a reason- 
able goal for filmmakers, the fact remains that their productions provide some of 
the most powerful, if not the most powerful images that inform the audience's 
view of the system. This begs an important question that Chase chooses not to 
address in much detail: Should commercial filmmakers be expected to portray the 
American legal system in its pure form, or when it comes to the law is there still 
room for fiction? Aside from the minor criticisms above, however, Chase's exten- 
sive and well-written analysis offers much of interest to serious scholars and 
movie-buffs alike. In particular, Movies on Trial presents a well-argued case for 
the study of the legal genre of film as an essential means of gauging how people 
understand the rules, regulations and procedures of the American legal system. 
Mark A. Eaton 
University of Western Ontario 
Marc Edge, PaciJic Press: The Unauthorized Story of Vancouver5 Media 
Monopoly (Vancouver, New Star, 2002). 
The relationship between academia and the popular press has never been an easy 
one. Academics complain that journalists lack rigor. Editors complain that aca- 
demics cannot write. Pity the poor PhD who tries to write a scholarly book in a 
journalistic style. The result is usually an unhappy marriage: not rigorous enough 
for scholars, not engaging enough for the general public. 
Marc Edge's advisors likely warned him about this when he set himself the 
task of writing the history of Vancouver's two dominant newspapers, but unfor- 
tunately, PaciJic Press: The Unauthorized Story of Vancouver5 Media Monopoly 
succeeds in being both dull and sensationalist. Not only is it filled with clichCs, it 
lacks the narrative structure to draw a reader along. 
It is too bad, because Edge chose a great subject. Vancouver is infamous for 
its lack of media diversity. Today, both the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver 
Province are owned by CanWest Global. This means that the Aspers, according 
to a recent Department of Canadian Heritage report, control more than ninety- 
five percent of the city's newspapers. They also own Vancouver's two biggest tel- 


Anthony Chase — Movies on Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen

Coleman, Heather J.

226 Reviews 
Mary M. Leder, My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back, 
Laurie Bernstein, ed., introduction by Laurie Bernstein and Robert Weinberg, 
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 
This marvellous book chronicles the thirty-four year odyssey of a young 
American woman making her way alone in Stalin's Soviet Union. In 193 1, at 
the age of fifteen, Mary Mackler Leder arrived in Soviet Russia with her fam- 
ily, left-wing Russian-Jewish Americans who had come to build a socialist 
Jewish homeland in Birobidzhan. After taking one look at the mud of 
Birobidzhan, Leder journeyed on alone to Moscow, where she managed to find 
work, a bed in a workers' commune, and to learn Russian. Two years later, her 
disillusioned parents renounced their dream and returned to the United States, 
but by then, Leder had applied for Soviet citizenship in order to keep her job 
and, despite her desire to accompany her family, she was not permitted to leave. 
Leder would come of age and spend her entire young adulthood in the Soviet 
Union. We follow her as she joins the Young Communist League (Komsomol), 
begins work at the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow, studies at 
Moscow University, trains as an intelligence officer at the Commissariat of 
Defence, and works for the Soviet news bureau, TASS. Leder takes us through 
the horrors of the Second World War, including the death of her only child, to 
post-war Berlin, where her husband was stationed in 1946-47. Finally, she 
describes the rising anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union after the war, the wave 
of arrests among those with foreign connections, and her complete disillusion- 
ment with Soviet socialism. In 1959, her husband died and Leder began a strug- 
gle to return to the United States. Six years later, she left for good. 
Leder's plainly-written memoir thus describes many different contexts, 
from the world of fellow travellers working in Moscow in the 1930s to post-war 
Berlin. In particular, she provides the best description of everyday life in 
Stalinist Russia I have ever read. This is due to her marvellous memory for 
detail and to her frankness, but also to the fact that she writes as both an insid- 
er and an outsider in Soviet society. She sketches the intricate system of privi- 
leges that allocated food, clothing, housing, and medical care. She describes the 
various places she lived right down to their plumbing facilities, showing us how 
people interacted in communal apartments and exploring manners and social 
assumptions. Leder discusses at length the relationships between men and 
women, how she and her friends reacted to changing laws on abortion or mar- 
riage, and explains how people organized their sexual lives in crowded condi- 
tions. At the same time, Leder conveys the thrill of being a young person build- 
ing socialist Moscow in the 1930s as well as the terror that came to infuse all 
aspects of life and raised nagging doubts about the regime. 
Reviews 227 
Leder also provides fascinating insight into how the system of informers 
functioned. This is another aspect of life that was ubiquitous, but that mem- 
oirists rarely describe in personal terms. In 1938, the enthusiastic Komsomol 
activist was first recruited to inform on her colleagues at the publishing house. 
Leder describes in detail the "courting" process of recruitment, how she was 
reminded that the Soviet Union was surrounded by enemies and how her han- 
dler explained that the state needed information about public attitudes in order 
to consolidate socialism. Neither in 1938, nor during the war when she was 
again recruited, did it occur to Leder that she might refuse to co-operate. 
Indeed, although she remembers being rather evasive in her reports, this was 
not because she doubted the system, but because she believed that the police 
were targeting the wrong people. Leder also shows how people involved in the 
informer system sometimes tried to warn their targets. For example, in late 
1947, one of Mary's closest friends, Ahsia Shoyet, was recruited to spy on her. 
She immediately informed Mary and, after each appointment with her opera- 
tive, Ahsia would go to the Leders' room, where they would analyse every 
detail of the meeting and plot strategy for the next session. For this reason, iron- 
ically, Leder writes that she owes her life to Ahsia. Sober thinking for those 
given to seeing the world in black and white. 
Finally, Leder takes us into the world of Soviet Jewry in the 1930s and 
1940s. We visit the beginnings of the Jewish socialist homeland in distant 
Birobidzhan and encounter the community of native and foreign left-wing Jews 
in Moscow. Indeed, the reader is struck by how Leder's knowledge of Yiddish 
helped her get by in Moscow before she learned Russian. Later, we meet her 
husband's family of Jewish artisans in Rostov on Don and read with horror of 
their extermination by the Nazis. Leder's father-in-law had refused to leave 
Rostov, despite his son's urging, because he remembered the Germans as "civ- 
ilized" occupiers during the First World War and was convinced that reports of 
Nazi atrocities were merely Soviet propaganda. Finally, Leder remembers the 
first time that her Jewishness became an issue: in 1944, when an official 
implied to her that she had been turned down for Party membership because of 
her ethnicity. According to Leder, the vicious anti-Semitism of the post-war 
years proved very disillusioning for her circle of highly assimilated, left-wing 
Russian Jews. 
This memoir deserves the attention of a wide variety of audiences, from 
those interested in Stalinist culture, women's history, and Jewish studies to 
scholars of the Left in the mid twentieth century. It will most certainly appeal 
to undergraduate students. Moreover, the book is available in paperback, it is 
illustrated with interesting photographs, and includes a useful list of further 
readings. Laurie Bernstein and Robert Weinberg supply a brief, accessible 
introduction. 
228 Reviews 
A brief review cannot do justice to the many subjects addressed in Leder's 
absorbing book. I only wished that she had not stopped with Stalin's death, but 
described at greater length the last six years of the story - the period of de- 
Stalinization and her battle to return to the United States. 
Heather J. Coleman 
University of Calgary 
John Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of 
American Thought (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999). 
John Ryder has produced a remarkable study of the reaction of Soviet philoso- 
phers to American philosophical and political thought. Ryder systematically 
covers major American thinkers from the colonial period through the twentieth 
century, and from Puritan Messianism to naturalism. As Ryder notes, Soviet 
philosophers took history and the history of philosophy quite seriously, and 
their studies of American thought are also serious. One reason for this is that 
Marxists believe that the social, political and economic context of a given 
nation will strongly influence thought. These thoughts concern such funda- 
mental issues as freedom and workers' rights in various political systems. 
Soviet interest in American thought had much to do with understanding the sys- 
tem that was opposed to it during the Cold War. Another reason for Soviet 
interest in American thought was that both nations were born of revolution. 
Soviet scholars emphasized class and economic interests as major motivating 
factors in philosophy, with bourgeois interests permeating all thought. Ryder 
focuses almost exclusively on Soviet writers from the 1950s onward. 
Interpreting America covers a series of interesting topics and philosophers 
that Ryder discusses thoroughly and precisely. In his discussion of Puritan 
Messianism which developed, unlike its British form, in the absence of feudal 
social institutions, Ryder notes that Soviet scholars were reasonably concerned 
about the place of religion in American secular society, an important subject for 
them given that theirs was a society that officially promoted atheism. They had 
interest in Roger Williams as the most significant representative of Puritan 
thought, as well as in Increase Mather and Cotton Mather. They explored the 
ideas of Samuel Johnson who had been stimulated by Berkeley's Treatise on 
Principles of Human Knowledge and his Three Dialogzdes Between Hylas and 
Philonous. Ryder then turns to the American Enlightenment and aspects of 
American political theory: the notion of the necessity of central government, 


Mary M. Leder — My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back

Murray, Sylvie

Reviews 137 
not all anti-communist hawks? Yet her analysis is generally strong and she 
admirably develops her "pieces of evidence." Some errors intrude on an other- 
wise provocative and very useful work: 1 10,000 not 70,000 Japanese Americans 
were interned by the War Relocation Authority and Nixon's "southern strategy" 
was his reelection strategy, not his strategy in 1968. Walter Mondale was not a 
key player in the compromise presented to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic 
Party in 1964, although Joseph Rauh of the ADA was. Why is there no discus- 
sion of Israel as a factor in the ADA or Minnesota politics in 1948? The book 
would be stronger if it ended after the eighth chapter and lefi out the Epilogue 
that attempts to carry the story from 1948 to 1968. The author also periodical- 
ly uses the first person, which produced in this reader an urge to get out the old 
red pencil! However, these inadequacies are minimal beside the book's impor- 
tant exploration of the relationships and ideas that account for America's steady 
movement to the Right since, Delton argues, 1948. Keep writing, Professor 
DeIton! 
Gretchen Cassel Eick, 
Friends University 
Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class 
Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1956 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
2002). 
Becky Nicolaides' history of South Gate, a working-class suburb bordering Los 
Angeles on the southeast, opens with the powerful image of its residents stand- 
ing guard over their homes, "some on roofiops, others on porches, some bran- 
dishing weapons7' as one of the worst urban riots of the 1960s is raging across 
the railroad tracks in Watts. The book traces the journey of these white residents 
from suburban homesteaders, primarily concerned by issues of economic sur- 
vival, to their transformation into the more conventional post-World War I1 sub- 
urbanites, concerned by race above all. Given the tremendous transformation 
that the suburb underwent since its first lot was sold in 1920, and the thorough- 
ness of the book's reach -- it examines every aspect of the residents' lives from 
work to consumption and worship - it is an ambitious goal which is, on the 
whole, successfully met. 
The book's first part on the interwar period is the most original. The fas- 
cinating story of working-class families building their homes themselves in 
order to get access to the advantages of suburban living has been told elsewhere 
- one is reminded, for instance, of Richard Hams's Unplanned Suburbs - but 
Nicolaides weaves together economic, cultural, social and political strands to 
provide a complex picture of a suburban community not only dominated by a 
138 Reviews 
concern for economic autonomy but deeply divided by class conflicts. 
Her account of "suburban homesteading" in South Gate is a powerful 
reminder of the various meanings that the ownership of residential property has 
taken over the course of the twentieth century. With more "sweat equity" than 
cash at their disposal the original South Gate residents build their own modest 
bungalows and turned their suburban plots into productive property by using 
their backyards for raising small livestock and home gardens. Hence, their "sub- 
urban homestead" had utilitarian rather than aesthetic value; it provided a sup- 
plement (or alternative in times ofjoblessness) to unpredictable cash income and 
offered them economic security and autonomy; it allowed them to remain inde- 
pendent and self-reliant, values that they prized above all. 
The fierce independence of South Gate residents - especially of the blue- 
collar workers who constituted the community's largest group - is described 
most effectively in the author's analysis of "the texture of everyday life" (chap- 
ter 3). In this chapter she explores the impact that one's occupation and place 
of work had on social experience (including patterns of consumption and 
leisure) and allegiance to the local community. Most significant here, and 
indeed one of the strengths of the book, is the attention given to the class dif- 
ferences and conflicts within the suburb during its first decades - particularly 
between blue-collar workers and merchants. She convincingly demonstrates 
that while the two groups shared an identity as homeowners and suburbanites, 
their loyalty to the local community was vastly different. In a refreshing rever- 
sal of the classic - and elitist - local/cosmopolitan divide, the workers are 
described here as mobile and cosmopolitan, while the merchants appear provin- 
cial and parochial. Not only did the former commute to work, but they also trav- 
eled to shop (and bargain hunt), play, and socialize: "To them, Los Angeles was 
a safe, welcome, familiar place. They experienced an easy openness and per- 
meability between their hometown and the larger city" (71). In contrast, "the 
merchants were a more provincial lot" (96); "they developed a parochial men- 
tality" (101). Largely because of economic interests (their livelihood afier all 
was based on local patronage), they exhibited a strong commitment to South 
Gate and their day-to-day experience was largely confined within the suburb's 
boundary. 
The salience of conflicting economic interests, and resulting tension 
between workers and merchants, is more than ever present in the analysis of 
local politics offered in chapter four. The merchants, with their "place-based 
conception of community," promoted the suburb's economic growth and devel- 
opment, which included local shopping, expensive improvement projects (rang- 
ing from paved streets to ornamental lights), and higher taxes. This conflicted 
with the workers' suburban dream, which was predicated on affordable proper- 
ty and low taxes. Again, suburban homeownership, far from the consensus that 
it has been presented to be, is described as the site of profound tensions among 
Reviews 139 
suburbanites themselves - tensions ordered around diverging class interests. 
The centrality of class-based politics, and its predominance over racial con- 
cerns in the prewar period, is also effectively illustrated in the debate over edu- 
cation. South Gate residents, in an effort to keep their taxes down, approved 
annexation with the racially-mixed Watts School District where school expendi- 
tures were lower than in neighbouring all-white towns. As the author rightly 
notes, for ex-southerners this was no small matter - especially in the face of a 
vigorous opposition by the suburb's merchants who would have preferred annex- 
ation with a better-off and all-white town. That it represented a temporary 
accommodation based on strictly economic motives - rather than on racial lib- 
eralism - is made clear by the context of deteriorating racial relations in 1920s 
L.A., including the widespread use of restrictive covenants to maintain a strict 
residential segregation, and the residents' fierce opposition to racial integration 
in the 1960s. But in the prewar decades, the residents "simply could not afford 
the level of segregation they desired" (164). The author's skilled and nuanced 
treatment of this issue highlights the prime concern for economic security that 
dominated the early period, without ignoring the racial (and racist) views har- 
bored by South Gate residents: "The massive popular support for this move 
revealed how South Gate chose to balance its fears. The tax fear had won out, 
overpowering even concerns about race." (1 67) 
It is in this balance between class and race fears that the differences between 
the prewar and the postwar experiences lay most centrally. While homeowner- 
ship had been invested in the prewar period primarily with economic concerns 
and had led to internal class tensions, it was redefined in the postwar period by 
a defensive posture "to segregate, protect, and defend their suburb (182) from 
external - and racial - "threats." Here the author's main argument that race 
replaced class as the main focus of the residents' identity and politics comes to 
the fore. As blue-collar families experienced greater economic security and 
upward mobility - moving "beyond sheer survival to comfort and even afflu- 
ence" (231) - the suburb itself also experienced greater social solidarity. 
Internal class tensions subsided and a shared sense of community emerged. An 
active civic life, in which workers now played a central role, flourished and 
focused on "the sort of defensive protectionism and NIMBYism characteristic 
of postwar neighborhood associations.. ." (265). The suburban advantages that 
they sought were no longer based strictly on the "use" value of their property, 
but on its "commodity" value which could be lessened by a number of tangible 
and less tangible factors. Hence, various "threats" - including tenants, juvenile 
delinquents, encroaching industries, and above all, their black neighbours to the 
west and civil rights activists in L.A. - now mobilized the residents who acted 
with a newfound unity in defense of their suburb. 
For the postwar period, the book reinforces the well-established narrative of 
middle-class defensive racism, and situates South Gate squarely within the con- 
140 Reviews 
text of the white backlash against racial liberalism. By showing how these blue- 
collar workers were at the forefront of that important social and political move- 
ment, the book makes an important contribution, complementing well, for 
instance, Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors, which documents the rise of con- 
servatism in the better-off suburbs of Orange County in the early 1960s. But if 
racial tensions are given due attention, and their centrality in the politics of 
South Gate in the 1960s irrefutable, the related argument that Nicolaides makes 
about the erosion of class tensions in the immediate postwar period and the exis- 
tence of a new communal consensus is not as compelling. (It must be said that 
the author acknowledges that economic concerns did not completely disappear 
- for instance, they were intimately tied to the fear of residential integration - 
but class tensions within the community seemingly had). While providing a 
clear analytical thread, statements such as "when class divisions dissolved into 
postwar consensus, race moved to the fore" (271), might be too neat to be his- 
torically accurate. In fact, the meticulous analysis of class conflicts.that charac- 
terizes the first part of the book is lacking in the second (or, at least, does not 
seem as convincing) - and especially for the 1940s and 1950s, which were key 
transitional decades in matters of suburban politics. 
The author's argument that class divisions eroded in the postwar period is 
based on a number of facts ranging from the improved material circumstances 
of blue-collar families to the greater participation of workers in civic associa- 
tions where they fought, along with the merchants, to defend their suburban 
community from external threats. Another element presented by the author as 
evidence of "the demise of class-based politics" is the fact that blue-collar work- 
ers' loyalty to their union did not go beyond the shop floor (workers ignored, for 
instance, social activities sponsored by the union, or its progressive stance on 
racial equality when it came to neighbourhood politics). But in light of the 
strong case that the author makes for class-based conflicts in the community in 
the prewar period, during a time when union loyalty was also weak, this last 
point appears almost irrelevant. However it is in the case of the politics of con- 
sumption that the argument about interclass reconciliation is most problematic. 
The merchants' support of the South Gate workers who participated in the GM 
strike of 1945-46 is one instance that the author cites to support her case that 
merchants and workers "began to recognize their shared interests" (239). The 
fact that the local strikers defined their struggle in terms of their purchasing 
power, which the merchants recognized as in their interests also, is crucial to the 
argument. But the merchants' perception that workers would spend their 
increased disposable income locally is left unquestioned; in fact, this proposi- 
tion is far from evident given the strong independence and the metropolitan ori- 
entation the workers had displayed prior to the war. Why would working-class 
families who had always considered the greater L.A. - and not simply South 
Gate - their territory when it came to shopping now confined themselves to 
Reviews 141 
shopping locally? While the book effectively shows that the merchants and civil 
rights activists racialized the politics of consumption in the 1960s, nothing is 
said about the workers themselves, indeed the possibility of a continuing class 
divergence in patterns of consumption is left unexamined. 
A related problem is the assumption that an ideological consensus existed 
in the community. The author mentions in passing the existence of a vocal lib- 
eral minority in the suburb in the context of her discussion of the debate over 
racial integration in 1964. But where these suburban liberals were in the 1950s 
is unclear. Also, the possibility that they used civic associations to challenge 
their neighbours' emerging conservatism is not considered. As my study of sub- 
urban Queens and Rosalyn Baxandall's and Elizabeth Ewen's work on Levittown 
have shown, community organizations were often sites where neighbours debat- 
ed political issues. The same might have been true of South Gate as well. 
The author's conclusions about the predominance of race in shaping local 
politics in the 1960s are not called into question by these criticisms. But the 
book could have been strengthened by a lesser reliance on the ever-problematic 
concept of "consensus" and a more careful attention to internal conflicts over 
class or other issues in the immediate postwar period. This said, My Blue 
Heaven remains a very important accomplishment, and will play an influential 
role in the ongoing debate about the changing politics of twentieth-century sub- 
urbanites. 
Sylvie Murray 
University College of the Fraser Valley 
Marjoleine Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre- 
Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill and London: University of North 
Carolina Press, 2002). 
Historians have long treated the Regulation in North Carolina as a prelude to the 
Revolutionary crisis. Along with the poor in colonial seaports, tenants in upstate 
New York, and border dwellers in New England, Regulators enter the narrative 
of the imperial crisis to stage a dress rehearsal for the independence movement 
to come. For some, their actions signaled that the Revolution would sometimes 
jump the boundaries of a confined, constitutional challenge to Great Britain to 
become a class-conscious social rebellion. For others their cause prepared the 
ground for wartime disaffection from the Patriot cause in the southern back- 
country. The study under review also places the Regulators squarely in the rev- 
olutionary generation, but Marjoleine Kars is much more interested in the caus- 
es of the uprising than the consequences of it. This beautifully written and 
argued book focuses on the long-term economic and political tensions that ulti- 


Becky Nicolaides — My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class Suburbs in Los Angeles, 1920-1956

Cole, Peter

Quakertown Blues: Philadelphia's Longshoremen and the Decline of the IWW

Scipes, Kim

Reviews 163 
due to rigid adherence to independence, a broad platform, and rejection of 
fusion. 
Part of the problem is a stylistic choice to let the insurgents "speak for 
themselves." The approach minimizes distortion of their collective message. It 
becomes somewhat of a liability when analyzing the dynamics of party com- 
petition. Explanations for the G.L.P.'s failure are drawn almost solely from its 
adherents, and focus on mudslinging and bulldozing. Lause argues "context" 
over "partisanship," yet his own narrative indicates the latter was important. In 
a footnote, he relates that cultural regimentation also arrested the turn to social- 
ism. If he means it supplemented political oppression, which appears the case, 
then perhaps partisanship was important after all. Cultural regimentation also 
featured socialization into party subcultures. Maybe entrenched partisanship 
was a major obstacle for the G.L.P. In the South, for example, he attributes 
Democratic hostility to racism. While this factor was important, partisanship is 
also pertinent to explaining Democratic antagonism towards threats to its 
powerbase. Indeed, ritualistic behavior displayed at the unity convention indi- 
cates even the G.L.P. was not entirely free from the trappings of broader tradi- 
tional partisan cultures. 
Lause is rightly skeptical of pronouncements by victors, and his study is a 
valuable corrective to earlier treatments which overemphasized fusionist ten- 
dencies. Yet, the thesis is overdrawn, and thereby skews the third party profile 
towards radicalism, albeit an influential faction within the G.L.P., but not nec- 
essarily its defining element. Despite its national aspirations and desire to 
realign the electoral system, the G.L.P. achieved neither objective, nor is its 
demise necessarily traceable only to overt political repression. Indeed, its rise 
and fall may actually have contributed to spawning more fusionist-oriented par- 
ties in the future that sought to avoid its fate. A disjuncture may have occurred 
in 1880, but there may be more to the case for continuity than Lause concedes. 
Tom L. Franzmann 
Stillwater, Oklahoma 
Kenneth Warren, Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel 
Corporation, 1901 -2001 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 200 1). 
Kenneth Warren has written what will probably be seen as the definitive histo- 
ry of US Steel, or at least of its first 100 years. This is a book that is compre- 
hensive, detailed and, despite being heavily based on documents from US Steel 
164 Reviews 
itself, critical. In addition, although focusing on US Steel, his story is placed 
within the larger context of the development of the American steel industry as 
a whole, so it will also prove to be a critical source on the industry's develop- 
ment in the United States as well. 
The book is a straight-forward rendition of the corporation's history. While 
it does not focus on each plant or each product line, it is focused around 
"themes of technological and locational change, major shifts in corporate pol- 
icy, and reaction to new patterns of demand or government pressure of all 
kinds" (xvii-xviii). Professor Warren was allowed access to corporate docu- 
ments, and had over 12 hours of interviews with top corporate officers, some 
in office and some retired. He has tried to understand why the corporation took 
a particular developmental path at different times, and not only accounts for 
these changes but critically evaluates them as well. 
The contradiction that Warren focuses upon is the one between potential 
and reality: when formed, US Steel was the largest industrial corporation in the 
world, and "this exceptional size was expected to confer exceptional commer- 
cial advantages" (I). Yet, this never worked out: the humongous size of the cor- 
poration never provided these advantages - at least not until a radically 
slimmed down version of the corporation emerged in the 1990s - and, in fact, 
usually worked against the corporation. US Steel basically was an amalgama- 
tion of different steel companies, each which had been developed to meet its 
respective needs, and until the late 1980s - late in its eighth decade! - was 
never rationalized to meet a strategic plan that directed the development of the 
new corporation. As such, it took a "supermarket" approach to steel production, 
trying to provide steel from one "source" to meet each and every need. This was 
an approach that might have worked had the corporation focused its efforts 
from the beginning on technological and organizational innovation, but its very 
size made it a continuing target of public and government attention, and the 
ramifications of such innovation would probably have brought it increased anti- 
trust pressures. 
However, Warren suggests quite strongly that technological and organiza- 
tional innovation was never at the heart of US Steel's evolution. The term he 
uses again and again to describe US Steel's efforts is "entrepreneurial failure," 
meaning that the corporation failed to respond quickly, much less take the lead, 
in addressing numerous issues in the industry. 
This entrepreneurial failure occurred in a range of different areas. The 
company failed to address the issue of locational change: as steel markets shift- 
ed westward and then southward, the corporation remained overly focused on 
the Pittsburgh area. The company failed to address changes in product demand 
- as the economy shifted from a production-base to to a consumer-base, with 
the latter's demand for lighter steels, much of the corporation's capabilities 
Reviews 165 
remained in heavier steels. And it especially missed key shifts in technology, 
such as the shift to oxygenated steel making and continuous casting production. 
Thus, US Steel lagged behind its competitors in many different areas - and 
these competitors were not only other steel companies in North America but, 
by the mid-1950s, included a growing number of overseas steel corporations 
that exported increasing amounts of steel into the US. And, interestingly, 
despite all the alligator tears cried by steel companies in the US over the years 
about the high wages the evil steelworkers' union forced them to pay, which 
supposedly made it so terribly difficult to compete with overseas-based com- 
panies, Warren gives this issue short shrift, noting that high productivity was 
more important than low wages. 
The biggest failure by US Steel was in its response to "mini-mills" that 
emerged in North America in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Instead of having to 
produce their own iron to make steel, the mini-mills rely on scrap iron as the 
base for production. Their more recent development allowed them to better 
locate their mills, giving them better access to their chosen markets. Especially 
in the early years, the "minis" had a definite cost advantage over the older, 
unionized companies. But more importantly, managements were more flexible 
and there was less development of a hierarchy between management and 
labour. These differences resulted in an incredible productivity gap: "In the late 
1980s, despite recent improvements, many integrated firms still required 5.5-6 
man-hours [sic] per ton of steel products; the figure for mini-mills was then 
commonly 1.5-2 man-hours [sic]" (286). This gave mini-mills almost a $100 
per ton cost advantage. 
From the late 1970s into the early 1990s, US Steel went through a tremen- 
dous down-sizing process - over 330,000 jobs were destroyed between 1973- 
1990 - as it tried to recreate itself, based on its most productive and modern 
plants. Inefficient andlor poorly located plants were closed, and excess raw 
material holdings were sold off. Through this process, US Steel has emerged as 
one of the most efficient steel-making corporations in the world today. 
Ironically, it was only when the corporation focused on a few things and did 
them well - repudiating much of its corporate history and rationale for exis- 
tence - did it excel as a steel corporation. It is this story that Warren tells so 
very well. But he does more. The sub-text of the book, at least as I read it, is 
the disembowelment of much of the capitalist propaganda about the knowl- 
edge, expertise, and rational decision-making of the corporate enterprise and 
particularly corporate management. And although Warren focuses on the out- 
comes of policy, rather than the processes by which it develops, the critique is 
devastating: despite having the resources to procure the very best expertise and 
knowledge to guide their company, US Steel officers again and again failed to 
meet the challenge of their competitors. For many years, its huge size hid its 
166 Reviews 
limitations, but the restructuring of the last third of the 20th century illuminat- 
ed the traditional weaknesses of US Steel for all to see. 
That being said about the contributions of this book - and there are many 
-this still remains a deeply dissatisfying book to this reviewer. Warren not only 
fails to discuss the steelworkers, whose knowledge and labour-power contribute 
so strongly to the successes the corporation did achieve, but he all-but-ignores 
corporate policy toward labour. It's like managerial decisions concerning orga- 
nizational development are all that count in the making of steel. 
This management-focus fails, of course, to account for the efforts of work- 
ers to control the workplace, reduce management discretion, and end abuse by 
foremen, processes that led toward organizing and unionization. The 19 19 steel 
strike is covered in less than two pages. But as unsatisfactory as that is, the 
account of the 1937 decision by US Steel Chairman Myron Taylor to accept the 
presence of and sign a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee 
is even worse. (SWOC was the organizational predecessor to the United 
Steelworkers of America.) The single most powerful corporation in the world at 
the time was forced to accept unionization by some of its workforce - SWOC 
only could bargain for its members as a result of the 1937 contracts, not all pro- 
duction workers - and this gets less than four pages of discussion! And some 
of that is simply wrong! 
To me, this is one of the key developments in the corporation's history. US 
Steel had been virulently anti-union from its earliest days, and had not signed 
a collective bargaining agreement after 1909. Management had worked hard to 
keep workers separated by ethnic, and then racial, discrimination in job place- 
ment. It undoubtedly opposed the early New Deal programs of US President 
Franklin Roosevelt, but established Employee Representation Plans in 1933, 
when after the National Industrial Recovery Act became law it was hoped that 
this would preclude unionization. It made massive investment in espionage and 
spying, and union advocates were dismissed when discovered. The Corporation 
opposed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, and Roosevelt's re-election 
efforts in 1936. In short, the Corporation was not about to cede any manage- 
ment prerogative to labour without a struggle. 
And yet, Myron Taylor decided to accept SWOC without even a strike. 
Warren conjures up the threat of a "damaging strike" that supposedly was to 
take place on April, 1937 to explain part of the reason for the acceptance of the 
union, but provides no evidence of this possible strike: the historical evidence 
for such a strike remains well hidden, as the steelworker organizing drive was 
far less successfbl than SWOC's propaganda at the time claimed. Yes, orders for 
the corporation were improving, and a strike could have hurt this recovery from 
the Depression, but there is no evidence that SWOC was planning to strike, and 
there had to be serious discussion within top-level management over labour- 
related issues - but one gets no hint of this from Warren. 
Reviews 167 
Other things are missing, too. There's no mention of the impact of the 
autoworkers' successful sit-downs in Flint, Michigan against General Motors in 
late 1936-early 1937 on Taylor's thinking. There is no awareness by Warren of 
the organizing going on in the mills that preceded founding of SWOC in June, 
1936, and how steelworkers had organized particularly in the Chicago area but 
around Pittsburgh and Youngstown as well. There was no mention of the cor- 
poration\ efforts to buy off steelworkers with a small raise in November, 1936, 
after it had refused such in the preceding September. Nor was there any men- 
tion of the reports going to John Stephens, head of Industrial Relations, from 
African-American newspaper entrepreneur Claude Barnett and his researchers 
in Gary, Indiana: Barnett's researchers were finding that African-American 
steelworkers in Gary were terribly aware of the racial discrimination in the 
mills, blamed corporate management for such discrimination, and were over- 
whelmingly unwilling to scab against a C10 strike on behalf of the corporation. 
In short, Warren ignores a key factor in the development of the corpora- 
tion: the unionization of its workforce. Management was forced to accept col- 
lective bargaining by some of its workforce, and managerial domination in the 
workplace began being attenuated. Major strikes in 1946 and especially 1959 
affected corporate productivity and management rule. The union - despite its 
many limitations - both improved things for production workers, and limited 
management discretion in closing plants or restructuring. But to Warren, this is 
of no consequence. 
And yet, failure on the issue of labour and labour relations is only an indi- 
cation of the limitation of the overall study: Warren fails to understand the 
social power of US Steel - this was no ordinary corporation, at least until the 
early 1970s: it was a power within the US social order and, accordingly, the 
world. It was the dominant corporation in the industry that was key to eco- 
nomic development in North America, Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union. It 
is this larger sense that is missing from Warren's details, and his presentation 
excludes any sense of the larger drama in which upper management was 
involved. 
In short, this is a book that I expect will be the standard on its subject for 
many years to come. Warren provides considerable data, strong arguments and 
critical evaluation of his subject. If one wants an economistic and technology- 
focused study, it will be hard to surpass this. But there is so much more to the 
corporate history that is missing - and it is this missing larger sense that keeps 
this study from being a classic. 
Kim Scipes 
University of Illinois at Chicago 


Kenneth Warren — Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation, 1901-2001

Wall, Sharon

"To Train a Wild Bird": E.F. Wilson, Hegemony, and Native Industrial Education at the Shingwauk and Wawanosh Residential Schools, 1873-1893

Spangler, Jewel L.

Marjoleine Kars — Breaking Loose Together: The Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina

McCann, Gillian

Reviews 155 
strates the utility of spatial theory for non-geographers, and in so doing gives 
historians new questions to ask about the intersection of space with race, gen- 
der, and immigration. It shows historians who are already interested in race, 
gender, migration, aboriginal peoples, colonization and settler societies how 
space interacts with and shapes the categories and questions we are already 
using in our analyses. Second, by pinpointing some of the ways in which race, 
space, and the law have interacted in Canada to marginalize First Nations peo- 
ple and people of colour, this collection offers another tool with which to 
unmap, and possible dismantle, the pervasive racism that has structured 
Canada's past and present. 
Sheila McManus 
University of Lethbridge 
Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine, Theosophy and Feminism in England (Baltimore: 
The John Hopkins University Press, 2001) 
At the end of Divine Feminine, Joy Dixon states that one of the most significant 
questions that emerges from her study is the relationship of spirituality to mod- 
ern political life. While Dixon's book takes on a number of topics it is the nexus 
of spirituality, feminism and socialism in late nineteenth to early twentieth cen- 
tury Britain that is the backbone of the work. Dixon argues that the Theosophical 
movement was a major site of feminist activity where crucial questions of the 
time were framed and debated. 
The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 in New York City by 
Russian emigrke Helena Blavatsky and American Henry Steel Olcott. The soci- 
ety's stated aim was to "form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of 
Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour." While inter- 
ested in comparative religion generally, Theosophists focused particularly on the 
Indian religious traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. The society was plagued 
by scandals and considered by many to be a refuge for "cranks" and eccentrics 
of all descriptions. Theosophy seemed destined to become an interesting foot- 
note in western history. However, with the radical changes wrought in historical 
methodology particularly the rise of social history and feminist and esoteric 
studies, the impact of Theosophy has been reconsidered. A growing body of 
work has shown that Theosophy was influential far beyond what membership 
numbers would indicate. Historians have begun to map out the connections 
between this group and the counterculture of the 1960's, feminist spirituality and 
the New Age movement. 
Dixon's book, which builds on her 1993 dissertation ("Gender, Politics and 
Culture in the New Age: Theosophy in England, 1880-1935"), contributes to this 
156 Reviews 
growing field of research. One of Dixon's central claims is that most historians 
have mistakenly linked religion solely to conservatism and anti-modemism and 
that this impedes a true understanding of the early feminist movement in Britain. 
The author states that the ascendancy of scientific styles of socialism has 
"shaped the historiography of socialism itself." As a result, according to Dixon, 
histories of early feminism fail to take into account that causes such as woman 
suffrage, animal rights, and socialism were viewed by many of the women who 
fought for them as part of their larger religious worldview. Many accounts sim- 
ply ignore the possibility that religious belief might be a factor in political 
action. 
A growing number of feminist scholars in the field of alternative religion, 
however, have also viewed spirituality as a potentially liberating force for 
women. Both Ann Braude and Alex Owen, in their studies of women in the 
Spiritualist movement, have claimed that religion and political activism went 
hand in hand. In her work on women's leadership in alternative religious tradi- 
tions, editor Catherine Wessinger notes the excellent track record in regard to 
female representation of groups such as Theosophists, Spiritualists and 
Christian Scientists. These religions offered women an opportunity to speak 
publicly, to write, and to take positions of power at a time when they were legal- 
ly barred from voting, owning property, attending university or practicing a pro- 
fession. Dixon argues in Divine Feminine that rather than being oppressive to 
women, alternative spirituality was often an empowering force. Dixon also notes 
that the sort of woman who was likely to join the Theosophical Society also 
often belonged to a much larger movement that included "oppositional politics 
and alternative spirituality." Theosophists like Annie Besant and Charlotte 
Despard were among the most radical and effective political organizers of their 
time and both were devoted to the spiritual ideals of the Theosophical Society. 
The Theosophical Society was founded by a woman, and women main- 
tained important leadership positions from 1875 onward. Theosophical beliefs 
postulated that the ideal person was mentally androgynous and did not privilege 
one gender over another (at least on an ideological level). While Dixon shows 
that Theosophists were heir to many of the sexist ideas of their time, she also 
demonstrates that many Theosophists made a concerted effort to rework ideas 
about gender and the role of women. As the result, the Theosophical Society 
then supported women's activity in public life in the realms of writing, lecturing 
and organizing and also contained an egalitarian ideal at the theological level. In 
this way, as Dixon's study shows, Theosophy carved out a space where women 
could engage with new ideas and influence the larger culture. 
Dixon's work is something of an embarrassment of riches for a feminist his- 
torian of religion. This monograph discusses female leadership in alternative 
spirituality, the attempt to construct a feminine form of god or "divine femi- 
nine," and the complex and shifting discourse on race, class and gender in 
Reviews 157 
England from the late 19th century to the 1920's. Dixon also asserts that the 
ideas developed in early British feminism continue to shape current discussions. 
The problems of race and internationalism were already evident by the early 
twentieth century as Theosophical feminists attempted to form links with the 
women's movement in India. The controversy over whether femaleness was an 
essential category had also already emerged at this early stage. On the extreme 
end of the argument Frances Swiney wrote in 1899 that women were the supe- 
rior sex and that the male element was a "waste product of nature." Overall, 
however, Theosophical feminists took less of a hard-line and advocated the ideal 
of mental and spiritual androgyny in which aspects of both genders were main- 
tained in balance. The debate over femininity and whether it is constructed or 
innate continues into the present. In her recent book Communion: The Female 
Search for Love bell hooks critiques Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller for 
asserting that women are innately different from men. In Divine Feminine Joy 
Dixon reveals the genesis of these ongoing questions and the context in which 
they were formed. 
Her analysis of the material is subtle and while she is clearly sympathetic 
to the Theosophical project, Dixon notes that many of their conceptions were 
shot through with ideas of class and race privilege. However, she refuses either 
to valorize or condemn the movement but instead demonstrates how 
Theosophical women negotiated questions related to spirituality, race, class and 
gender. Divine Feminine is scrupulously well-researched and Dixon uses 
Theosophical archival sources, British feminist weeklies, and the journals and 
biographies of women to good effect. The contents of the latter buttress the 
author's arguments as they allow a glimpse into the subjectivity of these women 
and their motivations for political action. 
Divine Feminine would be of particular interest to historians of feminism 
and occult movements, but is also likely to appeal to general readers. Dixon 
writes engagingly and the Theosophists never fail to fascinate and entertain. In 
their case, Byron could not be more correct: fact is stranger than fiction. The 
author discusses some of the excrescences of the Theosophical Society such as 
Annie Besant's announcement of the arrival of the World Mother in the person 
of Rukrnini Devi by putting it in the context of the feminist and millennia1 move- 
ments of the period. Dixon's work is original and she refuses to create 
dichotomies between the spiritual and the political, revealing the way in which 
Theosophical feminists blended the personal and public and their refusal to 
accept liberal ideas of individualism. The author shows how the multiplicity of 
causes espoused by these women were all related to their belief in a higher Life 
and an attempt to build a society in line with Theosophical ideals. 
Gillian McCann 
University of Toronto 


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