Letham has produced for his readers an intoxicating cocktail of 20th century New York, complete with communist Jews, Black cops, Irish folkies, hippy Quakers, city communes, Sandinistas and a whole load of the usual Freudian stuff to keep us amused. Khrushchev is in there, as is Bob Dylan, dementia and homosexual professors on the prowl. East Germany looms large at some point. Guilts and recriminations are there by the bucket load: mother-daughter and estranged father-daughter tensions that transcend time and place. The prose is invariably clever, sometimes too clever, but that is probably more an indictment of this reader than the author.

Admittedly, some of the New York references fly over the head for someone not from those parts but it doesn’t really detract from the overall enjoyment. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the star of the show, American Communism – past, present and future, gets some welcome and long overdue publicity.

So what is it about American communism that rendered it virtually obsolete even before it really got going? To begin to answer that, one ought to rephrase the question more scientifically; what is it about American socialism that consigned it to the dustbin of 20th century history where at least in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa it made a respectful showing of itself? This is no pedantic quibbling. To label anything in the 20th century as communist is to immediately set it up to fail. Socialism and communism may be interchangeably used by the lazy and ill-informed, but anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of political science will know that these two social categories are historically quite distinct, though inevitably, if indeed anything is inevitable in human history, the latter must pass through the former in some form and content. We are talking stages here, stages of human development neatly differentiated by Karl Marx himself with the usual quick-fire brilliance of the man; socialism being typified by the slogan, From each according to his ability, to each according to his work; and communism, the far, far more advanced era of human organisation succinctly described as, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. One seemingly insignificant change of word but two entirely distinct phases of human history, the latter unfortunately still just a theoretical construct.

So having dispatched from the outset the irritatingly and needless confusion around terminology, we can now return to our initial enquiry: what was it about socialism in the USA that allowed it to so easily be swept aside leaving in its wake thousands of disillusioned and damaged individuals of which Latham’s central character, Rose, is a fine example? Why, even mention of a national health service sends millions of right leaning US citizens into paroxysms of rage. Better to eke out an existence via soup kitchens and food stamps that have the indignity of the state provide a comprehensive welfare safety net. Better to die in a totally random hail of street gunfire than have the state regulate the use of firearms. Better to allow a totally unregulated market to create such vast discrepancies in wealth and opportunity than to move even one inch towards a socialist model of organisation. How did this almost psychotic mind-set come to prevail where at least in Western Europe and other advanced capitalist countries some begrudging compromise between free market and social provision was arrived at?

A hundred years ago Lenin tried to make sense of the failure of the working class in the developed economies to be a revolutionary force. His conclusion was that imperialism was able to create a labour aristocracy by buying off the most influential sections of the working class; the steel workers, the power workers and the engineers. It was a powerful thesis that has, I would argue, stood the test of time. Now that western imperialism has less booty to throw about, this labour aristocracy in America and Western Europe may very evaporate leaving the newly impoverished worker to bitterly resent his new circumstances. Of course, a confused and resentful workforce is as likely to turn to the right as to the left for explanations. Plenty of evidence of that happening already.

What neither Lenin nor Marx before him could have imagined, was the intoxicating lure of consumer capitalism, with its shiny things to buy, its celebrity and pornographic culture, and its brand new opiate, global sport. As traditional religions started to lose their lure, so new ones had to be created. No one does that better than 21st century US corporate capitalism. Marx was more than aware that a commodity culture would grow out of an economic system based on commodity production, but even he might have been a little a taken aback by just how pernicious, debilitating and all-pervading that soulless commodity culture would become.

It all started off so much more promising with the Wobblies and militant organised Labor in the United States fed by a continuous influx of politicised European immigrants bringing with them radicalised ideas for human advancement. Rose, her family and many of her associates were from this European milieu. Latham, without in the slightest romanticising Rose and her communist friends, faultlessly situates his characters geographically, socially and ideologically. Urban secular commune versus the rural Jewish/communist commune is a masterstroke by Latham. Rose, at least until her dementia takes hold, is having none of the pseudo rural commune stuff. Rose, communist matriarch, embittered, encircled, and more than a little paranoid, is faithful to her notions of urban secularism to the very end. But if Latham gets Rose and her Jewish communist sympathisers spot on, where are the communist trade union organisers, the militant Trotskyites and the syndicalists of the earlier era? No novel can cover every aspect, but one can’t help feeling that here is a weakness of Latham’s otherwise superb offering.

Lathan offers the Occupy Movement by way of continuity but it’s a lazy offering. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for the Occupy activists but unless and until they can capture the imagination of the organised working class, they will not have the necessary ammunition to trouble corporate America. Even a Black progressive President with a professed social agenda can’t make much headway against the entrenched corporate state. It might seem a bit unfashionable but without the mobilisation of the battalions of organised workers, no real advance seems likely. Latham doesn’t want to walk this territory. And of course the leadership of the much hoped for legions of organised workers are presumably heavily infiltrated by mafia and FBI elements who seem always to be one step ahead. The novel exploring all this buried blue collar history needs to be written but Dissident Gardens, wonderfully readable as it is, is not that novel. Warren Beatty’s film, Reds, which now seems a lifetime ago, delved a little closer into the American communist movement and linked it to global currents and real political events, but again its remit was limited by Hollywood. Marlon Brando’s On the Waterfront dipped a toe into the murky waters of US industrial politics but again that all seems almost like ancient history. Oliver Stone is busy doing the historical research. Perhaps Latham might consider borrowing his notes and coming up with a more proletarian version of Dissident Gardens. Just a thought.