Unless you’re an Israel scholar, you may not know that most of the founders of the modern state of Israel were secular Jews and socialists. The system they put in place in 1948 was based on socialist principles, reflecting both the experience many had growing up on kibbutzim or activism in socialist organizations in Europe. […]
Archive | Political Economy
PollaksPolitics: My Political Blog
I am a writer of genre fiction, but I am also engaged in the political realm. As a result, it seemed logical to have two separate blogs–one for each kind of post. For that reason I created PollaksPolitics.com, a blog where I post my thoughts on political issues. In case you’d like to label me […]
Why Socialism Will Never Arrive. A Review of Bernard Johnpoll’s The Impossible Dream
Bernard Johnpoll with Lillian Johnpoll, The Impossible Dream. The Rise and Demise of the American Left, Greenwood Press, 1981 I was fortunate to have taken a class with Professor Johnpoll in the 1970s when I was a graduate student at the University at Albany. He was sui generis––a cigar smoking, iconoclastic, child of Communists who […]
Toward Civic Integrity, A Book Review
This column was first published September 30, 2010 on the Empire Page website. After more than six years of haggling, the final hurdles were recently overcome for the construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter within the city limits of Gloversville in Fulton County in upstate New York. While Gloversville City Court Judge Vincent DeSantis, author of […]