IF I HAD A HAMMER: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left [Paperback]

Maurice Isserman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Isserman's provocative theme is the New Left's unacknowledged ties to the Old Left that it has repudiated. His scholarly history is useful in tracing the roots of contemporary U.S. radicalism. Conscientious objectors who refused to fight in World War II participated in postwar communal experiments. Their Americanized version of Gandhi's pacifism would inform the civil rights movement as well as civil defense protests of the early 1960s. Author of Which Side Were You On?, a study of the American Communist Party, Isserman here examines the CP's collapse in the late 1950s. He portrays renegade socialist Max Shachtman, mentor of Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, as a manipulative recluse fond of sectarian squabbles. The author takes his story up to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a common ground where New Leftists forged a politics of personal morality while members of the old guard discarded outdated dogmas.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This excellent study focusing on the Communist Party, Max Shachtman, Dissent , and the peace movement demonstrates that the left of the 1950s had an important influence on the next generation of American radicals. A central assertion is that "the early new left emerged from the old left in ways that made it difficult to perceive where one ended and the other began." The author believes that while the upheavals of the 1960s resulted from a "complex interaction of demographics, economics, and politics," the actions of an earlier generation of American radicals also had an important influence. A provocative reexamination of postwar American radicalism that will stimulate controversy and further study. Recommended. John R. Sillito, Weber State Coll. Lib., Ogden, Utah
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (March 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252063384
• ISBN-13: 978-0252063381
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,802,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative And Diverting History Of American Socialism!, February 14, 2004

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: IF I HAD A HAMMER: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (Paperback)

In this wonderful history of how the ghost of the old American Communist movement informed and influenced the birthing and early history of the so-called New Left of the late 1960s and beyond, scholar Maurice Isserman shows how the contradictions and themes motivating the socialist of the late 1940s and 1950s profoundly affected the birth and growth of the new cultural critique emanating from the several leftist movements of the turbulent 1960s. Is so tracing the social history of the leftist movements within the domestic political scene. Isserman helps to make greater sense of many of the predominating themes of later domestic radicalism, as with the notorious rise of the Students For A Democratic Society (or SDS) movement, one that transpired largely on large, metropolitan college campuses.

Indeed, several of the founders of the SDS organization such as sociologist Todd Gitlin and California politician/social activist Tom Hayden were sons of socialist radicals themselves, raised in middle class households in which spirited intellectual discussions centering round the plight of the ordinary working man and his or her exploitation at the hand of capitalism was `de rigueur' for dinnertime conversation. We are treated to an inside look at how the wartime pacifism of Gandhi-like non-violent opposition played out over several decades to become the largely non-violent protests of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements of the sixties. Isserman has also authored other interesting tomes about the times, including both "Which Side Were You On", a study of the American Communist Party, and the provocative "America Divided", a study of the rise of the American Counterculture of the later sixties.

Here Isserman shows how the personalities of several key participants in the avant-garde urban socialist scene such as Michael Harrington (noted author of "The Other America"), Max Shachtman, and Irving Howe (author of several noted tomes on the rise of an urban and mainly Jewish intellectual class in America such as "World Of Our Fathers") and how they transformed the collapse of the American Communist Party in the 1950s into a nascent socialist movement that was more consonant with the needs and characteristics of the contemporary American social scene. Isserman is most interesting when tracing how individual beliefs become transformed into social policy, and he does this here with these several personalities quite well. For me, this was a memorable journey back into the intellectual and social heritage and the political genesis of the 1960s protest movements, and a reading experience I thoroughly enjoyed.