The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left

Although long tainted by association with disloyalty and nutty sectarianism, socialism is actually as American as apple pie, according to this engaging apologia for the left. Weinstein, ex-Communist, founder of Socialist Review and publisher of In These Times, argues that socialists were once a prominent and positive force in American democracy: they energized the labor movement, won elective office and proposed reforms--the eight hour day, unemployment insurance, abolition of child labor, public ownership of utilities, progressive income taxes--that became the cornerstone of Progressive, New Deal and Great Society legislation. The left lost its way, Weinstein contends, after the Russian Revolution, when sterile debates about the Soviet Union, and Communists' subservience to Moscow, marginalized it from the American mainstream. Then, in the 1960s, the New Left squandered an opportunity to reenter mainstream politics by failing to articulate a broad social vision and embracing an outre lifestyle radicalism that alienated Middle America. Weinstein's clear prose, free of Leninist cant, examines a forgotten but vital aspect of American political history. Some of his criticisms of the left miss the mark (his complaint that""few New Leftists thought much about a different form of society"" will surprise radical feminists and Deep Ecologists); and sometimes, as with his rehash of New Left factional infighting or his insistence that Soviet tyranny was""fundamentally incompatible"" with Marx's ideas, he can't resist gnawing on old sectarian bones. Still, he makes a strong case for the importance of the left reclaiming its rightful place in American politics.