Ira Katznelson
The March 4th 2013 issue of The New Yorker Magazine has an
uncharacteristically interesting article by Louis Menand on Ira
Katznelson’s new book “Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our
Time” that stands out from the usual dreary rot from Jon Lee Anderson,
David Remnick, Hendrik Hertzberg, et al.
The article is behind a paywall unfortunately but I am going to quote
the opening paragraphs that should be of particular interest to my
regular readers:
In September, 1939, just as the Second World War was beginning, a
left-wing Italian shoe salesman named Bruno Rizzi published a book, in
Paris, called “The Bureaucratization of the World.” Rizzi brought the
book out at his own expense; he couldn’t find a publisher. In early
1940, he was charged by French authorities with racial defamation–there
was an anti-Semitic chapter in his book–and he was fined and received a
suspended sentence. Remaining copies of the book were confiscated and
pulped.
Rizzi hadn’t used his full name on the cover–he identified himself as
Bruno R.–and he more or less disappeared from view in the chaos of the
war. (He resurfaced afterward.) “The Bureaucratization of the World”
might have slipped into oblivion but for one thing: Rizzi had managed to
get a copy to Leon Trotsky, who was living in exile in the village of
Coyoacan, outside Mexico City. Trotsky read the book and was
sufficiently exercised to write an article criticizing it. The article
was published, in November, 1939, in a journal called The New
International, an organ of the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist
organization based in New York City.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/the-new-deal-leon-trotsky-and-the-bureaucratic-state/
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