Gar Alperovitz

Concentrating on Harry Truman and his immediate circle of cabinet-level advisors, Alperovitz stresses the discontinuity which the new Truman administration represented. From the very first week, the Truman administration took a "get tough" attitude toward the Soviets.

The bulk of Alperovitz's book is concerned with debates over the strategy of achieving a post-war order of peace and stability for Europe. The key to understanding the American approach to the Soviets in the final months of WWI is, according to the author, the progress on the atomic bomb. Henry Stimpson, Truman's Secretary of War, argued that in addition to the Soviet need for American money to rebuild after the war the Soviets were vulnerable to atomic intimidation. Truman accepted his argument that a confrontation with Stalin over the post-war order in Europe would best occur once the successful atomic test had occurred. As a result, Truman delayed the Potsdam conference until pressure from Churchill made further delay impossible. When Truman learned at the Potsdam Conference of the successful atomic test at Alamogordo, he took a very hard line with Stalin. As a result Potsdam saw no compromise reached over the Baltics or the post-war reparations issue.

Perhaps more contentiously revisionist is Alperovitz's argument that considerations in the Pacific war were consistently subordinated to the requirements for an American-style order in post-war Europe. Alperovitz consistently presents the argument that Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan to prevent Russian involvement in the Pacific. Taken to its most extreme, the tendency is to question whether Truman didn't actually drop the atomic bombs on Japan to intimidate the Soviets. Largely due to this tendency to extreme and speculative conclusions, Alperovitz's work was not warmly received by the academic community and few scholars accepted his conclusions in later years, even among the revisionists of the New Left. It would be interesting to study the popular reaction to the book, since this may reveal a different response.… (more)

I've been working on a short book examining the contemporary condition as it applies to black politics. And I heard about this book from Marc Steiner. It was extremely helpful for my own work as it neatly consolidates a number of radical ideas that could fundamentally change the way we think about how economies should work. It's a neater, slimmer version of his AMERICA BEYOND CAPITALISM. But, like that book, I think the organization suffers a bit. There's not as much redundancy as there is in ABC, but it's still there. If an editor would've gone back over it once more I'd have given it one more star.

With that said, if you're interested in thinking about what an alternative society could look like (if given a push) check it out.… (more)