Home
Collaborators on the book
Contact Barry
Reviews

Where to order:

www.haymarketbooks.org
www.amazon.com
www.abebooks.com
www.tomfolio.com
www.resistancebooks.com

This review appeared April 24, 2005 on the Marxmail list (www.marxmail.org)

By A. C. Pollack

I just finished Barry's book, and I share the enthusiasm expressed by Fred [Feldman] a week or so ago. To a certain extent it reads like an official history, i.e. a book that could have been issued by the Party itself -- assuming, of course, that the Party had maintained its 1973 politics (the year this volume ends). Aside from some fascinating behind-the-scenes asides, it mostly focuses on carrying out the intention stated in its first pages -- to introduce the period and its most important party to young radicalizing people seeking to benefit from that history.

I have no idea what he'll say in Volume II, and while I hope he paints a picture which fits with the FIT [Fourth Internationalist Tendency] documents I've been posting at MIA [Marxist Internet Archive], I'm not holding my breath.

Nonetheless I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone as an example of what a mostly healthy vanguard party did -- and could still -- do.