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Full-Text Articles in History
Response To Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness And The American Labor Movement, 1790-1920", Nick Salvatore
Response To Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness And The American Labor Movement, 1790-1920", Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Wilentz's critique of the exceptionalist theme in American historiography is to the point. Whether one applauded the absence of feudalism, and therefore class conflict, in America with the historians of the 1950s or bemoaned that liberal democratic tradition as the "nail in the coffin of class consciousness" in the 1970s, either interpretative structure sacrifices empirical evidence for grand theory. In the former, the careers of Thomas Skidmore or Ira Stewart are all but incomprehensible; in the latter, men like Joseph R. Buchanan or Eugene V. Debs have little relevance. More importantly, the actual experience of the majority of American …
The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer
The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published 150 years ago in London in February 1848, is one of the most influential and widely-read documents of the past two centuries. The historian A. J. P. Taylor (1967, p. 7) has called it a "holy book," and contends that because of it, "everyone thinks differently about politics and society." And yet, despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece, a document of what was called the "hungry" 1840s. It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th …