Wages of Rebellion (38 page)

Lisa Bankoff of International Creative Management handled the contracts, as usual, for the book. We have been together since my first book. I look forward to a long continuation of our partnership.

My four children, Thomas, Noëlle, Konrad, and Marina, along with Eunice, comprise my precious universe, the one that keeps me whole. Konrad and Marina, my youngest, make for a noisy and chaotic household, one that is not always optimal for the prolonged silence coveted by a writer, but they infuse our lives with irreplaceable joy, wonder, and beauty. I write and struggle for them. I worry about the world they will inherit. I fear I have never done enough.

1.
Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in
A Critique of Pure Tolerance
by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), 95–137, 137.

2.
Francesco Guicciardini,
Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman
(
Ricordi
) [1528], trans. Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), Series C-1, 39.

3.
Karl Marx,
The Civil War in France
[1871], in
The First International and After
(New York: Verso Books, 2010), 226–228.

4.
Crane Brinton,
The Anatomy of Revolution
(New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 34.

5.
Ibid., 56.

6.
Karl Marx,
The Manifesto of the Communist Party
[1848], authorized English translation, edited and annotated by Friedrich Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 9–21.

7.
Brinton,
The Anatomy of Revolution
, 101.

8.
Ibid., 89–90.

9.
James C. Davies, “Toward a Theory of Revolution,”
American Sociological Review
27, no. 1 (1962): 5–19, reprinted in
When Men Revolt and Why
, ed. James Chowning Davies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 133, 135.

10.
Ibid., 133–134.

11.
Ibid., 140.

12.
Ibid.

13.
Ibid., 141.

14.
Leon Trotsky,
History of the Russian Revolution
(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008), 353.

15.
Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “The Uncomfortable Truth About American Wages,”
New York Times
, October 22, 2012.

16.
Barbara Ehrenreich explores this false promise in her book
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America
(New York: Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2009).

17.
Rami Zurayk, “Use Your Loaf: Why Food Prices Were Crucial to the Arab Spring,”
The Guardian
, July 16, 2011.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Liz Alderman, “More Children in Greece Are Going Hungry,”
New York Times
, April 17, 2013.

20.
Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012,”
Current Population Reports
P60-245 (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, September 2013),
http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p60-245.pdf
(accessed June 14, 2014).

21.
According to the summary for Elise Gould, Hilary Wething, Natalie Sabadish, and Nicholas Finio,
What Families Need to Get By: The 2013 Update of EPI’s Family Budget Calculator
(Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2013,
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib368-basic-family-budgets/
, accessed December 15, 2014): “The basic family budget for a two-parent, two-child family ranges from $48,166 (Marshall County, Miss.) to $94,676 (New York City). In the median family budget area, Topeka, Kan., a two-parent, two-child family needs $63,364 to secure an adequate but modest living standard. This is well above the 2012 poverty threshold of $23,283 for this family type.”

22.
DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012,” 15.

23.
National Center for Law and Economic Justice, “Poverty in the United States: A Snapshot,”
http://www.nclej.org/poverty-in-the-us.php
.

24.
J. R. Porter et al., “Food Security and Food Production Systems,” in
Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability
, Part A,
Global and Sectoral Aspects: Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 2–4.

25.
Vladimir Lenin,
“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(Chippendale, Australia: Resistance Books, 1999), 83 (emphasis in the original).

26.
The historians and political philosophers who have examined the phenomenon of revolutionary waves include Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hoffer, Jacques Godechot, and Antonio Gramsci.

27.
Walter Benjamin, “Goethe’s
Elective Affinities
,” in
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1913–1926
, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

28.
Ibid.

29.
Friedrich Engels arrived in England in October 1842 to work for his family’s cotton business in Manchester, where he witnessed the deplorable conditions in the mills. He drew on what he saw to write
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
and became a contributor to the Chartist newspaper
Northern Star
.

30.
Adam B. Ulam,
The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 39–41.

31.
Adam B. Ulam,
Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 12.

32.
Auguste Blanqui, “Contre le Progrès” [“Against Progress,” 1869 manuscript], published in Auguste Blanqui,
Instructions pour une prise d’armes: L’Éternité par les astres et autres texts
(
Instructions for Taking Up Arms: Eternity According to the Stars and Others Texts
), ed. Miguel Abensour and Valentin Pelosse (Paris: Éditions de la Tête de Feuille, 1972), 103–105; cited in Daniel Bensaïd and Michael Löwy, “August Blanqui, Heretical Communist,”
Radical Philosophy
185 (May-June 2014).

33.
Auguste Blanqui, “La Critique sociale” (“Social Criticism”), part III of Auguste Blanqui,
Textes choisis
(
Selected Texts
), preface and notes by V. P. Volguine (Paris: Éditions Sociale, 1971), 74; cited in Bensaïd and Löwy, “August Blanqui.”

34.
Ibid., 159.

35.
Quoted in Gustave Geffroy,
L’Énfermé
(
Locked
), vol. II (Paris: Éditions G. Crès et Cle, 1926), 19–20; cited in Bensaïd and Löwy, “August Blanqui.”

36.
Karl Marx,
The Revolutions of 1848: Political Writings
, vol. 1, ed. David Fernbach (London: Verso Books, 2010), 24.

37.
Paul Avrich,
Anarchist Portraits
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 217–219.

38.
Nicholas Kulish, “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around the Globe,”
New York Times
, September 27, 2011.

39.
Sheldon S. Wolin,
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), xviii (emphasis in original).

40.
Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 289.

41.
Wolin,
Democracy Incorporated
, xviii.

42.
Michel de Montaigne,
The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne
(New York: Digireads, 2004), 78.

43.
Seumas Milne, “Venezuela Shows That Protest Can Be a Defence of Privilege,”
The Guardian
, April 9, 2014.

44.
Gabriel García Márquez and Subcomandante Marcos, “A Zapatista Reading List,”
The Nation
, July 2, 2001.

1.
Norman Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements
(New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 74.

2.
“Hurricane Sandy’s Rising Costs” (editorial),
New York Times
, November 27, 2012.

3.
Eric S. Blake, Todd B. Kimberlain, Robert J. Berg, John P. Cangialosi, and John L. Beven II, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Sandy, AL182012, 22–29 October 2012,” National Hurricane Center, February 12, 2013,
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL182012_Sandy.pdf
.

4.
Richard D. Knabb, Jamie R. Rhome, and Daniel P. Brown, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina, 23–30 August 2005,” National Hurricane Center, December 20, 2005,
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf
.

5.
Connor Adams Sheets, “Hurricane Sandy Anniversary 2014: NYC Victims Still Waiting for Home Repair Funding Two Years After Storm Hit New York,”
International Business Times
, October 28, 2014; Hilary Russ, “New York, New Jersey Put $71 Billion Price Tag on Sandy,” Reuters, November 26, 2012.

6.
Russ, “New York, New Jersey Put $71 Billion Price Tag on Sandy.”

7.
“De-coding the Black Death,” BBC News, October 3, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1576875.stm
.

8.
Climate Vulnerability Forum,
Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet
, 2nd ed.,
http://www.thecvf.org/web/publications-data/climate-vulnerability-monitor/2012-monitor/
.

9.
Koko Warner, Charles Ehrhart, Alex de Sherbinin, Susana Adamo, and Tricia Chai-Onn, “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement,” Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Earth Institute of Columbia University,
May 2009,
http://ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/clim-migr-report-june09_media.pdf
.

10.
Andre Delbanco,
Melville: His World and Work
(New York: Vintage, 2006), 6–7.

11.
Carl Van Doren,
The American Novel
(New York: Macmillan, 1921).

12.
D. H. Lawrence,
Studies in Classic American Literature
[1923], vol. 2 (New York: Penguin, 1990).

13.
E. M. Forster,
Aspects of the Novel
(New York: Mariner Books, 1955), 138; Lewis Mumford, “The Significance of Herman Melville,”
The New Republic
, October 10, 1928,
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114098/significance-herman-melville-lewis-mumford-stacks
.

14.
Nathaniel Philbrick, “The Road to Melville,”
Vanity Fair
, November 2011,
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/11/moby-dick-201111
.

15.
Edward Said, “Islam and the West Are Inadequate Banners,”
The Observer
, September 16, 2001,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/16/september11.terrorism3
.

16.
C.L.R. James,
Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001).

17.
Greg Grandin,
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Necessity in the New World
(New York: Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2014); Morris Berman,
Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).

18.
Nathaniel Philbrick,
Why Read
Moby-Dick? (New York: Viking, 2011), 6.

19.
International Programme on the State of the Ocean, “Greater, Faster, Closer: Latest Review of Science Reveals Ocean in Critical State from Cumulative Impacts” (press release), October 3, 2013,
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/IPSO-PR-2013-FINAL.pdf
.

20.
Seth Borenstein, “Study: Species Disappearing Far Faster Than Before,” Associated Press, May 29, 2014.

21.
Binyamin Appelbaum, “Citing Growth, Fed Again Cuts Monthly Bond Purchases,
New York Times
, January 29, 2014.

22.
“Bloomberg Billionaires: Today’s Ranking of the World’s Richest People,”
Bloomberg.com
, April 22, 2014,
http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2014-04-22/cya
.

23.
Thomas Piketty,
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).

24.
Clive Hamilton,
Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
(London: Earthscan, 2010), xiv.

25.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center, “Climatological Rankings,”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/climatological-rankings/index.php?periods%5B%5D=12¶meter=tavg&state=110&div=0&month=12&year=2009#ranks-form
; see also World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “WMO Annual Climate Statement Highlights Extreme Events,” press release 985, March 24, 2014,
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_985_en.html
.

26.
Joseph A. Tainter,
The Collapse of Complex Societies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Charles L. Redman,
Human Impact on Ancient Environments
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999); Ronald Wright,
A Short History of Progress
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005).

27.
Reinhold Niebuhr,
Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History
(New York: Scribner’s, 1965), 39.

28.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline,
Castle to Castle
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1968), 184.