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Article Excerpt
Randi Storch, Red Chicago: American Communism At Its Grassroots, 1928-1935 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2007)
IN THE EXPERIENCE of the revolutionary left there are those who have thought it possible, indeed preferable, to create socialism in one country, a stand that has nothing to do, ultimately, with the undeniable waging of revolutionary struggle within national borders and their particular political economies and cultural settings. Others, of course, have disagreed, arguing forcefully that just as capitalism is a global order, so too is socialism inevitably sustained, in the long run, not in isolation, but through extending the reach of revolutionary transformation internationally. Historians, too, have grappled with this issue, writing their histories of communist possibility on canvases large and small. But few have stated the case as forthrightly as the historian of Chicago's communists in the tumultuous 'Third Period' years of 1928-1935. Randi Storch concludes her study of the pivotal proletarian metropolis of United States revolutionaries with an unambiguous assertion that, "regardless of the historic period, the story of America's Communists is best understood when it is framed in a local context." (230)
A reading of Storch's book confirms what can be gained with such a perspective. She tells us a great deal about where Chicago's communists lived and came together in political meetings and social circles. Particularly valuable are her accounts of African American communists, and their struggles against racism, both inside the Party and outside of it; as well as the outline of communist protest movements associated with the unemployed and rent evictions in the dreary early years of the Great Depression. Storch has researched assiduously...
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