On June 28-29, an “Open National Antiwar Conference” was held in Cleveland, called by a newly minted National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. Over objections from the conference organizers, centrally Socialist Action, the assembly voted to change the name to include reference to the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize the connection with U.S. backing for the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air is a damn good book, one that should be must reading for all those who consider themselves part of the left today and for future generations of socialists as well.


Elbaum has done the left a great service in crafting this incisive history and analysis of the rise and demise of the preeminent revolutionary socialist political current that emerged from the radicalization of the 1960s, broadly definable as Maoist, which he calls the "New Communist Movement".