Books Briefly
BOOKS BRIEFLY Subverting Apartheid FRONTLINE SOUTHERN AFRICA: Destructive Engagement edited by Phyllis Johnson and David Martin Four Walls Eight Windows, P.O. Box 548, Village Station, New York,...
...Whether or not one shares Kolko's vision, her analysis will help the reader understand tomorrow's headlines about deficits, bank failures, and debt crises in the Third World...
...24.95 cloth, $14.95 paper...
...Kim Moody of the Detroit-based Labor Notes discusses the reasons for falling union membership and atrophying labor muscle...
...In Boxed In, Miller shows what a mistake that is...
...Kaplan Fund), and Human Rights Watch (which will benefit from sales of the book...
...That war, the authors estimate, has claimed more than a million lives in the 1980s and inflicted damage and costs totaling at least $35 billion...
...The change she favors is not "capitalism with a human face" but a genuine socialism of a kind never yet achieved anywhere...
...Frontline Southern Africa comes highly recommended: It has been banned by the government of South Africa as "subversive" and "prejudicial to the safety of the state...
...Human Jetsam FORCED OUT: The Agony of the Refugee in Our Time by Carole Kismaric Random House, W.W...
...Television has a tendency to eliminate its critics...
...23.95...
...The roots of this contemporary decline lie," he says, "in the abandonment of the early social unionism of the CIO in favor of a modern version of business unionism...
...349 pp...
...But most significant of all is the evidence that U.S...
...You live in fear of starvation...
...The 200 or so photos reproduced in Forced Out— many of them by prize-winning photo-journalists—are grim and deeply moving...
...He cites the activism of women workers, Latinos, and blacks, and he highlights two strikes in the 1980s that brought the rank-and-file to the fore: the P-9 strike in Austin, Minnesota, against Hormel and the Watson-ville canning strike in California...
...labor movement from the 1930s to the present should be read by activist and scholar alike...
...Moody blames the AFL-CIO for not organizing the new and unorganized sectors of the work force, especially in the service sector, noting that the unions have been all too willing to raid each others' membership rather than plow new ground...
...In words and pictures, Forced Out presents a wrenching portrait of the human jetsam cast adrift by war and political turmoil, hunger and privation...
...390 pp...
...Among these, Kolko cites the widening gaps between rich and poor nations, rich and poor classes, and rich and poor individuals...
...Norton, William Morrow, and Penguin Books...
...50.00 cloth, $16.95 paper...
...19.95 paper...
...530 pp...
...Government's policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa...
...some estimates run as high as thirty million around the world...
...With the exception of Elayne Rapping of The Guardian and Mark Crispin Miller, few leftist critics have bothered to take TV seriously...
...These commercial incentives are the ideological filters that distort news and dismiss innovative programming...
...Despite the bad tidings of the last two decades, Moody finds the seeds of a resurgent labor movement...
...No one knows how many refugees there are...
...Crisis of Capitalism RESTRUCTURING THE WORLD ECONOMY by Joyce Kolko Pantheon...
...39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper...
...As the union hierarchies entrenched themselves in bureaucracies and confined their bargaining to bread-and-butter issues, they abandoned the "collectivist, egalitarian ethic" that gave the union movement its strength, Moody argues...
...either they become enthusiasts or they turn off their sets in disgust...
...It isn't difficult to fathom why...
...The comments of one Ethiopian refugee sum up the tragedy to which attention must be paid: "Arriving in the area of settlement we were scared to death...
...Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, who operate the Southern Africa Research and Documentation Center in Zimbabwe, have compiled ten thoroughly documented essays that serve as a devastating indictment of South Africa's war against its own black majority and against neighboring countries...
...His central argument is that TV has its own intrinsic biases that are dictated by the need to sell ads and captivate audiences...
...But he returns to his theme in his final essay, which closes with these chilling words about television's power to chain the viewer: "As you watch, there is no Big Brother out there watching you— not because there isn't a Big Brother, but because Big Brother is you, watching...
...Many of the facts detailed in this book are simply unknown to most Americans, partly because of the pathetically inadequate reporting of our mass media, partly because of the falsehoods propagated to recruit support for the U.S...
...Homeland was a beautiful place, full of grazing cattle...
...Contrary to the dark guesswork of the vulgar Marxist, the TV newsman, for example, usually needs no guiding phone call from his higher-ups in order to decide the bias of his story, but will guide himself, as if on automatic, toward whatever formula might 'play,'" he writes...
...Written before the Eastern Airlines strike, Moody's book had already divined the rise of "solidarity consciousness" among an active minority in the movement...
...This comprehensive study of the fall (and possible rise) of the U.S...
...political and economic support is instrumental in shoring up the apartheid regime and abetting its crimes against humanity...
...My dreams are still bound to my homeland...
...TV Blues BOXED IN: The Culture of TY by Mark Crispin Miller Northwestern University Press...
...Moody clings to Marx's insight that the working class is the engine of social transformation, and he makes a persuasive case in this important book...
...Among the significant contributions in Frontline Southern Africa is Abdul S. Min-ty's chapter on "The Apartheid Bomb," which asserts, persuasively, that "there is no longer any doubt about South Africa's nuclear-weapon capability...
...376 pp...
...He also critiques the AFL-CIO's unquestioned fealty to the Democratic Party and calls for a new labor party that can articulate the radical goals of social unionism...
...More disquieting even than the old nightmare of conspiracy is the likelihood that no conspiracy is needed...
...President Truman, weary of economic experts who always hedged their bets by saying, "On the one hand...
...You feel lost...
...Box 548, Village Station, New York, NY 10014...
...You are shocked...
...This is an unusual publishing venture—a joint effort by four major publishers, a foundation (the J.M...
...As a consequence, labor was not in a strong position to defend itself when business took the offensive in the 1970s and 1980s by moving jobs overseas and demanding "concessions" at home...
...The words include eloquent eyewitness accounts by refugees from Afghanistan, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, South Africa, Uganda, Uruguay, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam...
...Joyce Kolko doesn't waffle or equivocate...
...In crisp, lucid style, she sets out the crisis in contemporary capitalism and concludes that it will take a radical new international order to resolve the contradictions that bedevil us...
...but on the other hand...," once proclaimed that he'd give anything to meet a one-handed economist...
...Miller does not simply theorize, however: He dissects specific programs {Family Feud, The Bill Cosby Show, Jerry Lewis's Telethon) and deconstructs the techniques of the "stars" (Dan Rather's hucksterism, David Letterman's irony...
...Nothing is forever," she notes, "except contradiction and change...
...He exposes the overpowering influence of television and subjects the medium to a withering analysis...
...In the second half of the book, Miller goes on a tangent—albeit an interesting one—and discusses rock music, Elvis Presley, cinema, and Alfred Hitchcock...
...193 pp...
...Never had we seen such a thick forest, inhabited only by wild animals, snakes, and big, biting flies...
...Labor Pains AN INJURY TO ALL: The Decline of American Unionism by Kim Moody Verso Press...
...Such solidarity "across occupational, racial, national, and sexual lines beyond one's immediate workplace," he says, has created the "historical possibility of a more general awakening among working-class people...
Vol. 53 • May 1989 • No. 5
