Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Morris Kolko (August 17, 1932 – May 19, 2014) was an American historian.[2] His research interests included American capitalism and political history, the Progressive Era, and U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century.[3] One of the best-known revisionist historians to write about the Cold War,[4] he was also credited as "an incisive critic of the Progressive Era and its relationship to the American empire."[5][6] U.S. historian Paul Buhle summarized Kolko's career when he described him as "a major theorist of what came to be called Corporate Liberalism...[and] a very major historian of the Vietnam War and its assorted war crimes."[7]
Gabriel Kolko
May 19, 2014 (aged 81)
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Historian, writer, educator
English
American
Kent State University (BA; 1954)
University of Wisconsin (MS; 1955)
Harvard University (PhD; 1962)
1955–2014 (writer)
History
The Triumph of Conservatism, The Limits of Power (co-author w/ Joyce Kolko)
Transportation History Prize from Organization of American Historians, 1963; Social Sciences Research Council fellow, 1963–64; Guggenheim fellow, 1966–67; American Council of Learned Societies fellow, 1971–72; Killam fellow, 1974–75, 1982–84; Royal Society of Canada fellow.
Background and education[edit]
Kolko was of Jewish heritage.[8] He was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of two teachers: Philip and Lillian (née Zadikow) Kolko.[9] Kolko attended Kent State University, studying American economic history (BA 1954). Next he attended the University of Wisconsin, where he studied American social history (MS 1955) and was taught by William Appleman Williams.[10] He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1962.[11]
During these years, Kolko was active in the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID). By the time SLID published his first pamphlet, Distribution of Income in the United States, in 1955, Kolko had already completed a stint as the league's national vice chairman.[12] Following his graduation from Harvard, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at SUNY-Buffalo. In 1970, he joined the history department of York University in Toronto, remaining an emeritus professor of history there until his death in 2014.[13]
Political views[edit]
Kolko was a self-declared leftist and an anticapitalist.[35][36] Nonetheless, Kolko's revisionist historical accounts gained favor with several libertarian capitalists from the United States, often to the chagrin of Kolko, who, at least as late as 1973, actively tried to distance himself from connections to that particular strain of libertarian thinking as it developed in the US.[6][37]
Regarding socialism, Kolko wrote in After Socialism (2006) that, both as theory and as movement, it is "essentially dead," its analysis and practice have both been failures, and it "simply inherited most of the nineteenth century's myopia, adding to the illusions of social thought". He maintained, however, that capitalism is neither a rational nor a stable basis for a peaceful society: "Given its practice and consequences, opposition to what is loosely termed capitalism—the status quo in all its dimensions—is far more justified today than ever. Precisely because of this, a more durable and effective alternative to capitalism is even more essential."[38]
As sociologist Frank Furedi has argued: "[Kolko's] scathing condemnation of American foreign policy, like his condemnation of the crudity of Maoist rhetoric, stand as a testimony to his intellectual and political integrity."[39] Georgetown historian David S. Painter similarly wrote that "while very critical of Marxist and Communist movements and regimes, Kolko also counts among the human, social, and economic costs of capitalism the 'repeated propensity' of capitalist states to go to war."[40] Kolko was a strong supporter of North Vietnam,[41][42] but he was opposed to Lenin and Stalin and was scathingly dismissive of Mao Zedong and his thinking.[43]
Kolko regarded the result of the creation of Israel as "abysmal". In his view, Zionism produced "a Sparta that traumatized an already artificially divided region," "a small state with a military ethos that pervades all aspects of [it]s culture, its politics and, above all, its response to the existence of Arabs in its midst and at its borders." Overall, his conclusion was that there is "simply no rational reason" that justifies Israel's creation.[8]
"The US has never been able to translate its superior arms into political success, and that decisive failure is inherent in everything it attempts," remarked Kolko in the context of the Iraq War, just after George W. Bush's Mission Accomplished speech. He predicted that Iraq's "regionalism and internecine ethnic strife will produce years of instability."[44] Similarly for Afghanistan: "As in Vietnam, the US will win battles, but it has no strategy for winning this war."[45]