Building a left coast: the legacy of the California Popular Front and the challenge to Cold War liberalism in the post-world war two era

The Cold War in the late 1940s blunted attempts by the Truman administration to extend the scope of government in areas such as health care and civil rights. In California, the combined weakness of the Democratic Party in electoral politics and the importance of fellow travelers and communists in state liberal politics made the problem of how to advance the left at a time of heightened Cold War tensions particularly acute. Yet by the early 1960s a new generation of liberal politicians had gained political power in the Golden State and was constructing a greatly expanded welfare system as a way of cementing their hold on power. In this article I argue that the New Politics of the 1970s, shaped nationally by Vietnam and by the social upheavals of the 1960s over questions of race, gender, sexuality, and economic rights, possessed particular power in California because many activists drew on the longer-term experiences of a liberal politics receptive to earlier anti-Cold War struggles. A desire to use political involvement as a form of social networking had given California a strong Popular Front, and in some respects the power of new liberalism was an offspring of those earlier battles.

Breaching the social contract: crises of democratic representation and patterns of extreme right party support

Why has the extreme right Greek Golden Dawn, a party with clear links to fascism experienced a rise defying all theories that claim that such a party is unlikely to win in post-WWII Europe? And, if we accept that economic crisis is an explanation for this, why has such a phenomenon not occurred in other countries that have similar conducive conditions, such as Portugal and Spain? This article addresses this puzzle by (a) carrying out a controlled comparison of Greece, Portugal and Spain and (b) showing that the rise of the extreme right is not a question of intensity of economic crisis. Rather it is the nature of the crisis, i.e. economic versus overall crisis of democratic representation that facilitates the rise of the extreme right. We argue that extreme right parties are more likely to experience an increase in their support when economic crisis culminates into an overall crisis of democratic representation. Economic crisis is likely to become a political crisis when severe issues of governability impact upon the ability of the state to fulfil its social contract obligations. This breach of the social contract is accompanied by declining levels of trust in state institutions, resulting in party system collapse.

"To strive for economic and social justice": welfare, sexuality, and party politics in San Francisco in the 1960s

This article explores how liberal politicians like Phil Burton of San Francisco joined with welfare rights lobbyists and bureaucrats to embrace late twntieth-century notions of sexual equality through a broader reconception of economic equality brought about by the expansion of the California welfare state in the early 1960s.

Oswald Mosley and the New Party

The book is a study of the New Party formed by Sir Oswald Mosley in 1931 following his leaving the Labour Party and prior to his forming the British Union of Fascists. It examines Mosley's transition from socialism to fascism within the wider context of British politics between the wars.

Burnt offerings and harpies at Nasidienus’ dinner-party (Horace, Satires 2.8)

Horace's last Satire describes a disastrous dinner party hosted by the gourmet Nasidienus, which is ruined by a collapsing tapestry. The food served afterwards is presented in a dismembered state. This chapter argues that several elements of the scene recall the greedy Harpies of Apollonius' Argonautica, and that Horace's friend Virgil shows the influence of this Satire in his own Harpy-scene in Aeneid 3. It also argues that the confusion in the middle of the dinner causes the food cooking in the kitchen to be neglected and burned. This explains the state of the subsequent courses, which Nasidienus has salvaged from a separate disaster backstage.