The Historiography of Communism

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I owe a great deal to far more people than I can thank in a short paragraph of acknowledgments. I mention only the few who have been directly connected to the publication of this book and the development of many of the ideas discussed in it. Randy Martin cowrote two of the chapters and, generously, read all the others. My discussions with him over the years have always been productive, not only because of his vast knowledge of the critical literature but because of the creative way he has of working through difficult concepts and his willingness to help me work through my own ideas. I owe him a special debt of gratitude for having shown me different sides to almost every argument I discuss in this book and for encouraging me to publish it. Frank Rosengarten and I founded the journal Socialism and Democracy more than twenty years ago, when several chapters were originally published. His comments have always been helpful, and I learned a great deal from him about the history of communism in America. George Snedeker participated with me, Randy Martin, and Frank Rosengarten in editing a collection entitled New Studies in the Politics and Culture of American Communism, and he has generously shared his knowledge of critical theory with me. Bertell and Paule Ollman have patiently read parts of this book and part of a manuscript that lays the foundation for my discussion of the idea of “society,” and they have discussed them with me at great length. The theoretical parts of this book have been influenced by our discussions about internal relations and dialectics, and by Paule’s willingness to share her considerable knowledge of modern French thought. I have also had the benefit of discussions with Peter Manning and Michael Meyer. Both helped me to clarify the relationship between key concepts and various theoretical and philosophical literatures with which I was only casually familiar when I undertook this project, but which turned out to have been important to its completion. Finally, Marie-Annick Brown took precious time from her preparation of a forthcoming exhibition of her drawings to read the final manuscript and help me edit the prose. Our discussions about art have been instructive and contributed to my accounts of the concepts of “reflexivity,” “sociality,” and “a course of activity,” each of which is crucial to my understanding of what is at stake in any sociologically oriented discussion of historiography. viii / Acknowledgments ...