Reviews for Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story of an American Radical

The average rating for Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story of an American Radical based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-26 00:00:00 Christopher Kelsey An excellent account of Kautsky's political thought, in particular focusing on the theme of the transition to socialism and how his view of it changed in response to circumstances and events over his life. Kautsky comes across as a thinker who could be quite prescient about future developments but was hampered by two limitations. On the personal side, he was an optimist not in the long term Gramscian sense, but in his belief that the bourgeoisie and capitalist society was rational and committed to democracy. In the philosophical sense by his Darwinism which led him to a view of progressive social evolution, of which socialism was the outcome. Salvadori shows that the figure of the 'renegade Kautsky" peddled by Lenin and Trotsky, is in fact inaccurate. Kautsky did not suddenly change positions from the orthodox Marxist they had previously praised; his critical positions on Bolshevism were always inherent in his thinking and writing and were entirely consistent. A nice corrective. The book has led me to rethink Kautsky more and to give some greater credit to his positions and arguments about political strategy in times of class weakness, there is I think still much we can learn from him.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-16 00:00:00 Matt Anderson I'm not sure what I expected from a book called "Marx in 90 Minutes" but this book still managed not to meet my expectations. So much of this brief volume focuses on the biographical details of Marx's life (one point to Strathern, I did not know that Karl Marx's wife Jenny was a baronness!) and so little time on Marxian theory - you know, the part that people actually care about when they see a title like "Marx in 90 Minutes." So you have 30 pages of Marx biography and a little north of 30 pages of Marxian theory - but even in those brief 30 pages the author can't resist the opportunity to apply his own capitalist critique of Marxism while giving it the shortest of shrift. There were about two pages that helped me grasp Marxism in a meaningful way - the rest was mostly biographical filler and the author's "objective" interpretation of Marxian theory. Your 90 minutes are better spent elsewhere.