REBELLION OR REVOLUTION?

Cruse's Crisis of the Negro Intellectual was very well-received. This book conforms to Kirkus' Law: the tendency to collect and publish one's odds and ends in the wake of a success. The essays range from pieces on culture for the Daily Worker to attacks on C.P. intellectual Herbert Aptheker (Cruse quit that scene ""around 1953""). Aptheker, an early student of Negro history, keeps cropping up like King Charles' head, but Cruse's comments are far less devastating than the scholarly critiques of which he seems to be unaware. Indeed, he neglects social-scientific contributions to his subjects, in favor of jibes at ""American Marxists,"" whom he equates with the Communist Party, much to the amusement of 60's left-liberals and the boredom of other readers. His discussion of the DuBois-Washington debate exemplifies the simplistic faults of this collection; the discussion of the NAACP exemplifies the irrelevance of his approach; both display his lingering infection with old-left categories, from anti-Trotskyism to overemphasis on the black middle class. Cruse dabbles at times with domestic colonialism, the drawbacks of black-white coalition, and other now- fashionable topics. But mainly he sifts the ashes of straw men instead of building the new radical theory he calls for.