Best of
Politics

1938

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution


C.L.R. James - 1938
    It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.

Homage to Catalonia


George Orwell - 1938
    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution


Leon Trotsky - 1938
    The product of these discussions, a program of immediate, democratic and transitional demands, was adopted by the SWP later that year. This program for socialist revolution, remains an important tool for communist workers today.

Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel


C. Vann Woodward - 1938
    Watson championed the rising Populist movement at the turn of the 19th century--an interracial alliance of agricultural interests fighting the forces of industrial capitalism--his eventual frustration with politics transformed him from liberalism to racial bigotry, from popular spokesman to mob leader. Pulitzer Prize winning scholar C. Vann Woodward clearly & objectively traces the history of this enigmatic Populist leader.

Germany Speaks


Joachim Von Ribbentrop - 1938
    Contributors include Otto Dietrich, Fritz Todt, Robert Ley, R. Walther Darré, Wilhelm Frick, Ritter Von Epp, and many others.The first part deals with the foremost political issues: the state structure, population growth, race, Jews, the judicial system, women’s rights, the educational system, and the role of propaganda. This section includes a detailed account of the eugenic measures adopted by the state to prevent the spread of heritable diseases and to boost marriage and childbirth rates.The second part explains the Reich’s economic system, its agrarian, social, labor, and welfare policies.The third part details the organization of day-to-day life in the Third Reich: sport, culture, entertainment, and a fascinating exposition of the motoring industry and autobahn construction program.The final part discusses Germany’s foreign policy, and includes world economics, colonies, trade, the world press, and politics, and finally, a plea for lasting peace between Germany and Britain in particular.

Europe and the Czechs


Shiela Grant Duff - 1938
    

Meet Me on the Barricades


Charles Yale Harrison - 1938
    Story of an oboe player who has vivid hallucinations of serving in the Spanish Civil War.

Tomorrow We Live: British Union Policy


Oswald Mosley - 1938
    Full reprint of the 1938 book outlining British Union policy.Contents include : Foreword by Oswald Mosley, System Of Government - What Is Wrong, British Union System Of Government, Economic System - What Is Wrong ?, British Union Economic System, The People's State - A Classless System, The Jewish Question, British Foreign Policy, British Union.

Tocqueville in America


George Wilson Pierson - 1938
    Taking as its topic the promise and shortcomings of the democratic form of government, Tocqueville's great work is at or near the root of such political truths as the litigiousness of American society, the danger of the "tyranny of the majority," the American belief in a small government that intrudes only minimally into the daily lives of the citizenry, and Americans' love of political debate. Democracy in America is the work of a 29-year-old nobleman who, with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, traveled the breadth of Jacksonian America to inquire into the future of French society as revolutionary upheaval gave way to a representative government similar to America's. In his magisterial Tocqueville in America, George Wilson Pierson reconstructs from diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts the two Frenchmen's nine-month tour and their evolving analysis of American society. We see Tocqueville near Detroit, noting the scattered settlement patterns of the frontier and the affinity of Americans for solitude; in Boston, witnessing the jury system at work; in Philadelphia, observing the suffocating moral regimen at the new Eastern State Prison (which still stands); and in New Orleans, disturbed by the racial caste system and the lassitude of the French-speaking population.