[lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Oct 18 15:12:04 PDT 2006


On Oct 18, 2006, at 6:03 PM, Jesse Lemisch wrote:


> I always disliked Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes.... all made out of
> ticky-tacky," etc., as contemptuous of people, including
> suburbanites, who
> live in those little boxes. I was therefore quite surprised in reading
> Bettina Aptheker's excellent new memoir, Intimate Politics, to hear
> that
> Reynolds was a Communist. It had been my experience that Communists,
> regardless of their other problems, did not insult potential
> constituencies.
> But there's no doubt that contempt for suburbia was very much a
> part of the
> New Left.

Pete Seeger sang it too, and he was a Communist in some sense, no?

I thought that part of the point of encouraging suburbanization was to break up the urban working class, and make it more atomized and conservative. Is that not true?

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list