Bruce Levine

The History of Politics and the Politics of History

I believe Ira Katznelson is quite right to link the condition of labor history as a scholarly field with bigger changes taking place in the world. The malaise he points to is a response to the striking, protracted, and continu ing shift to the Right in political life; the prolonged and barely challenged erosion of working-class living standards, rights, and organizations; and the evident programmatic and strategic bankruptcy alike of Stalinist, social democratic, and even more explicitly business-minded labor leaders and labor parties. Those waiting for organized labor to stand up on its hind legs and fight back grow disappointed and disoriented. This situation calls forth a range of responses among us. One of these is a sadder-but-wiser reassessment of working-class history, according to which past labor struggles and organizations really carried within them selves the seeds of no fundamental challenge to the status quo; those who believe otherwise are depicted as hopeless romantics.1 Such r??valuations, in turn, prompt very diverse practical conclusions, ranging from the reha bilitation of conservative labor leaders past to the abandonment of labor as a focus of research and writing. A formally distinct but very much related response to the present world political situation is a philosophical turn (or drift) away from a more or-less qualified, implicit materialism toward a more and more ardent subjective idealism. Among the most aggressive exponents of this trend are devotees of postmodernism and poststructuralism who abuse long recognized truths about the social shaping of cognition in order to under mine basic premises of all historical (and, indeed, all scientific) inquiry: most broadly, the existence of reality and causation; more specifically, the understanding that thought and culture (including language) arise out of the practical interaction of humans with one another and their environ ment. By carrying epistemological skepticism (which has haunted empiri cism at least since Hume) to such extremes, they do not advance beyond na?ve rationalism but retreat from its most basic achievements.

Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809-60

How did Abraham Lincolns agrarian background shape his worldview? In Lincoln, Land, and Labor the French scholar Olivier Fraysse traces Lincolns problematic relationship with and ideas about the land and those who worked it, revealing Lincoln as an intelligent and ambitious man who in fact turned his back on his rural roots for a time in favor of the opportunities offered in law and politics. In revealing Lincolns estrangement from the rural masses and analyzing his perception of the differences between free and slave labor, Fraysse illuminates Lincolns ideas on agriculture and industry, the disposal of public lands, and the place of blacks and Indians in American life. The author provides useful and provocative insights about Lincolns career as an Illinois legislator and congressman and ties the theme of the land to Lincolns growing interest in slavery. Fraysse assesses Lincolns career using explicit references to class analysis. The author concludes that the slavery issue, by bridging the differences between rich and poor, made possible the formation of a strong Republican party.