Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals Of Mike Alewitz by muralist and labor activist Mike Alewitz in collaboration with historian and academician Paul Buhle presents a vibrant, full-color presentation of the vivid and powerfully themed mural artworks done by Alewitz, an outspoken labor activist since the 1940s. Presenting a strong political theme of worker's rights and solidarity, capturing the imagination with its outspoken message, and offered alongside a sensible commentary that places pieces in context to the labor and humanitarian issues they illustrated, Insurgent Images is a stunning collection of art created to serve showcase and advance the cause of worker and human rights.

I love this book. Its first person accounts by the courageous men and woman who fought valiantly for social justice and economic equality for all people, and stood strong against reactionary forces are so inspiring and moving that I was often in tears.

The book is also immensely informative and even quite funny at times. It vividly presents an amazing array of personalities and is arguably the most affecting, revealing and far-reaching volume about the most shameful chapter in Hollywood's history

Tender Comrades is required reading. We are all indebted to Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle for gathering these testimonials, which are true profiles in courage.

I grew up midwestern 1950's, in a hotbed of Mc Carthyism. Needless to mention, my ingrained image of who and what was a communist was somewhat different from the thoroughly humanized portraits that emerge in the pages of the book. Not that the interviews with individual victims of the blacklist result in glamorized or enviable cameos. They don't. Instead, we get a glimpse of what life was like for people of strong conviction who defied the fashion of their day even when it cost them dearly. The fact that most were communists was enough to demonize them in the eyes of so many of us, who, when it comes right down to it, were victims ourselves.

To those of you who have been assailed by America's peculiarly virulent strain of anti-communism, read the book. It won't make a communist of you, but it will give you second thoughts about a political culture that regularly demonizes its opposition, whoever that may be. The interviews reveal not only an America that was, but in many ways an America that still is. The individual stories themselves are fascinating. The names are ones you may have seen briefly on a late night movie credit crawl. Here they come alive in their own words; names and faces that were on the screen one day, then gone the next. Not celebrities, but the kind of people who made movies memorable because they brought more than varying degrees of talent to their work, they brought social concern.

I hope the authors soon bring us a similar volume on non-Hollywood victims of the purges, of which, I gather, there were thousands. Folks without marquee names, but with their own stories to tell about how the world was made safe for democracy.

For anyone that's ready to move past the historical books about the Blacklist period and is ready to hear more about the people involved this is the book to read. It contains interviews with 35 blacklisted personalities (many of them screenwriters, two of them were even in the Hollywood Ten) and deals with more than just the blacklist. This is an intimate book that gives a voice to those that are not often heard or have been forgotten. Many of these people led fascinating lives outside of Hollywood (one of them having fought in the war in Spain against the fascists), and you will hear about their own childhood, how they came to Hollywood, and all the dreams and visions they had before the Red Scare destroyed them. It is also interesting to hear these people talk about this turbulent time in their lives since it is something that can only be explained by those who were wronged. Some have moved on and forgiven the friendly witnesses while others still recall those horrible moments and refuse to forget and forgive their transgessors (which they have a reason to). Among those included are Norma and Ben Barzman, Hugo Butler, Alvah Bessie, John Bright, Ring Lardner Jr., Frank Tarloff, and Bernard Vorhaus. All in all, this book is clearly one to read.

"Taking Care of Business" is a scathing attack on the shortsighted, bureaucratic, business union approach of the leadership of the AFL and AFL-CIO over the last one hundred years. None of the presidents of these labor federations from Gompers through Meany and Kirkland escape the author's thoroughgoing criticism.

Of course, those leaders can only reflect the nature of the overall trade union movement. Trade unions in the US have historically been both exclusionary and, since WWII, controlling in their relationship to the working class. Most trade unions, until only very recently, have focused on protecting the relatively privileged position of white, skilled craftsmen within the economy while either outright excluding or only rhetorically supporting the largest portion of the working class due to differences in race, ethnicity, gender, or skill level. The rise of industrial unions in the WWII era, despite being a small step in the direction of inclusion, ushered in a labor relations regime where labor unions' role became one of enforcing constraining collective bargaining agreements as much as the representation of workers.

By the early 1950s union officials, as typified by Meany and Kirkland, came to see themselves as the counterpart to business leaders in a labor-management accord. They adopted the same lifestyles and moved in the same social circles. Labor officials, in their newfound role, had no problem with making the world safe for business interests. So-called radical unions and unionists with their demands for worker activism at the point of production were purged from the AFL and unions. The AFL and AFL-CIO under the regimes of Meany and Kirkland collaborated with the US intelligence community through a series of front committees and councils to defeat popular movements in favor of pro-US, right-wing thugs in foreign lands, especially Latin America. Even though the PATCO fiasco of 1981 clearly showed the shredding of the post-WWII domestic social compact, the focus of the AFL-CIO remained on expending tremendous amounts of federation resources on dubious foreign operations.

Clearly, Meany and Kirkland did little to advance the interests of US workers, but the author does not really address the weakly federated structure of organized labor in the US. Given the independence of the AFL's constituent unions and the history of organized labor through WWII, were Meany and Kirkland types not almost predictable? Perhaps they do deserve the author's scorn as symbols of the ineffectualness of organized labor, but the problems run much deeper.

The author more than hints that the Gompers-Meany-Kirkland threesome squashed the desires of the US working class to establish some sort of workers democratic regime - his admiration for the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) being a tip-off. But that view may be mostly wishful. He cites the Knights of Labor as indicative of working class interest in social unionism, but it is clear that only a small portion of the membership of that organization supported the KOL position of transforming the US into a cooperative society. In fact the KOL impaled itself on traditional, yet failed, strike actions. The author does not attempt to quantify, or place in a broader perspective, the impact of the 1890-1920 movements of populism, the IWW, and socialism on the wider society. Though Gompers, a socialist in his early working days, was clearly unsympathetic towards these movements, the attribution that he was a major factor in their demise seems very questionable. His power to influence events pales in comparison to power of various organs of the state, especially the judiciary, and corporations to adversely affect the working class.

Though the author continually raises the issue of worker democracy as a rebuke to the policies of labor leadership, there is scant reflection on what worker democracy may entail. It would have been unthinkable that the author's much admired IWW would have tolerated third-party bureaucratic organizations like unions negotiating contracts for workers. The IWW wanted direct worker control at the point of production for all workers. But then the practical questions of social and economic coordination arise quickly with such radical decentralization. Nonetheless, the author does not attempt to resolve in any practical way the conflict between actual democracy and the current form of organized labor in the US. Nor is there any real assessment of the desire of the American working class to participate in some form of IWW-like democracy.

The author does not limit himself to the personalities that have led the AFL-CIO. He is determined to identify countless former communists and socialists of labor organizations who renounced their radical pasts and joined neo-conservative political bodies or collaborated with the intelligence community. The fact that the author is a socialist undoubtedly is germane to his mission of identifying those who have abandoned the cause.

A book that is so intent on skewering personalities usually suffers as a result and this one is no exception. The author hints at but does not pursue some worthy topics. What is worker democracy? Are trade unions compatible with such democracy? Aren't centralization and bureaucracy necessary in any complex society? Now those are topics worthy for a book on the labor movement and the working class.

A scathing analysis of the flaws of Meany and Kirkland as leaders of the AFL-CIO. Well-written, well-informed, and passionate. Must reading for union activists and scholars, especially those who are sympathetic to Kirkland or Sweeney. But for rather different views, see Mort, Not Your Father's Labor Movement, and, especially, Taylor Dark, The Unions and the Democrats.

A pugnacious, elegant and devastating critique of the Cold war liberal, business unionists who have corrupted American trade unionism and delivered the wimpy, pathetic federation we have now.

The new Oxford edition is a big improvement on the first. At least the two major practicing bodies of Marxist-Leninist thought today (ISO & RCP) are at least mentioned by name this time! The context is informative and the critical edge is penetrating. Those of us who have marched with those groups will appreciate a little uninfatuated, academic, outside perspective. The RCP's fading post 70's glory is mercilessly skewered, and the ISO's sectarian hair-splitting is given necessary historical background. But there's something missing from the analysis. Any practicing worker or Marxist/activist will want to know what is GOOD about the parties that survive today. Shouldn't there be some forward thinking? We are still out here, organizing against police brutality, fighting the right-wing backlash, advocating workers' power, fighting for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. There is a vanguard of a real democracy we see only glimmers of in the history of the Left.

It's quite true that the authors' knowledge of Hollywood film history is encyclopedic, and this alone makes the book an indispensable reference to the stories behind the stories of innumerable great and less-than-great films. Described elsewhere as "the Abbott and Costello of film studies," these two spew forth gallons of embarrassingly wrongheaded and outmoded leftie humbug; nevertheless this is exactly what makes their work so useful. Yes, all those "paranoid" right-wingers were right all along about the real motives and agendas in Hollywood "back then." And not much has changed...it's still "Fantasyland" in more ways than one, which ought to be an important clue to the etiology of leftism. My only real objection to this work is that being so thoroughly deluded by their own political fantasies as they are, the authors attempt to claim almost everyone in Hollywood as a real, potential, or lapsed leftie, whether or not there was ever much actual evidence of it...a kind of triple-reverse McCarthyism. One final tip: buy this book second-hand. I'd hate to think I'd given one red cent (no pun intended) to either of these authors or their publisher.

This is a good look at the often ignored early radicals of hollywood. It gives a good history of the time leading up to and the aftermath of the Blacklist and it's antisemitic tendencies. Paul Buhle, et al seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject but I found their method of sharing the information a little overwhelming and pedantic. Every page is dotted with references to very obscure films, many with alternative titles, that are impossible to find. It's difficult to envision many of the situations and influential aspects of the films when you can find no more information on them much less see them. Taking all of the authors information on faith is not the usual film studies method. In contrast to many books about hollywood this one dosn't have many salacious details about harlets and moguls. I would recommend this book to serious film/hollywood history buffs only.

There is something peculiarly ahistorical about this history of Marxism in the USA. Buhle's brand of Marxism operates in a historical vacuum where external events are rarely if ever glimpsed. Thus, Marxism's record in America becomes little more than a series of rather inexlicable failures. Names, dates, events, rarely appear, and when they do, they are largely decontextualized. Pesumably themes remain, but when taken outside their explanatory contexts, they become abstractions - surely a strange outcome for an exercise in historical scolarship.

"Old Marxism" is roundly condemned. Yet no real analytical explanation of why those political parties failed is presented. Instead the narrative of failure moves along like a free-flowing stream without hint of the surrounding shore. Buhle has more success with accounts of the New Left in which he participated. But once again there is no sense of context, i.e. period potential or lack thereof. Nowhere, for example, does he address the political potential of an anti-war movement evolving within a larger context of general prosperity. For a work on Marxism, the absense of economic context here, as elsewhere, amounts to a paradox and characterizes the book as a whole. But then, inclusion of such themes would perhaps smack too much of the Old Left.

Recurring instead are cultural themes. That Marxism failed in an elemental way to connect with American culture is a powerful and provocative thesis that lies buried somewhere in the text. Resurrecting it and addressing the historical subplots would amount to a real contrbution. But alas, as the book stands, New Left thinking may make for energizing politics, but in Buhle's case, it makes for poor historical writing.

This book is an excellent resource for those who already have some basic understanding of the history of marxism. However, for those who are looking for an introduction to this history, this book is not for you.

There's been a flood of books by and about screenwriters in
recent years: Fante/Southern/Trumbo/Bolt/Salter/Laurents/
Waterhouse/Dahl/Siodmak/Goldman/Gordon/Hayes/Raphael ... All
are good to excellent; at the very least they're competent and
achieve professional publication standards. This hopelessly
addled claptrap, cluelessly cobbled together by the Abbott &
Costello of film scholarship, is an alltime low. They think
the episode of TV's M*A*S*H made in black-and-white -- obviously to
approximate Korean War-era news reportage -- is an example of
"noir style." Which would make every episode of I LOVE LUCY and
WAGON TRAIN and the Walt Disney show prior to the advent of color
TVs all examples of "noir." (As for the M*A*S*H episode "sans
sound" -- fellas, adjust that volume control -- or your hearing
aids!) Their prose? Get a load of this: "In retrospect, the
cold war's outbreak foreshadowed the ruin of Polonsky's body of
work as a touchstone for the immediate future for the American
art film." Wow. Their critical acumen? TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS
HERE is "widely hailed as the ultimate cinematic critique of
American western mythology." Really? More so than another little release that same year -- what was it called? -- THE WILD
BUNCH? Edward Dmytryk's "visual sadism" was "often realized
through the direction of Robert Ryan." By "often" they mean
"once." (In CROSSFIRE -- after which Dmytryk didn't direct Ryan
again for about 20 years, and then only in a cameo as a
sympathetic general in ANZIO.) The whole book is like this!
Every page, often every sentence, sometimes each PART of a
sentence -- is simply harebrained. In their hilarious attempt
to describe the trend of movie stars breaking free of the old
studio system and forming their own companies, instead of citing,
say, Humphrey ("Santana") Bogart, or John ("Batjac") Wayne, or
Kirk ("Bryna") Douglas -- or Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, etc.
-- who do they come up with? Why, none other than that prolific
producer whose career positively THRIVED beyond the studio era,
that double threat: Hedy Lamarr (hey, rhymes with "noir")!
A laff riot.