[Marxism] Centrist skunk reviews leftist book

[Aaron Aarons]

1) The first half of Wolfe's review is favorable enough that it will probably help sell Sugrue's book, at least to people who can afford $35 ($23 on Amazon), even if people read the whole review.

2) I do think the Ocean Hill--Brownsville controversy is worth a lot more than two paragraphs in a book on this topic. It did show the limitations of white middle-class liberalism, and the complexity of issues around union rights of mostly-white workers. (Still pretty much of a workerist at the time, I originally supported the striking teachers. But, after attending their mass demonstration at City Hall, I was repelled by the obvious racism that was expressed by some and tolerated by the rest.)

3) I don't think "the fact that a creep like Wolfe is so hostile to Sugrue should be seen as all the
evidence you need that the book is first-rate." There are plenty of crummy leftist books, as well as good ones, that are panned by bourgeois critics.

 - Aaron

P.S. The ISBN of the book is 0679643036.

>Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:17:32 -0500
>From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
>Cc: wolfe at bc.edu
>Subject: [Marxism] Centrist skunk reviews leftist book
>
>(Once again the neoconservative NY Times Book Review section assigns
>someone with rightist politics to review a leftist book. According to
>the wiki entry on reviewer Alan Wolfe, he "was a member of the
>collective that put out the Marxist-oriented journal, Kapitalistate,
>whose pages featured articles by such writers as Poulantzas, Claus
>Offe, Ralph Miliband, and Bob Jessop. By the early 1980s, Wolfe's
>politics had become more centrist." Nowadays he is a contributing
>editor to the ineffable New Republic magazine and accordingly
>pontificates: "He spends a disproportionate amount of time writing
>about Marxist extremists and crackpot demagogues, devoting a dozen
>pages, for example, to the Revolutionary Action Movement, a
>violence-spouting Maoist sect. Yet he manages only two paragraphs for
>the Ocean Hill--Brownsville controversy in Brooklyn, which did so
>much to fracture the alliance between blacks and Jews." Albert
>Shanker could not have put it better. Furthermore, the fact that a
>creep like Wolfe is so hostile to Sugrue should be seen as all the
>evidence you need that the book is first-rate.)
>
>NY Times, November 9, 2008
>Uncommon Ground
>By ALAN WOLFE
>
>SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
>
>The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
>By Thomas J. Sugrue
>Illustrated. 688 pp. Random House. $35
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