Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?: And Other Questions - Hardcover

Kaye, Harvey J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312126913 ISBN 13: 9780312126919

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996

Synopsis

In "Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?" and Other Questions, Harvey Kaye shows how our present-day political and economic elites stand in a long line of governing classes that have been eager to declare an end to the making of history. Invoking the hard-fought-for accomplishments of America's past and the persistent possibilities of its future, he calls upon his fellow citizens, especially intellectuals of the Left, to redeem the "prophetic memory" of American experience and renew the struggle for liberty, equality, and democracy. Through essays that range in tone and content from the rhetorical power of a public address to the intimacy of a personal memoir, Harvey Kaye looks at the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate. Not content to accept the notion that history is at an end and that individuals are powerless to effect change, Kaye makes an impassioned plea to understand the ongoing, circuitous route of history and its ability to engender social action at a time when society seems to have lost tract of the true lessons that history can teach.

About this title

About the Author

Harvey J. Kaye is Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay.

Reviews

This collection of an academic's essays and reviews aims to invigorate America's lagging Left. Kaye warns against what he sees as conservative efforts to create "a political culture of lowered expectations" and, in the title essay, argues that history remains "a process of struggle for freedom and for justice." He supports the much-criticized National History Standards as reflecting often-neglected bottom-up history and urges his colleagues to push their students to become publicly engaged as social and political critics. He finds inspiration in the works of Tom Paine, C. Wright Mills and E.P. Thompson and offers sympathetic reviews of works by Russell Jacoby, John Sayles and Benjamin Barber. For all his passion, however, Kaye, who teaches social change and development at the University of Wisconsin, is mainly addressing the converted.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this collection of articles, lectures, and book reviews, Kaye (Univ. of Wisconsin-Green Bay) explores the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate. He warns against the efforts of conservative intellectuals to declare that the struggle for democracy is over and that we are now at "the end of history." Kaye is confident, however, that even in the face of the triumph of capitalism and of a profound crisis on the left, we will yet witness resurgent struggles to create a truly democratic society. He faults his colleagues on the academic left for ignoring the crucial issues of curriculum and pedagogy at a time when public education is under attack from the right. Though he discusses important issues, Kaye's writing is tendentious and rambling. An optional purchase for academic libraries.
Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Marxist historian Kaye, a professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin^-Green Bay, based his title essay on his 1994 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Lecture, in which he argues that ruling classes fear history because "they know that however ancient the democratic idea, the modern democratic narrative has really only just begun." In part 1's essays, Kaye looks at recent U.S. and world history (including the interplay of baseball and capitalism); part 2's commentaries urge that our national education debate recognize that a democracy's schools must help students become citizens as well as producers and consumers. In part 3, with tributes to Tom Paine, C. Wright Mills, and the late British historian E. P. Thompson, Kaye takes up the role of intellectuals in our political tong wars, arguing eloquently that the U.S. has a viable radical tradition and that--by spreading the word about this tradition--historians offer alienated Americans a nourishing source of hope for the possibility of change and of effective individual and collective action. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312126913
• ISBN 13: 9780312126919
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270