Another History

Michael Kazin's bracing intervention asks us to consider why, despite circumstances of rising inequality and ample sources of discontent, it is the Right, not the Left, that has more effectively mobi-lized populist instincts and possibilities. His thoughtful historical answer is marked by an internal tension. Kazin ends by calling on the Left to "stop mourning" and "start organizing," but as his analytical history portrays a Left without adequate assets, one must wonder whether his call to arms is a form of wishful thinking. From where might the Left's initiatives come after a lost half-century? Persuasive answers to this pressing question will not be found, I believe, unless some features that he does not discuss are given more prominence.