Bravo to Paul Buhle! It’s easy for even great thinkers, like E.P. Thompson and their work to disappear into intellectual ether as new generations move on to new challenges, intellectual and political. Let’s hope your appreciation helps to recover Thompson’s life and legacy for today’s activists who face a far more complex reality than we did. I read Thompson later than most, in the 1990s. By then I had crossed enough streams and encountered enough dead ends to leave me wondering about my understanding of class, marxism, and socialism. Luckily my meet up with Thompson made all the difference in the world. It allowed me to look at theory, history, and practical politics with new eyes and in new ways, which I don’t regret, even though it got me in more trouble than I could have anticipated at the time.
Written by
Sam Webb
I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world. I hope to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. Besides blogging, I also leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago.
While I currently reside in New York, my politically formative years were spent in Portland, Me. and Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received a MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.
I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014 when I stepped down at the convention. In 2016 I resigned from the Communist Party two years later. We were no longer on the same page.
