IN 1986, AGAINST the Current was something new under the Reaganite sun, a fresh, radical, freethinking magazine of movement strategy and socialist revival.
The very name Against the Current signified opposition to the political tides of political conservatism and runaway corporate domination. It registered the many defeats suffered by the left while conveying defiance, resistance, and resolve. An outgrowth of three prior publications, the new series of Against the Current heralded a rare and welcome combination of energies in a socialist movement that had seen far more division and factionalism than coming together.
The spirit was extended to writers from a wide range of political backgrounds who were invited to participate in the magazine’s discussions. This diversity has lent ATC a creative, open air—even as the organized socialist left that it sought to regenerate, paradoxically, has generally continued to weaken.
The best way to understand the distinctiveness of the project of ATC is to locate it within the history of radical publications in the United States. We might begin with the observation that Detroit is an unusual editorial address. Long a symbol of urban decline, Detroit is testament to the failure of capitalism and its political representatives to meet basic human needs.
Left-wing journals too numerous to count have been issued in New York. But the Motor City was fitting, with a powerful history of industrial union organizing and a larger proportion of African Americans than any other major American city.
A case might be made that ATC’s freewheeling cultural spirit, dashes of humor, and support for sexual freedom place it in a vein of independent radicalism running from the bohemian Masses (1911–1917) through Dwight Macdonald’s iconoclastic Politics (1944–1949) down to the new left’s Radical America (1967–1992).
ATC has printed as many cartoons as it could by Tuli Kupferberg, veteran of the East Village countercultural band The Fugs. Every issue contained a humor column written by the pseudonymous autoworker, R.F. Kampfer. (“Q. What do you call a Teamster in a three-piece suit? A. The defendant.”)
In political lineage, however, ATC is more akin to New Politics (1961–Present). They share a genealogy tracing to the midcentury periodicals of the anti-Stalinist left, especially New International (1934–1958), which emerged out of the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky.
ATC has carried many reminiscences, reconsiderations, and obituaries providing rich histories of this strand of the left, and some revolutionaries, like Ernest Mandel, lived long enough to contribute to both generations of periodicals. Like those earlier periodicals (and unlike New Politics), ATC is sponsored by a socialist organization, in its case Solidarity.
The magazine’s name recalls Against the Stream, a title once recognizable to a left steeped in the writings of Lenin, now more vilified than read. ATC’s libertarian Leninism—such phrases were not oxymoronic at one time—has been the source of many crucial conceptual achievements. Revolutionary organization, collective discussion, common strategizing, movement activity: Taken together, all gave definition to thought.
ATC’s distinctive insights on the trade union bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and social democratic reformism, for example, trace directly to the sponsoring group’s emphasis, dating back to its 1970s forerunners, on rank-and-file labor organizing.
That line of descent, though influential, was not determinative, however. ATC never fit the mold of the party organ. It takes editorial positions, but often admits to internal differences, and it is open to multiple alternative points of view on the left.
On the whole the journal has tended to be characterized by general political principles rather than definite political lines. Solidarity—itself a product of formerly rival groups coming together while agreeing to disagree on some matters—developed this form by rethinking socialist organization, emphasizing collaboration among multiple political currents without demanding ideological uniformity.
That thinking, in turn, reflected an assimilation of the liberatory movement innovations of the 1960s as well as a profound reconsideration about left practice as radical movements retreated in subsequent years.
The result was an uncommon form of socialist periodical. ATC, although sponsored by a group, has from the beginning included independents on its editorial board who are not members of the sponsoring organization.
In its pages it has deliberately sought to foster dialogue and debate inclusive of rival traditions of the left. In these respects, it is most comparable to the Marxist Quarterly (1937), V.F. Calverton’s Modern Quarterly (1923–1940), and the American Socialist (1954–1959). The last of these is closest, perhaps, to a forerunner of ATC’s curious combination: implantation in a specific socialist milieu and a very broad range of external radical participation.
The immediate precursors of the magazine were the old series of ATC (1980–1985), Changes (1978–1985), and Socialist Unity (1985). The first series of ATC was particularly important in pioneering the distinctive “regroupment” ethos of interactive left dialogue, guided in this direction by longtime socialists Carl Feingold and Steve Zeluck.
Sponsored by the group Workers Power and based in New York, the original ATC established a positive reputation on the left that led to the preservation of its name on the masthead. Changes, based in Detroit and published by the International Socialists, set the graphic design pattern. Socialist Unity, the third magazine, was issued by a group of Fourth Internationalists. Today, editors from all three original fusion journals still serve on the ATC editorial team.
Perhaps what most delights about ATC are the occasional surprise contributions that don’t easily fit conventional categories.
The refreshing and rare include the late socialist labor activist Stan Weir’s remembrance of novelist James Baldwin (1989); Jesse Lemisch and Naomi Weisstein on the dangers of left-wing asceticism (1992); Robin D.G. Kelley’s obituary for African-American Communist organizer Christopher Columbus Alston (1996); and This is the Thanks We Got (2001) by Rodney Ward, a flight attendant laid off after September 11.
Some of the most controversial and least predictable writings published in ATC have been the editors’ own major contributions, such as Alan Wald’s The End of American Trotskyism? (1994–1995) and Samuel Farber’s The Black Panthers Reconsidered (1996).
The magazine is recognizable for its commitment to a constellation of basic concerns:
A great achievement of ATC is to have survived across fifteen years when many left-wing publications and much of the organized socialist left imploded or fizzled out, demoralized by the collapse of Communist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, or disoriented by the triumph of market ideology that pulled the center of political gravity rightward.
ATC survived the deluge because of the strength of its perspective, bolstered both politically and materially by the sponsoring group Solidarity. It always looked to the working class as the baseline of politics, a working class served poorly by command economies and the profit system alike. It held a realistic view regarding the direction of history, yet it refused to relinquish radical politics, revolutionary theory, or socialist hope.
It kept its pages interesting by continually reaching out to well-regarded independent radical writers, from Paul Buhle to Noam Chomsky. Today ATC carries on its function as a place for dialogue on the left and is well-positioned to help give voice to a new generation of instinctively anticapitalist activists.
The stability of the magazine is also a result of a group of editors drawn from the activist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Robert Brenner, Dianne Feeley, David Finkel and Alan Wald have served since the first issue, and Samuel Farber since the second. Susan Weissman joined the board in 1989.
This team of six editors, in other words, has presided over the magazine from its beginning. Other editors have left their mark along the way, including Johanna Brenner, Nancy Holmstrom, Joanna Misnik, César Ayala and Peter Drucker.
Not that the editorial process has allowed for sausage-making without bloodshed. Spread out around the country, the editors have almost never been able to meet as a group in person. They have been compelled, therefore, to make decisions by collective monthly Sunday morning phone meetings plagued invariably by technical weaknesses.
From time to time, serious political disagreements have erupted—even, once in a while, cantankerous shouting, usually leavened in the end by wit and camaraderie. (Barking once ensued in the background as a household pet joined the yelling match, leading one editor to denounce another’s “dogmatism.”)
Credit for getting the magazine out especially goes to David Finkel, whose sardonic wit and erudition in world politics have informed Letter from the Editors drafts over the years, and Dianne Feeley, who has laid out the pages of every issue. In a media mode of production dominated by a handful of giant corporations, ATC is that anomaly, a labor of love.
Every reader will have a criticism or two to level at ATC. Density of text has sometimes precluded airy design, the desire for inclusiveness has sometimes resulted in admission of weak articles, and academic jargon has crept in from time to time.
This is not the place for a full critique of the magazine, or a full history, which would have to ruminate on where some of its best young writers of the 1980s wound up. (Hints: One writes for Money, believe it or not. Another has reached the pinnacle of cultural journalism.)
For the most part, ATC has balanced analytical depth with lively accessibility. It mixes the intellectual and the activist, the topical and the theoretical, and the cultural and the political. So long as the project of radical renewal remains incomplete, so long as capitalism continues to degrade the earth and exploit humankind, this magazine has its task set for it. For the foreseeable future, ATC will be found swimming upstream.
Christopher Phelps teaches history at Ohio State University and is an editor of Against the Current.
ATC 100, September–October 2002