Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?: And Other Questions
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ISBN: 0312126913 / Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, January 1996
Kaye (social change and development, U. of Wisconsin-Green Bay) calls on intellectuals of the Left to renew the struggle for liberty and equality, in essays originally written as lectures, articles, and reviews. He examines the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate, and criticizes the efforts on the part of conservatives to promote the view that the struggle for democracy is finished with the end of the Cold War. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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In "Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?" and Other Questions, Harvey Kaye shows how our present-day political and economic elites stand in a long line of governing classes that have been eager to declare an end to the making of history. Invoking the hard-fought-for accomplishments of America's past and the persistent possibilities of its future, he calls upon his fellow citizens, especially intellectuals of the Left, to redeem the "prophetic memory" of American experience and renew the struggle for liberty, equality, and democracy. Through essays that range in tone and content from the rhetorical power of a public address to the intimacy of a personal memoir, Harvey Kaye looks at the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate. Not content to accept the notion that history is at an end and that individuals are powerless to effect change, Kaye makes an impassioned plea to understand the ongoing, circuitous route of history and its ability to engender social action at a time when society seems to have lost tract of the true lessons that history can teach.
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