Paul Buhle
Paul Buhle, formerly a senior lecturer at Brown University, produces radical comics. He founded the SDS Journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left and, with Mari Jo Buhle, is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left. He lives in Madison.
Upcoming Events
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February 28, 2012
Goodman Community Center
Book Reading and Talk in Madison, WI
Join editors and contributors for an evening of dispatches from the front lines of the new labor protest
Blog
"Our Forgotten Tradition"—Paul Buhle on John Nichols' The "S" Word
I'm particularly fond of the following quote from Socialist Party of America leader Eugene Debs:
I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition.
It truly encapsulates the notion that socialism cannot be constructed from above but rather through actions and ideas of ordinary people. This idea, and Debs as a monumental figure in US history, informs John Nichol's attempt to revive interest in US socialism and rescue it from the red-baiting of the right in his new book The "S" Word: A Short History of An American Tradition...Socialism. In Paul Buhle's (a remarkable historian in his own right) review of the book he suggests that socialism is a historical undercurrent in progressive US politics:
Books
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It Started in Wisconsin
First-hand accounts of the largest pro-labor mass mobilization in modern American history
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Che
A graphic biography of the most iconic revolutionary figure of the twentieth century.
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Wobblies!
A vibrant history in graphic art of the Industrial Workers of the World.
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From the Lower East Side to Hollywood
A lively, extensively illustrated history of the widespread influence of Jews on American popular culture through the twentieth century.
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C.L.R. James
A rich analysis of James’s achievements across his many spheres of interest.
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Marxism in the United States
“Challenges the entire edifice of modern US cultural and political history.”—Monthly Review