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Political parties are the defining institutions of representative democracy and the darlings of political science. Their governing and electoral functions are among the chief concerns of the field. Yet most political theorists--including democratic theorists--ignore or disparage parties as grubby arenas of ambition, obstacles to meaningful political participation and deliberation.On the Side of the Angelsis a vigorous defense of the virtues of parties and partisanship, and their worth as a subject for political theory. Nancy Rosenblum's account moves between political theory and political science, and she uses resources from both fields to outline an appreciation of parties and the moral distinctiveness of partisanship. She draws from the history of political thought and identifies the main lines of opposition to parties, as well as the rare but significant moments of appreciation. Rosenblum then sets forth her own theoretical appreciation of parties and partisanship. She discusses the achievement of parties in regulating rivalries, channeling political energies, and creating the lines of division that make pluralist politics meaningful. She defends \"partisan\" as a political identity over the much-vaunted status of \"independent,\" and she considers where contemporary democracies should draw the line in banning parties. On the Side of the Angelsoffers an ethics of partisanship that speaks to questions of centrism, extremism, and polarization in American party politics. By rescuing parties from their status as orphans of political philosophy, Rosenblum fills a significant void in political and democratic theory.

Mothers of Conservatism tells the story of 1950s southern Californian housewives who shaped the grassroots right in the two decades following World War II. Michelle Nickerson describes how red-hunting homemakers mobilized activist networks, institutions, and political consciousness in local education battles, and she introduces a generation of women who developed political styles and practices around their domestic routines. From the conservative movement's origins in the early fifties through the presidential election of 1964, Nickerson documents how women shaped conservatism from the bottom up, out of the fabric of their daily lives and into the agenda of the Republican Party.

Sixty years ago political divisions in the United States ran even deeper than today's name-calling showdowns between the left and right. Back then, to call someone a communist was to threaten that person's career, family, freedom, and, sometimes, life itself. Hysteria about the \"red menace\" mushroomed as the Soviet Union tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, Mao Zedong rose to power in China, and the atomic arms race accelerated. Spy scandals fanned the flames, and headlines warned of sleeper cells in the nation's midst--just as it does today with the \"War on Terror.\" In his new book,The Fear Within, Scott Martelle takes dramatic aim at one pivotal moment of that era. On the afternoon of July 20, 1948, FBI agents began rounding up twelve men in New York City, Chicago, and Detroit whom the U.S. government believed posed a grave threat to the nation--the leadership of the Communist Party-USA. After a series of delays, eleven of the twelve \"top Reds\" went on trial in Manhattan's Foley Square in January 1949. The proceedings captivated the nation, but the trial quickly dissolved into farce. The eleven defendants were charged under the 1940 Smith Act with conspiring to teach the necessity of overthrowing the U.S. government based on their roles as party leaders and their distribution of books and pamphlets. In essence, they were on trial for their libraries and political beliefs, not for overt acts threatening national security. Despite the clear conflict with the First Amendment, the men were convicted and their appeals denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision that gave the green light to federal persecution of Communist Party leaders--a decision the court effectively reversed six years later. But by then, the damage was done. So rancorous was the trial the presiding judge sentenced the defense attorneys to prison terms, too, chilling future defendants' access to qualified counsel. Martelle's story is a compelling look at how American society, both general and political, reacts to stress and, incongruously, clamps down in times of crisis on the very beliefs it holds dear: the freedoms of speech and political belief. At different points in our history, the executive branch, Congress, and the courts have subtly or more drastically eroded a pillar of American society for the politics of the moment. It is not surprising, then, thatThe Fear Withintakes on added resonance in today's environment of suspicion and the decline of civil rights under the U.S. Patriot Act.

The Secret World of American Communism(1995), filled with revelations about Communist party covert operations in the United States, created an international sensation. Now the American authors of that book, along with Soviet archivist Kyrill M. Anderson, offer a second volume of profound social, political, and historical importance.Based on documents newly available from Russian archives,The Soviet World of American Communismconclusively demonstrates the continuous and intimate ties between the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and Moscow. In a meticulous investigation of the personal, organizational, and financial links between the CPUSA and Soviet Communists, the authors find that Moscow maintained extensive control of the CPUSA, even of the American rank and file. The widely accepted view that the CPUSA was essentially an idealistic organization devoted to the pursuit of social justice must be radically revised, say the authors. Although individuals within the organization may not have been aware of Moscow's influence, the leaders of the organization most definitely were.The authors explain and annotate ninety-five documents, reproduced here in their entirety or in large part, and they quote from hundreds of others to reveal the actual workings of the American Communist party. They show that:• the USSR covertly provided a large part of the CPUSA budget from the early 1920s to the end of the 1980s;• Moscow issued orders, which the CPUSA obeyed, on issues ranging from what political decisions the American party should make to who should serve in the party leadership;• the CPUSA endorsed Stalin's purges and the persecution of Americans living in Russia.

In November 1974, nearly one thousand Communists, black activists, and a variety of other leftists gathered at the newly built Hilton hotel in New York City to celebrate Jack’s sixtieth birthday. The folk singer Pete Seeger performed and told stories of his travels through the South in the 1940s. The South Carolina civil rights activist Modjeska Simkins gave a speech in which she reflected on her experiences with Jack when they were both active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC). The attorney Mary Kaufman, one of the youngest prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials and a defender of Communists in

Jack and Esther reunited in February 1946 on a dock in New York City. In a characteristic play on conventional gender roles, it was Jack who stood waiting, clad in a Stetson hat and with a bouquet of flowers, as his wife’s ship from England docked.¹ He was fighting frustration, as he had returned from war with no idea where his wife was. Even though he had overcome his envy that she got to be an internationalist activist while he languished in Burma, he had to travel around the South to get information about where to find his daughter and

When James Edward Jackson Jr. was a small boy in Richmond, Virginia, in the early twentieth century, he would stand outside his father’s pharmacy on the corner of Brook Road and Dubois Avenue every evening and wait. The strong stench of sweat and tobacco wafted his way before he saw anything coming, and then a throng of people appeared in the distance. The procession was composed of tobacco workers heading home from the city’s tobacco factories. These workers were black, mostly female, and desperately poor. Many were clad in burlap tobacco sacks that they had taken from the factory because

The Communist Party USA ended its annual convention Sunday, but not without criticism of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was a prime target of the three-day convention. In the main hall where delegates spoke, there was a huge banner that re-created a Pablo Picasso painting, superimposing Gingrich's head on a bull.

Healthy, educated, and reenergized, the family Crouch embarked on an eventful era, spending the years from 1932 to 1937 in Virginia, Utah, and North Carolina. Building on the ever deepening Depression, and intent on winning people to the Communist Party by fighting for the needs of the poor, Crouch found his element organizing the proletariat. As Cedric Belfrage notes, he was “a man from headquarters who could describe Russian marvels in a North Carolina accent, and as a serious sufferer from stomach ulcers, Crouch was welcomed by local comrades with awe and sympathy.”¹ This charisma, charm, and shared sense of