Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 1 • February-March 2008Annette Rubinstein, 1910-2007Marxist literary lion, activist and educator Annette T. Rubinstein died in June 2007 at the age of 97. The daughter of socialist immigrants living in New York City, Rubinstein experienced anti-Semitism when she was refused entry to Barnard College and later was denied academic appointments because she refused to anglicize her name. Rubinstein had an encyclopedic knowledge of history and literature and produced two masterpieces of socialist criticism, The Great Tradition in English Literature from Shakespeare to Shaw and American Literature Root and Flower. Rubinstein's intellectual breadth is reflected in the subject of her 2003 Women's Rights Day speech for Radical Women's New York branch, "Women in Politics: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Ella Baker." Rubinstein joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s and left in 1952. She taught at two U.S. Communist Party schools, in Eastern Europe and in China. Until her death, she was part of the teacher's collective at the Brecht Forum Marxist School. She spent decades as a leader and candidate of the American Labor Party. She wrote, spoke out, and organized in defense of McCarthyism's victims, desegregation and Puerto Rican independence, and FSP founder Clara Fraser's landmark suit charging political discrimination at Seattle City Light. |
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