The editorial board of New Politics is very sad to report the death of Phyllis Jacobson, co-founder and long-time co-editor of the journal. Phyllis died on March 2, 2010, after suffering a devastating stroke close to ten years ago. We are deeply indebted to Phyllis and her late husband Julie for tirelessly holding high the banner of radical, democratic socialism and independent politics. 

Those of us who knew Phyllis Jacobson and her husband Julie will realize that her death brings to a close a long and rich chapter in the history of the revolutionary and democratic socialist left in the US. She was the last of a small but heroic generation. Starting with the YPSL Fourth International, the youth section of the Socialist Party that split under Trotskyist leadership to set up the Socialist Workers Party in 1938 she and Julie ended up in the Workers Party (later the Independent Socialist League) when it was formed in 1940.

We would like to send our condolences to the family, friends and comrades of Phyllis Jacobson. As a founding editor of New Politics, Phyllis played a crucial role in advocating the core principles of "socialism from below," including opposition to Stalinism and support for independent working-class political action. Her commitment to internationalism and solidarity was genuine and heartfelt. Without any hesitation, she opened the pages of New Politics to us when we organized campaigns to defend socialists in Greece and South Korea who faced government persecution.

I met Phyllis and Julie in September of 1961. I had just graduated from the University of Chicago where I had joined the YPSL, and was passing through New York on my way to London. I met them at Julie’s machine shop in Great Jones Street in the East Village and they took me out for lunch at the corner diner on Lafayette and Great Jones. There they told me that the first issue of New Politics had just come out, and as the good and experienced organizers they were, they immediately enrolled me as their London distributor.

The image of Phyllis that remains most salient, and the one I most miss, would begin with a phone call. I would answer with a lugubrious “hello.” And from the other end, I would hear a buoyant “HIYA, STEVE, this is PHYLLIS.” A robust voice for such a diminutive person. And a twang that seemed more Texan than Bronx.

Julie and Phyllis Jacobson launched New Politics in the early 1960s, when they saw the absence of a voice for authentic left-socialist thought following the demise of the Independent Socialist current of the previous period. Ironically, although it was a time of reborn activism for civil rights, peace and what we now call “global justice,” the movement for a socialist politics fiercely independent of Washington, Moscow and Beijing had not organizationally survived to see it.

Phyllis Jacobson, who died after a protracted illness on March 2 — just shy of her 88th birthday — was the dynamic force behind a remarkable political and intellectual partnership of shared passion that left an indelible imprint on three generations of twentieth century American radicalism.

IT’S A STAPLE of American comedians to make fun of in-laws in general and mothers-in-law in particular. But, in my case and with no offense to Michael, I could have married my husband simply for his parents.

Monthly Review magazine, which long continues to have cache on the left—especially with regard to economic analysis—is currently hosting a debate on the so-called “Minksy moment.” MR, of course, long defends the view advanced in the 1960s by Paul Sweezy’s and Paul Baran’s book Monopoly Capital.

From the Tea Party to the Coffee Party, How Political Parties Grow the Grass and Mow the Lawn

How can we make neoliberalism’s project to destroy public education, captured in the Obama/Duncan “Race to the Top” proposal,  more understandable? The subject is complex, but bloggers in the US are taking up the challenge, as we see in Susan Ohanian’s excellent report on my work. (Thanks to all who have picked up the debate with Ravitch.)

 My research on Jack Tar, the American colonial seaman, began in rebellion against the highly politicized historiography of the 50s and early 60s, which reflected Cold War values, stressing the classlessness of American society, the lack of conflict, and the irrationality of those who dissented. A conservative historiography saw crowd actions in early America as drunk/crqzy, or manipulated by their betters.