Customer Reviews

The Bulwark

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The themes of greed, consumption, decency, truth and family are all taken up by TD here in a short, eloquent novel that is one of my favorites...

Resonant words of the rad scholar of the struggle of the exploited and the oppressed, legendary lecturer of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, Harvey Goldberg, who, with his brilliant colleague, William Appleman Williams, edited this classic history of the American Progressive Movement, which ought to be read by anyone interested in bringing positive, long needed change to our beleagured world.

The book recounts the efforts of leading men and women who fought for social justice in the hard days and long nights of the soul, when folks right here in America were willing to fight and die for their convictions. The figures covered: John Jay Chapman, Theodore Dreiser, Hetwood Broun, Henry Demarest Loyd, "Fighting" Bob LaFollette, John Brown, John Peter Altgeld, Vito Marcantonio, Eugene Debs, "Big" Bill Haywood, Daniel de Leon, Thorstein Veblen, Walter Weyl, and a cast of more or less unknown millions. Some of these vignettes are truly inspiring, all informative.

From the introduction:

"But the truth must be faced, however disillusioning, that the richest tradition of American radicalism belongs to a small minority of courageous men and women; that their achievements, while their achievements, while outweighing their numbers, included neither a lasting mass movement nor a profound shift of power; that a greater number of radicals than these have failed to measure up to the standards of profundity and constancy required of them.

What are the chief difficulties that have blocked the way of a genuine radical success? And what is the challenge that is now posed? The obstacles have been ideological and institutional, the difficulty of overcoming that popular American elixer of the frontier on the one hand and the problem of confronting hostile power on the other. But why bother to study the barriers of those who scaled them? The radical legacy is, in fact, the foundationupon which a more human America can be built. This convolution in which the seeming dead end of yesterday becomes the highroad of tomorrow appears to be the path upon which moves the continuity of history. And it is only through understanding and accepting this irony of history that contemporary radicals can grasp the meaning of the history of American radicalism, diagnose its present condition, and plan its future."

Above all, the book is one of the few literary legacies of the late, may it be said with finality, great, Goldberg. His venue was the podium - not the journal. He lays claim to being the most profound lecturer of his generation. I was one of unregistered hundreds who used to sneak into his lectures (and not often enough) in those slate grey waning afternoon hours long ago in Madison, in the dusky auditorium of the archaic Ag Hall, to watch him whip off his specs and deliver one passionate, incisive, definitive exposition after the next, of the most crucial issues facing humanity, their roots, their reasons, the prospects for resolution, and the possibilities for utopian revolution. As he refused to be recorded, we can surmize that his ideal was to infuse an oral history: to offer a word of wisdom, orientation, to children mostly, with a dream, a vision, little direction, but a vision. Fortunately, blessedly, the strict prohibitions of requests to record him were secretly disobeyed by a few of our very courageous and prescient comrades, and a smattering of these incredible lecture series are available on CD's from the history department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Of course, they are as relevant and insightful today as they were decades ago. Now, when the desperate self-interest of capitalism has again brought us to a brutal moment of crisis, and more and more of us see the truth of the situation, despite the most expensive, extravagant, and cruel attempts to obscure it, to listen to these incredible lectures is an experience none should miss. What history was meant to be.

"For where the people are is the land that never hath an ending, that never hath an ending, that never hath an ending".