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When examining history, one must be careful not to blame rapid political change solely on famine, war, economic inequality, or structural disfunctions alone.These conditions may linger for decades without social upheaval.

Historian Larry Ceplair argues that no other public figure dissented as strongly, eloquently, and lengthily against United States involvement in Vietnam as did Wayne L. Morse, the four-term United States Senator from Oregon (1945–1969). That campaign, however, was only one of several he fought to prevent the executive branch from taking the nation to war without congressional approval. Morse spoke against every resolution giving the president a blank-check, in the straits of Taiwan, the Middle East, and the Gulf of Tonkin. His words registered on the planners of the war, the antiwar movement, and some members of Congress. Legislation he had proposed to limit the war powers of the president eventually was passed by Congress. Nevertheless, Ceplair points out, presidential war continues as an unwritten amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

As part of its effort to expose Communist infiltration in the United States and eliminate Communist influence on movies, from 1947--1953 the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed hundreds of movie industry employees suspected of membership in the Communist Party. Most of them, including screenwriter Paul Jarrico (1915--1997), invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions about their political associations. They were all blacklisted. In The Marxist and the Movies, Larry Ceplair narrates the life, movie career, and political activities of Jarrico, the recipient of an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) and the producer of Salt of the Earth (1954), one of the most politically besieged films in the history of the United States. Though Jarrico did not reach the upper eschelon of screenwriting, he worked steadily in Hollywood until his blacklisting. He was one of the movie industry's most engaged Communists, working on behalf of dozens of social and political causes. Song of Russia (1944) was one of the few assignments that allowed him to express his political beliefs through his screenwriting craft. Though MGM planned the film as a conventional means of boosting domestic support for the USSR, a wartime ally of the United States, it came under attack by a host of anti-Communists. Jarrico fought the blacklist in many ways, and his greatest battle involved the making of Salt of the Earth. Jarrico, other blacklisted individuals, and the families of the miners who were the subject of the film created a landmark film in motion picture history. As did others on the blacklist, Jarrico decided that Europe offered a freer atmosphere than that of the cold war United States. Although he continued to support political causes while living abroad, he found it difficult to find remunerative black market screenwriting assignments. On the scripts he did complete, he had to use a pseudonym or allow the producers to give screen credit to others. Upon returning to the United States in 1977, he led the fight to restore screen credits to the blacklisted writers who, like himself, had been denied screen credit from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Despite all the obstacles he encountered, Jarrico never lost his faith in the progressive potential of movies and the possibility of a socialist future. The Marxist and the Movies details the relationship between a screenwriter's work and his Communist beliefs. From Jarrico's immense archive, interviews with him and those who knew him best, and a host of other sources, Ceplair has crafted an insider's view of Paul Jarrico's life and work, placing both in the context of U.S. cultural history.

This pair of revolutionaries is the most unusual of those discussed in this volume. No other duo has received such bipolar treatment by historians. Mao’s reputation has swung from Edgar Snow’s near worship to the thuggish portrait drawn by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Nikita Khrushchev wrote that Mao “suffered from the same megalomania Stalin had all his life. He had the same diseased outlook on other people. . . . [He] never recognized his comrades as his equals.” For his part, Zhou has been characterized as a lickspittle by Chang and Halliday and as “one of the three great

Lenin and Trotsky were not friends or even companions. For most of their relationship, they were bitter rivals. Though they came to respect and admire each other, during and after the revolution of 1917, they continued to clash for the remainder of Lenin’s life, and when Lenin tried to lean on Trotsky, Trotsky backed off. They bonded for only a few months, between July and October 1917, when they led the forces that overthrew the Russian Empire and established a Communist regime. And they worked together for the next six years. Lenin had built the Bolshevik Party, the revolutionary organization,

Marx and Engels were by far the closest of the five revolutionary pairs I include in this study. Indeed, they were like brothers, and it is clear that they loved each other. Franz Mehring called theirs a friendship “without equal in history, which can show many cases of famous friendship,” and Marx’s daughter Eleanor stated: “The life and work of these two men are so closely associated that they cannot be separated.” Marx privately expressed gratitude for Engel’s financial support and praised his writing, but he did not publicly praise him, though had he outlived him, he might have. Engels,

Of the pairs studied here, Gandhi and Nehru were the furthest apart in age, background, and belief systems (Gandhi was deeply religious, Nehru unabashedly secular). And they were distinct types of revolutionaries. Neither favored violence, but Gandhi’s civil disobedience centered on specific, unpredictable actions at key points and times, whereas Nehru was an advocate of predictable, constant pressure. Despite those differences, they were the second-closest personally, like uncle and nephew. The two did not spend much time together, they only occasionally met, and they rarely worked together, but they corresponded regularly, and Gandhi considered himself a part of Nehru’s family.

Fidel and Che are two of the most elusive of the personalities discussed in this volume. Zhou Enlai surpasses them, but only because he chose to keep a low profile. Fidel and Che, however, both spoke and wrote voluminously. And yet both personalities are difficult to analyze, as is the particular nature of their relationship. We have all manner of descriptive phrases but little depth. This partnership banded together two men from different countries, who were together a relatively short time, Che departing voluntarily from the revolution he had helped make. Their closeness and mutual admiration and the lack of