Customer Reviews

The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left (Historical Memories)

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If you are like me and trying to understand how to rebuild the American Left, then this is a book that you should read.

The one lesson that the American Left has failed to learn, and this is apparent from reading Wolforth's book, is that we must abandon democratic-centralism in favor of pluralism. Almost all streams of the radical Left in this country have one source..Leninism. It was Lenin who created the one party state and who began the suppression of all opposition. The American Left has carried forward this model with disastrous results: small fragmented left groups, each claiming a monopoly on the truth. This happened with the old CPUSA, the 4th Internationale Trotskyist movement (of which Wolforth was a leader) and the new Communist movement that emerged in the 70s.

We need to shed this model and build a pluralistic, heterodoxic democratic Left. Mr. Wolforth's book sheds light on this and provides other lessons for our movement from his rich experience.

Thomas Seay

I met Tim Wohlforth in the early 1970s when he headed up the Workers League, a left split from Socialist Workers Party. His group later bounced him. So he's been around the blocks and knows what he's talking about. A professional journalist, he has a pleasant writing style. Between the lines, his book is sad. A few thousand people wasted their time in little groups that went no where.