Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?, and Other Questions

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This collection of an academic's essays and reviews aims to invigorate America's lagging Left. Kaye warns against what he sees as conservative efforts to create ``a political culture of lowered expectations'' and, in the title essay, argues that history remains ``a process of struggle for freedom and for justice.'' He supports the much-criticized National History Standards as reflecting often-neglected bottom-up history and urges his colleagues to push their students to become publicly engaged as social and political critics. He finds inspiration in the works of Tom Paine, C. Wright Mills and E.P. Thompson and offers sympathetic reviews of works by Russell Jacoby, John Sayles and Benjamin Barber. For all his passion, however, Kaye, who teaches social change and development at the University of Wisconsin, is mainly addressing the converted. (Jan.)

Library Journal

In this collection of articles, lectures, and book reviews, Kaye (Univ. of Wisconsin-Green Bay) explores the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate. He warns against the efforts of conservative intellectuals to declare that the struggle for democracy is over and that we are now at "the end of history." Kaye is confident, however, that even in the face of the triumph of capitalism and of a profound crisis on the left, we will yet witness resurgent struggles to create a truly democratic society. He faults his colleagues on the academic left for ignoring the crucial issues of curriculum and pedagogy at a time when public education is under attack from the right. Though he discusses important issues, Kaye's writing is tendentious and rambling. An optional purchase for academic libraries.-Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY

Booknews

Kaye (social change and development, U. of Wisconsin-Green Bay) calls on intellectuals of the Left to renew the struggle for liberty and equality, in essays originally written as lectures, articles, and reviews. He examines the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate, and criticizes the efforts on the part of conservatives to promote the view that the struggle for democracy is finished with the end of the Cold War. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mary Carroll

Marxist historian Kaye, a professor of social change and development at the University of WisconsinGreen Bay, based his title essay on his 1994 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Lecture, in which he argues that ruling classes fear history because "they know that however ancient the democratic idea, the modern democratic narrative has really only just begun." In part 1's essays, Kaye looks at recent U.S. and world history (including the interplay of baseball and capitalism); part 2's commentaries urge that our national education debate recognize that a democracy's schools must help students become citizens as well as producers and consumers. In part 3, with tributes to Tom Paine, C. Wright Mills, and the late British historian E. P. Thompson, Kaye takes up the role of intellectuals in our political tong wars, arguing eloquently that the U.S. has a viable radical tradition and that--by spreading the word about this tradition--historians offer alienated Americans a nourishing source of hope for the possibility of change and of effective individual and collective action.