Murdered by Capitalism: A Memoir of 150 Years of Life and Death on the American Left (Nation Books) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Trinidad, California boasts that it is the smallest incorporated city in the Golden State-400 souls marinade here suspended in a fog-bound aspic where seasons are..." (more)
Key Phrases: San Francisco, Big Bill, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To hear Ross, who has covered Mexico for Noticias Aliadas (Lima), Texas Observer, San Francisco Bay Guardian and "other screwball publications," tell it, the American Left is dead and buried. Fittingly, he sets his history/dialogue in a graveyard populated by the ghosts of its heroes. Here lies E.B. Schnaubelt, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Sacco and Vanzetti and a host of others whose radical lifestyles and actions left their mark on those Communists, anarchists and revolutionaries who saw America in more utopian terms than the capitalists they fought. Soaked by alcohol and salved by drugs, Ross, who has made a life out of dissent, converses with the dead (and dying from memory), lamenting the Left's losses, its infighting, its failures and the occasional victory. But Ross stumbles in his rhetorical excesses and in his efforts to tie together so many disparate rebels and outlaws—from Goldman and Fidel to the Weathermen and Civil Rights leaders. Strictly for members of the choir looking for a good historical primer on the American Left, the book nevertheless entertains with its pugnacious language, Hunter Thompson-levels of chemical consumption and a conviction that no revolution can succeed without a sense of humor. Ross manages to salvage positivity from beneath all this forgotten death, and that's about all the solace the book offers for the true believer.
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Review

"[E]ntertains with Hunter Thompson-levels of chemical consumption and a conviction that no revolution can succeed without a sense of humor." -- Publishers Weekly, May 10, 2004

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (May 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255781
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255789
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #499,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real deal, June 21, 2004

By	STANDARD SCHAEFER (San francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

It's true this book is funny, but it is also very moving as it traces the more pugnacious side of US Left History. You get a real sense of the actors in this drama, their personalities as well as the effect of those personalities on the unfolding of rival left "organizations." In some ways, this is a real People's History as it contains and dramatizes all the contradictions of the various movements-Stalinist, Maoist, Anarchist, etc. Ross is much more sympathetic to violent resistance than Howard Zinn is, and his running down the forgotten violence by both right and left is meant to remind us that being left can't be being in a vacuum. Pacifism, for example, didn't bring on the 8hr work day. Most importantly, it reveals that the life of a political outsider and activist need not be sheer drudgery. Though it is struggle, Ross expresses a revolutionary joy. A good primer about left history, an excellent memoir of struggle. Ross has a muscular, but finely honed prose style. A joy to read.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A radical assault on middle-class movement pacifism., March 10, 2005

By	David W. Ewing (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The great contribution of this popularly written history of American radicalism is the joyful abandonment John Ross brings to slamming the annoying pacifism and political correctness of today's anemic Left movement. Yes folks, fighting imperialism and blowing it to bits can be fun! It's supposed to be fun. This bold idea is the premise of Murdered by Capitalism. Ross captures the spirit of the working class heroes who slugged it out, toe to toe, with the capitalist villains of American history. (Not the "corporate" villains PLEASE!) In addition to enjoying lives of adventure and freedom, people like Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood kicked butt and made breakthroughs that bettered the lives of all working people for decades to come. This is partisan writing. Pacifism and political correctness are middle-class ideologies that have infected the Left. The working class must break out of these limits if it is to ever mount a fight for human liberation, for freedom, and for political power. Ross wants to blow these middle-class prejudices away. And his book succeeds in doing so. The book presents the entire history of the American left since the Eight Hour Day movement of the 1880s. That's a lot of history-and a lot of contending ideologies-to cover well. Ross tries to represent the disputes fairly, and this book can serve as an introduction to the disputations that roil the adherents of anarchism, syndicalism and Leninism down to the present day. But Ross's own untamed anarcho-communist ideology comes through, in all its poetic fury, on every page. This book never descends into mere analysis of the contending trends. Explaining our past mistakes and finding the way forward is, of course, absolutely necessary if we are going to win. But a winning movement needs more than analysis. It needs to unlock all the latent creativity and combativeness of the American working class. John Ross's book is a long needed wake-up call to the Left. It is a life-affirming manifesto for working class rebellion and for revolution. "MBC" is, at the same time, a hilarious indictment of the politically-correct liberalism that is dragging our movement down.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I read it to my wife the afternoon it arrived in the mail, July 9, 2004

By	Robert S. Shields "c@lbob" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

John Ross is a fascinating and funny storyteller. The Publisher's Weekly dweeb who dis-ed this excellent book must have no soul. Ross might be that guy you've seen by the roadside and dismissed as a homeless drunk, however this homeless drunk tells a story everyone should know, and maybe understand. The enemy is revealed, and also the reason it is so hard to defeat.