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| June 2007 | Annette Rubinstein 1910-2007 |
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 Annette T. Rubinstein, a friend and comrade of Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman, and Harry Magdoff from the founding of Monthly Review in 1949 died on June 20th, aged 97. An active socialist for 75 years, Annette was the author of more than 20 essays and reviews on literary and political subjects for MR, as well as innumerable articles in Mainstream, Science & Society, and Jewish Currents, among others. She wrote the standard progressive introduction to English literature, The Great Tradition: From Shakespeare to Shaw as well as American Literature: Root and Flower, an invaluable overview of that country's literary history. Both emphasize the massive, but officially hidden, presence of the literature of resistance to oppression at the heart of the history and development of modern English language and literature. In her last public appearance, on the occasion of her 97th birthday in April, Annette returned to this topic in her talk and gathered her strength to do an effective public reading in Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy.
In the 1940s she founded and led the Robert Louis Stevenson school, an innovative primary and secondary school in New York, and during the Second World War served on Mayor LaGuardia's commission on the status of children in wartime. She was an unsuccessful candidate for congress on the American Labor Party (ALP) ticket in a district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and also served as state vice chair of the ALP. In 1958 she ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York State as an Independent Socialist candidate. Annette took the 5th amendment when asked by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy if she were a member of the Communist party. McCarthy replied that she was the most charming communist who had sat before his committee, to which she responded, "Aren't you jumping to conclusions, Senator." Rubinstein was a key adviser to radical New York congressman Vito Marcantonio through his career. On his death she edited I Vote My Conscience: Speeches and Writings of Vito Marcantonio 1935-1950. She also taught widely and was a visiting professor at universities in Eastern Europe and China. With her many intellectual and organizational contributions to a global community of activists and left intellectuals, notably for the New York City Brecht Forum, and to Science & Society, Monthly Review and to the many other publications that carried her work, she was most proud of her activism. She played an important role in the struggle against racial and class oppression in the New York public schools and would speak anywhere, from street corners to Madison Square Garden. Monthly Review published a biographical essay by her friend, the historian Gerald Meyer, to commemorate her 95th birthday.| Top | |
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