Making History

by Richard Flacks

Looks at the history of American participation in politic, explains the reasons for public apathy, and assesses the ability of Left to reestablish political influence in the U.S.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

313 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1988

Reviews

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

One wonders, reading this book in 2016, if anything could persuade Dr. Flacks to issue a new edition assessing what has changed, and what has remained the same, for the American left since this book appeared during the Reagan era. Tracing the development of social movements in recent American history and exploring the historic tension between private liberty and social responsibility, and the tension within left projects between democratization and vanguardism. Much of his analysis is still highly relevant even though the book's position is an America before Clintonism took hold of the Democratic Party, before the internet made its impact on social movements and professional politics, before the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements asserted themselves.

[Gordon Hilgers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flacks, present at the signing of the SDS's Port Huron Statement early in the Sixties, writes with some frustration that, despite upsurges in the American Left over the last 100 or so years, no sustained movement has appeared in America, and he tries to understand why this is so. The author concentrates his attention on the Socialist left of Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Joe Hill and forward to the period of anti-Vietnam War resistance in which he participated. However, he gives little or no attention to the rise of modern Liberalism as a challenge to strictly Socialist ideas and ideology, and perhaps here is where this well-conceived book fails to convince.

Flacks rightly puts the lie to the myth that Socialism immediately proceeds to autocracy or totalitarianism, and here the book is quite useful. As Flacks sees it, Socialism is every bit a part of the liberal democratic tradition in that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Socialism sought to democratize the American workplace. Doubtless this is why American commercial sector apologists have nothing but bitter resentment for anything Socialist, including even the success of social democracies that blend the best of representative democratic traditions with government intervention in the economy and social welfare programming, something so important to the New Deal's strategy to contain Communist expansion in this country.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

great perspective on the U.S. left