The old slogan "Communism is 20th century Americanism" appears to have been more right than wrong! The CP faces new challenges in the 21st century and, I think, their successes will be everybody's successes as well.
2
Once a popular intellectual toy, communism, by half-baked smart idealists was proven ineffective, harmful, and dangerous long time ago, and some fermented remnants still forbid a lot of people in the world from tasting basic rights for human beings.
It makes me sick seeing pathetic liberals appreciate this radioactive and toxic weapon to attack Trump. Stop doing it and learn from Trump and the new Republicans who embrace him. They are more adaptive and creative than you guys in preparing for an appealing solutions for contemporary poor Americans. Stop whining and find better solutions for every kind of have-nots than theirs.
It makes me sick seeing pathetic liberals appreciate this radioactive and toxic weapon to attack Trump. Stop doing it and learn from Trump and the new Republicans who embrace him. They are more adaptive and creative than you guys in preparing for an appealing solutions for contemporary poor Americans. Stop whining and find better solutions for every kind of have-nots than theirs.
2
The epithet "communist" was, when I was young, the equivalent of "terrorist" today. And, it was certainly used to define the other: because I had a beard, people would frequently come up and scream in my face that I should go back to Cuba or Russia, not that I have ever been to either place. In a similar vein where epithets are defined by function rather than by ordinary meaning, I was called a communist for picketing against the Soviet Union at their consulate in New York.
The image of agitator or anyone who does not fit the stereotypical (and often inaccurate) norm as the "outsider" is likely in itself a normal even if unfortunate reaction. For most of human history it probably served a useful function in defining and cohering small nomadic and, eventually, farming communities. It takes many eons for evolution to catch up with culture.
The image of agitator or anyone who does not fit the stereotypical (and often inaccurate) norm as the "outsider" is likely in itself a normal even if unfortunate reaction. For most of human history it probably served a useful function in defining and cohering small nomadic and, eventually, farming communities. It takes many eons for evolution to catch up with culture.
2
I'm a red diaper baby and I've read and heard about a lot of history and as a baby boomer, I've lived a fair amount of history and this much I know: First, that without the CPUSA, and their allies, there would be no comprehensive social infrastructures or consciousness today that addressed social justice. The first explosion for human rights came with the abolition of African enslavement; the second explosion came with the birth of the American Labor Unions and Women's Suffrage; the third explosion began in the 1930s and crescendos in the 1960s when Blacks, women and marginalized groups of all kinds advanced the idea of self-determination. The CP was in the vanguard during these decades.
That said, the CPUSA has aged, along with other left groups, and have become largely irrelevant---- first----because the number of splinter groups and ideologies have become unsustainable, and second---because the societies that adopted their versions of Communism could not live up to expectations and even worse, failed to place principles over personality-driven societies.
Ideologies, doctrines, orthodoxies and patriarchies do not feed and build healthy nations because ideologies are co-opted by the rich and powerful; that is the human way. A moral high-ground, like Rev.Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus and Rev. William Barber espouse, is only way through and out of this 21st century miasma. Even the loftiest Ideologies become dangerous (or moribund) in the wrong hands.
That said, the CPUSA has aged, along with other left groups, and have become largely irrelevant---- first----because the number of splinter groups and ideologies have become unsustainable, and second---because the societies that adopted their versions of Communism could not live up to expectations and even worse, failed to place principles over personality-driven societies.
Ideologies, doctrines, orthodoxies and patriarchies do not feed and build healthy nations because ideologies are co-opted by the rich and powerful; that is the human way. A moral high-ground, like Rev.Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus and Rev. William Barber espouse, is only way through and out of this 21st century miasma. Even the loftiest Ideologies become dangerous (or moribund) in the wrong hands.
6
Very interesting article that focuses attention on an interesting comparison: In some ways, the American South in the Jim Crow era (after the abolishment of slavery in 1865) was similar to Russia in the late tsarist era after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Both places were overwhelmingly agricultural places where subsistence sharecropping made up the lion's share of the economy and a rigid aristocracy (official in Russia, de facto in the American South) lorded over everybody.
The big difference, obviously, was that serfs in Russia had been part of the racial and religious majority while slaves in America had not. And this may explain in part why Russia had a revolution in 1917 while the USA did not. Communism did not prevail in America because, thankfully, the Jim Crow South was economically speaking a relatively unimportant region compared to the industrial North and Midwest--where workers eventually managed to extract tremendous concessions from the Robber Baron class.
But nevertheless, think of this comparison and it makes sense that "the most despised and dispossessed elements" of society in both countries were often drawn to radical communism (Jews in the case of tsarist Russia, blacks in the Jim Crow regions of the United States).
This reminds me of an insulting but somewhat accurate anonymous comment I read online awhile ago. One person observed that reactionary whites in the American South were akin to being the reactionary Russians of North America.
The big difference, obviously, was that serfs in Russia had been part of the racial and religious majority while slaves in America had not. And this may explain in part why Russia had a revolution in 1917 while the USA did not. Communism did not prevail in America because, thankfully, the Jim Crow South was economically speaking a relatively unimportant region compared to the industrial North and Midwest--where workers eventually managed to extract tremendous concessions from the Robber Baron class.
But nevertheless, think of this comparison and it makes sense that "the most despised and dispossessed elements" of society in both countries were often drawn to radical communism (Jews in the case of tsarist Russia, blacks in the Jim Crow regions of the United States).
This reminds me of an insulting but somewhat accurate anonymous comment I read online awhile ago. One person observed that reactionary whites in the American South were akin to being the reactionary Russians of North America.
3
Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Duke, 2008) offers a full study of Claudia Jones.
Let's not conveniently forget that the anti-communist forces in the west, supported by large swaths of the business sector, were actively encouraging and hoping that Herr Hitler would destroy the red threat and leave them alone. The non-aggression pact was also a reaction to this threat.
I am not condoning Stalin's atrocities but large segments of the german and non-german industrial elites were at best indifferent to Hitler, believing in the totality of the program as beneficial to their interests.
Hmm, sounds familiar.
I am not condoning Stalin's atrocities but large segments of the german and non-german industrial elites were at best indifferent to Hitler, believing in the totality of the program as beneficial to their interests.
Hmm, sounds familiar.
5
Bravo!
1
While many idealistic Americans joined the Communist Party U.S.A. for noble reasons -- to fight against injustice, racism, economic exploitation, and other evils -- the fact remains that the Party was controlled by the Soviet Union through the Communist International (the Comintern, later the Cominform), and was truly an outsider.
The Party was obliged to defend Soviet actions, however indefensible: the occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic nations in 1939-40, and the imposition of Communist rule by the Red Army in eastern Europe after World War II. The revelation of Stalin's crimes came as such a blow to the Party because it had been denying those same facts for years.
Let those who share the noble ideals of early American Communists pursue their goals. But nostalgia ought not obscure the truth that the Party was fatally morally compromised; it deserves to die and not be resurrected.
The Party was obliged to defend Soviet actions, however indefensible: the occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic nations in 1939-40, and the imposition of Communist rule by the Red Army in eastern Europe after World War II. The revelation of Stalin's crimes came as such a blow to the Party because it had been denying those same facts for years.
Let those who share the noble ideals of early American Communists pursue their goals. But nostalgia ought not obscure the truth that the Party was fatally morally compromised; it deserves to die and not be resurrected.
9
All we have to consider to know that communist one party dictatorship intending Stalinism is alive and well is that the liberal left manically crusades to fill the US up with 100's of millions more desperate illiterate immigrants with the knowledge they will be abused and exploited - due to liberal foot dragging on minimum wage rises & not stopping outsourcing to slave-wage nations. Plus killing domestic wages & good jobs by flooding the labor market with immigrant slaves ... calculated to destroy the US middle class and up the misery of the average citizen so far that they will 'revolt' and some fantasy revolution to Utopia will occur. Right? Because this has worked out well so far in other countries? In the short to mid term these "I feel your pain" lib-left deceivers chuckle about the gullibility of those in poverty and white PC yuppies, while they benefit from buying their votes with just enough government crumbs, extracted from the middle class, to keep them alive to return to work each day and go to the polls every few years. Mean while, as the imagining themselves to be Gods Left play games instigating riots and mass bloodshed, and the predatory criminal business elites, whose abuse could be easily controlled via regulation and enforcement of the rule of law, exploit and cheat us all, nothing gets any better. If you think about it for even 15 seconds it becomes apparent that this is all an elite Mutt and Jeff conspiracy intended to distract and control the masses.
2
The best remedy for our society, it seems, is what we formerly called "welfare capitalism"...or "capitalism with a human face." What this translates to is provision for the poor, the disabled, the ill, the old--while allowing the entrepreneurial, the talented, the healthy, the skilled to prosper.
Recall that after WWII, under Eisenhower as President, we had 90% tax rates for the richest--who still managed to live quite nicely. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the threat of Communism with it, all of a sudden there was not more "human face"--it was "capitalism with knobs on!"
So we're back to the survival of the fittest, which has a big downside. Now we have TWO parties representing the fittest, and the rest are finally waking up to that fact. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a rough ride.
Recall that after WWII, under Eisenhower as President, we had 90% tax rates for the richest--who still managed to live quite nicely. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the threat of Communism with it, all of a sudden there was not more "human face"--it was "capitalism with knobs on!"
So we're back to the survival of the fittest, which has a big downside. Now we have TWO parties representing the fittest, and the rest are finally waking up to that fact. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a rough ride.
11
> "capitalism with a human face."
Capitalism is the society of man's independent mind. It already has a human face. "Welfare" is the faceless society, without man's independent mind.
> provision for the poor, the disabled, the ill, the old--while allowing the entrepreneurial, the talented, the healthy, the skilled to prosper.
Freedom for the most productive people is the only way that the least productive people can survive. Despite drop-the-context Leftists, life was nasty, brutal and short before capitalism. The new capitalism in formerly non-Western societies greatly increased production (inc/food), daily health, mortality, and happiness for two billion people. Leftists evade this.
Capitalism is the society of man's independent mind. It already has a human face. "Welfare" is the faceless society, without man's independent mind.
> provision for the poor, the disabled, the ill, the old--while allowing the entrepreneurial, the talented, the healthy, the skilled to prosper.
Freedom for the most productive people is the only way that the least productive people can survive. Despite drop-the-context Leftists, life was nasty, brutal and short before capitalism. The new capitalism in formerly non-Western societies greatly increased production (inc/food), daily health, mortality, and happiness for two billion people. Leftists evade this.
2
Excuse me, but life was short, nasty and brutish in the early British factories until labor unions and laws for the protection of workers started to be passed in the 1830s. Life was nasty in Carnegie's steel mills where, after he and Frick broke the union, workers had to work 12 hours a day, 364 days a year (Carnegie was patriotic, so they got July 4 off). And corporations thrived in America with massive government giveaways to the railroads in the form of land and cash subsidies. I could go on and on but I'll just say that laissez faire is a myth. The rich have always had the power of the state at their back to break strikes, make convenient laws and gray special privileges.
19
No, Stephen, the industrial revolution was a killer. Unions came in to
save those vulnerable to the capitalists that only cared about the bottom line, which was most of the capitalists. Child labor was hardly unheard of, because they were little workers who slaved for those capitalists, and some died doing it. Sweat shops, ever herd of them. Run by capitalists. Communism didn't rise out of a vacuum.
save those vulnerable to the capitalists that only cared about the bottom line, which was most of the capitalists. Child labor was hardly unheard of, because they were little workers who slaved for those capitalists, and some died doing it. Sweat shops, ever herd of them. Run by capitalists. Communism didn't rise out of a vacuum.
5
racism, at root, is not about hate between groups, but about the way power is held in society.
That is like saying Islamic terrorists are not really Muslims and don't practice "true" Islam because Islam is a religion of peace. Parts of Islam are a misogynistic and intolerant religion that has not been tamed like Christianity was civilized by the Enlightenment. Some Christian denominations are still struggling with that.
I'm sorry, but you have obviously never met a white supremacist. If you had you would have known hatred regardless of class.
That is like saying Islamic terrorists are not really Muslims and don't practice "true" Islam because Islam is a religion of peace. Parts of Islam are a misogynistic and intolerant religion that has not been tamed like Christianity was civilized by the Enlightenment. Some Christian denominations are still struggling with that.
I'm sorry, but you have obviously never met a white supremacist. If you had you would have known hatred regardless of class.
7
Fascinating. I thought in this connection that readers (and maybe Ms. Jaffe) might be interested in this radio story - "Old-Time Communists Reminisce" - that I produced for the Voice of America (of all places) some years back.
http://www.audiobyadam.com/tag/american-communist/
http://www.audiobyadam.com/tag/american-communist/
2
The Voice of America had some great journalism, and this is a good example. The people in charge chose credibility over propaganda.
I was wondering how your piece would end. A good radio journalist can always find some smart, articulate people to interview, but ending with the Internationale was brilliant.
I was wondering how your piece would end. A good radio journalist can always find some smart, articulate people to interview, but ending with the Internationale was brilliant.
2
While "the power of the radical agitator...has always been the ability to expose the gap between the narrative of American greatness and the realities of people's lives," it has been legislative and judicial actions that have actually made some differences--imperfect as those may be.
3
This was an interesting article. However, I take issue with the phrase "scaremongering about '"radical Islamic terror." I hardly think this is scaremongering. I think the possibilities, the reality, the actuality, point to real destruction and threats by the radical Islamic extremists. This is not propaganda. We're reeling from the attacks on several Western nations, with little end in sight. To dismiss it as scaremongering, makes the article less cogent.
10
In the absence of focused and organized Social-Democratic resistance, the Trump administration is effectively demoralizing the American public.
Trump himself--with all his manipulative lies, misrepresentations, distractions, sweet heart deals, links with Russia, dependency upon loans from shady foreign banks, nepotism and enrichment of himself, his family, his billionaire appointees and his plutocratic friends--is the chief author of this demoralization.
A demoralized and cynical people will acquiesce as our socio-economic-political system moves beyond plutocracy to kleptocracy.
If the Vladimir Putin by his electoral interference and Russian connections with Trump had hoped to weaken America's international reputation and leadership, he has clearly already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
I knew that with Trump as President and Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House we would be regressively propelled back to the laissez faire glories of the kleptocratic Gilded Age.
I expected the worst, but a far worse worst than I had expected has already descended upon us. The internal divisions within the country have become extreme: our nation is now a house divided against itself.
The Marxist and Neo-Marxist critique of capitalism is increasingly relevant to the nation's current social, economic and political situation.
This critique must find an effective voice.
Trump himself--with all his manipulative lies, misrepresentations, distractions, sweet heart deals, links with Russia, dependency upon loans from shady foreign banks, nepotism and enrichment of himself, his family, his billionaire appointees and his plutocratic friends--is the chief author of this demoralization.
A demoralized and cynical people will acquiesce as our socio-economic-political system moves beyond plutocracy to kleptocracy.
If the Vladimir Putin by his electoral interference and Russian connections with Trump had hoped to weaken America's international reputation and leadership, he has clearly already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
I knew that with Trump as President and Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House we would be regressively propelled back to the laissez faire glories of the kleptocratic Gilded Age.
I expected the worst, but a far worse worst than I had expected has already descended upon us. The internal divisions within the country have become extreme: our nation is now a house divided against itself.
The Marxist and Neo-Marxist critique of capitalism is increasingly relevant to the nation's current social, economic and political situation.
This critique must find an effective voice.
8
> kleptocratic Gilded Age
Did Inventive Age businessmen steal the oil, RR and steel industries from slightly-above-Stone-Age Indians? Or maybe from their employees who didnt have the intellectual independence to be the first to conceive of an industry as a whole?
Did Inventive Age businessmen steal the oil, RR and steel industries from slightly-above-Stone-Age Indians? Or maybe from their employees who didnt have the intellectual independence to be the first to conceive of an industry as a whole?
1
Mr Grossman--We have almost emerged from another "Inventive Age"--that of the Wall Street banksters and other finagliaciers. With the Ryan-Trump agenda, are we headed for an all-but-instant replay?
The flaws of laissez-faire capitalism were very much evident in the financial collapse of 2008 and have remained evident ever since. Here in the U.S., mergers and acquisitions continue to result in too-big-too-fail financial institutions and corporations; a narrow focus on the enhancement of shareholder value remains detrimental to the interests of employees and consumers; robots and other technological innovations reduce the demand for workers; competition decreases; entrenched wealth dominates the political and legal systems; disparities between the wealth and incomes of the top 1% and the lower 99% continue to increase; ordinary people feel in their bones that the system is rigged; lower-middle-class and working-class resentment flares and finds its expression in support for a superficially anti-establishment Leader who proclaims that he alone can set things right.
I repeat: the pro-plutocratic agenda of Paul Ryan and the GOP Establishment is designed to return us to the laissez faire glories of the Gilded Age. Will this Gilded Age (Mr. Grossman's Neo-Inventive Age, perhaps?) be once again followed by another Great Recession or Great Depression?
Does Mr. Grossman have a personal interest in promoting the cause of the plutocratic oligarchs?
The flaws of laissez-faire capitalism were very much evident in the financial collapse of 2008 and have remained evident ever since. Here in the U.S., mergers and acquisitions continue to result in too-big-too-fail financial institutions and corporations; a narrow focus on the enhancement of shareholder value remains detrimental to the interests of employees and consumers; robots and other technological innovations reduce the demand for workers; competition decreases; entrenched wealth dominates the political and legal systems; disparities between the wealth and incomes of the top 1% and the lower 99% continue to increase; ordinary people feel in their bones that the system is rigged; lower-middle-class and working-class resentment flares and finds its expression in support for a superficially anti-establishment Leader who proclaims that he alone can set things right.
I repeat: the pro-plutocratic agenda of Paul Ryan and the GOP Establishment is designed to return us to the laissez faire glories of the Gilded Age. Will this Gilded Age (Mr. Grossman's Neo-Inventive Age, perhaps?) be once again followed by another Great Recession or Great Depression?
Does Mr. Grossman have a personal interest in promoting the cause of the plutocratic oligarchs?
5
The flaw in the Communist system is that somehow we will recognize our species being and get beyond all this racism and sexism to recognize our commonalities as workers. Alienation is our way of life now. From private property we have passed through capitalism to a sort of corporate feudalism.
The new Enclosure Acts are robots. My fellow workers fight to make private property out of public land. Fight to restrict reproductive right. Elect officials to diminish union power, rob us of our social security and slash the social safety net. But Marx would have seen this as progress. After all, these liberal band-aids only delay the revolution.
The alienation is so deeply embedded that my fellow workers elected a landlord, the ultimate enemy, continue to ignore corporate welfare and the banker's usury. They ignore the true immigration issue, the Rupert Murdochs of this world coming to the USA to spread lies and foment ignorance. The alienation is so deep my fellow worker defend poisoning their own water and air, and the mass destruction of their beautiful mountains in the name of a past legacy that fills their streets with black lunged worker struggling to catch a breath.
While real opiates ease the path to the ultimate alienation, religion is the opiate for many. Sexism at its core, religion offers nothing for the present or living future. Death beckons with a bright shining future.
Communism and Socialism are not dead but the forces arrayed against us are our 1848.
The new Enclosure Acts are robots. My fellow workers fight to make private property out of public land. Fight to restrict reproductive right. Elect officials to diminish union power, rob us of our social security and slash the social safety net. But Marx would have seen this as progress. After all, these liberal band-aids only delay the revolution.
The alienation is so deeply embedded that my fellow workers elected a landlord, the ultimate enemy, continue to ignore corporate welfare and the banker's usury. They ignore the true immigration issue, the Rupert Murdochs of this world coming to the USA to spread lies and foment ignorance. The alienation is so deep my fellow worker defend poisoning their own water and air, and the mass destruction of their beautiful mountains in the name of a past legacy that fills their streets with black lunged worker struggling to catch a breath.
While real opiates ease the path to the ultimate alienation, religion is the opiate for many. Sexism at its core, religion offers nothing for the present or living future. Death beckons with a bright shining future.
Communism and Socialism are not dead but the forces arrayed against us are our 1848.
5
> The flaw in the Communist system is that somehow we will recognize our species being and get beyond all this racism and sexism to recognize our commonalities as workers. Alienation is our way of life now.
Man as a species-being is alienation from man the individual with an independent mind.
Man as a species-being is alienation from man the individual with an independent mind.
The Nazi's also made the trains run on time but that only tells part of the story. The interesting point here is that the Communists staked out a position to the "left" of even the NAACP's platform. They wanted full equality including education and marriage rights - concepts so unimaginable that even black civil rights workers either couldn't envision or support for fear of their lives. Doubtless is was mostly opportunistic on the part of the Communists and but you have to give them credit for being on the right side of history in this case and acknowledge that so so much of America was in the wrong.
4
So many of these comments miss the entire point of the piece (and the appeal of radical politics to down-and-out people): the crimes of some Russian dictator thousands of miles away (however heinous) essentially do not matter to people who are being squeezed of their livelihood, nickle-and-dimed into starvation, and often lynched, when the local homegrown communists are the only ones with the interest or the ability to actually do anything about that.
10
> the crimes of some Russian dictator thousands of miles away (however heinous) essentially do not matter
Thats an unsustainable evasion.
Thats an unsustainable evasion.
3
No, Stephen, it's a bold fact that survival becomes the issue. The basic philosophy applied to the people on the line of attack, not what was happening far, far away. It was triage in its basic form. That's a fact, not an evasion.
I am the child of American Communists, working class Jews from New York City, who were radicalized in the struggle to free the Scottsboro Boys (I'm now 64). When I was young in the 60s and 70s I was also a Communist, radicalized by the Vietnam War.
In the 60s and 70s both blacks in Compton, CA (I grew up in L.A.) and whites in Southgate worked in factory jobs -- Bethlehem Steel, Goodrich Tire, etc. Now that those jobs have disappeared these communities are under much greater stress. Many parts of these communities have essentially become economically redundant. There is no place for them in the "Global Village".
During the 50s and 60s the white American working class was doing pretty well. This made it possible for the state to eliminate any significant left-wing working class movement. This was accomplished by expelling left-wingers from the Unions, constant red-baiting, and in the case of Fred Hampton in Chicago simple murder.
The disappearance of a left-wing multi-racial working class movement has made poor white people very susceptible to right-wing tribalist demagoguery. This is especially tragic given that large parts of the white community have now also been rendered economically redundant -- albeit with less direct police violence and incarceration.
Ultimately, the only way out of this quagmire is some kind of united struggle of poor people across racial lines. This was true in the 30s, true in the 60s, and even truer today.
Workers of the World Unite!
In the 60s and 70s both blacks in Compton, CA (I grew up in L.A.) and whites in Southgate worked in factory jobs -- Bethlehem Steel, Goodrich Tire, etc. Now that those jobs have disappeared these communities are under much greater stress. Many parts of these communities have essentially become economically redundant. There is no place for them in the "Global Village".
During the 50s and 60s the white American working class was doing pretty well. This made it possible for the state to eliminate any significant left-wing working class movement. This was accomplished by expelling left-wingers from the Unions, constant red-baiting, and in the case of Fred Hampton in Chicago simple murder.
The disappearance of a left-wing multi-racial working class movement has made poor white people very susceptible to right-wing tribalist demagoguery. This is especially tragic given that large parts of the white community have now also been rendered economically redundant -- albeit with less direct police violence and incarceration.
Ultimately, the only way out of this quagmire is some kind of united struggle of poor people across racial lines. This was true in the 30s, true in the 60s, and even truer today.
Workers of the World Unite!
20
What will you do when they come for your property and deny you the right to vote, cheer?
3
Will capitalism survive the death of communism? It's still up in the air. During the years when capitalism had to compete with communism in the marketplace of ideas, capitalism had a human face-because it had to in order to survive. Workers were permitted to organize unions, corporate leaders were paid a large but not staggering multiple of what the line workers earned, and America developed a middle class. The class pressures inherent in the capitalist system were given a way to let off steam. Creativity and entrepreneurship flourished, and America blossomed. We were, in short, a more ethical, happy and successful nation. Now, without communism (admittedly an inherently hypocritical, unnatural and cruel system in practice) as a competing ideal, capitalism has lost its way. The average American worker will not have the same prospect of living and raising a family in a society we agree, by consensus, is fair. The economic social contract we all lived under has disappeared. We are at each other's throats. Did Kruschev bury us after all?
4
It is certainly true that American Communism wasn't an exotic import. Communism has deep roots in America. The Plymouth Colony was operated initially on decidedly communist principles (no private ownership of land, everybody works on the common fields and receives food, clothing &c. from the colony in exchange; even household services such as food preparation and laundry were communal; read all about it in Governor Bradford's diaries, "History of the Plimoth Plantation", printed in 1856 in Massachusetts). In the XIX century there were dozens of communes of various descriptions; a contemporary overview can be found in a 1870s book by C. Nordhoff, "Communistic Societies of the United States". Later, John Reed and some others went to St. Petersburg before the Bolshevik coup-d'etat (not that there was much Russian etat left to coup in 1917). In America itself, it is patently untrue that American Communism was a movement that grew out of "the most despised and dispossessed elements of American society". It was a movement that attracted scions of the oldest and most respected WASP families and graduates of the best theological seminaries, who called Communism Christianity of the future: e.g. Elizabeth Bentley's memoirs, "Out of Bondage", show this clearly.
PS: all books mentioned are available for free on the internet.
PS: all books mentioned are available for free on the internet.
3
Communism has no roots in America. Religious communism was rejected by the rational individualists of the Enlightenment who created America.
1
The epithet "communist" was when I was young the equivalent of terrorist today. And, it was certainly used to define the other: simply because I had a beard, people would frequently come up and scream in my face that I should go back to Cuba or Russia, not that to this day I have ever been to either place. In a similar vein of epithets as function rather than ordinary meaning, I was called a communist for picketing against the Soviet Union at their consulate in New York.
The image of agitator or anyone who does not fit the stereotypical (and often inaccurate) norm as the "outsider" is likely in itself a normal even if unfortunate reaction. For most of human history it probably served a useful function in defining and cohering small nomadic and, eventually, farming communities. It takes many eons for evolution to catch up with culture.
The image of agitator or anyone who does not fit the stereotypical (and often inaccurate) norm as the "outsider" is likely in itself a normal even if unfortunate reaction. For most of human history it probably served a useful function in defining and cohering small nomadic and, eventually, farming communities. It takes many eons for evolution to catch up with culture.
2
The Communist Party along with all of the socialist groups consisted of people who sought permanent remedies to injustices that were manifested in material deprivations and that makes them all deserving of respect. However, the reality of Communists' behaviors in all places where they achieved significant power was pretty much reduced to gaining more of it by any means available and to diminish the value of human life to nothing very quickly. The certainty that they were transforming mankind into some perfect creation meant that any real and imperfect human who seemed to stand in the way could be eliminated without any regret. While their initial intentions were generous and kind, they became as ruthless and cold as any group of fanatics at any time in history. It is a shame to see people continuing to offer that ideology up after all the harm it has done.
8
> While their initial intentions were generous and kind, they became as ruthless and cold as any group of fanatics at any time in history.
Morality is the mind's guide to man's life and happiness, not a rationalization of sacrifice. Jesus, Kant and Hitler are wrong. Aristotle and Rand are right.
Morality is the mind's guide to man's life and happiness, not a rationalization of sacrifice. Jesus, Kant and Hitler are wrong. Aristotle and Rand are right.
Morality is a set of principles to be followed to achieve some ideal condition in life. One can justify a lot of bad treatment of other people with moral principles. The message of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount is the liberal message and it emphasizes mercy and kindness towards one another. Rand's message is that selfishness, not enlightened self interest, but base selfishness should form the principles leading to one's ideal condition of life. Strictly speaking Rand's philosophy is a basis for moral conduct but it's not the moral conduct which a Christian following Jesus' liberal message would follow.
2
> Rand's message is that selfishness, not enlightened self interest, but base selfishness should form the principles leading to one's ideal condition of life.
Rand's basic moral values are reason, purpose and self-esteem. Her basic moral virtues are rationality, productiveness, integrity, honesty, justice, pride and independence. That's Rand's new theory of selfishness, basically different from the conventional selfishness which she explicitly condemns. Her ideal is man the rational hero, successfully and happily living in the concrete, material universe. That's the theme of _Atlas Shrugged_.
Rand's basic moral values are reason, purpose and self-esteem. Her basic moral virtues are rationality, productiveness, integrity, honesty, justice, pride and independence. That's Rand's new theory of selfishness, basically different from the conventional selfishness which she explicitly condemns. Her ideal is man the rational hero, successfully and happily living in the concrete, material universe. That's the theme of _Atlas Shrugged_.
Redistribute the unnecessary obscene quotients of incomes of wealthy individuals and corporations. Stop off shore banking. Control inflation. Invest in infrastructure development. Ensure and insure that the lowest income is $60,000 for a family of four. Expect employment by providing jobs for those capable of working, and providing volunteer work where there are no jobs available.
Expect each person and corporation to learn how to accurately manage their budgets, including all ongoing reoccurring expenses whether weekly, monthly. Have universal free education. Assure social security and universal health care. Recognize that wanting obscene and unnecessary amounts of money and wealth is a function of attitudes of extreme stinginess and extreme spending in order to feel vainglorious.
The transition period to a fair economy for all, the learning curve for all, will take 5 generations, 150 years, - - during which time we should forgive ourselves for our mistakes; and we should love our neighbors whether or not our neighbors love their selves and, as well, whether or not we love our selves.
The aforementioned ideas represent sane and healthy and functional social-economic-political policy. And, there still will be economically well-off people and corporations.
Expect each person and corporation to learn how to accurately manage their budgets, including all ongoing reoccurring expenses whether weekly, monthly. Have universal free education. Assure social security and universal health care. Recognize that wanting obscene and unnecessary amounts of money and wealth is a function of attitudes of extreme stinginess and extreme spending in order to feel vainglorious.
The transition period to a fair economy for all, the learning curve for all, will take 5 generations, 150 years, - - during which time we should forgive ourselves for our mistakes; and we should love our neighbors whether or not our neighbors love their selves and, as well, whether or not we love our selves.
The aforementioned ideas represent sane and healthy and functional social-economic-political policy. And, there still will be economically well-off people and corporations.
2
> Redistribute the unnecessary obscene quotients of incomes of wealthy individuals and corporations.
Leftists hate man's independent mind. "You didn't build that....It takes a village" The vastly superior productivity of leading businessmen is experienced by Leftists as moral condemnation of their cowardly, consensus-seeking evasion of man's need of independent judgment. Thus their frothing-at-the mouth, nihilist hatred of the most productive people in history. Even primitive savages celebrate productive harvests. If Leftists didn't rationalize their evasion, they would go insane or commit suicide. See Edvard Munch's, Leftist-modernist-nihilist icon, "The Scream," for a concretization of the anti-humanist, Leftist soul. See _Atlas Shrugged_ for the rational humanist alternative.
Leftists hate man's independent mind. "You didn't build that....It takes a village" The vastly superior productivity of leading businessmen is experienced by Leftists as moral condemnation of their cowardly, consensus-seeking evasion of man's need of independent judgment. Thus their frothing-at-the mouth, nihilist hatred of the most productive people in history. Even primitive savages celebrate productive harvests. If Leftists didn't rationalize their evasion, they would go insane or commit suicide. See Edvard Munch's, Leftist-modernist-nihilist icon, "The Scream," for a concretization of the anti-humanist, Leftist soul. See _Atlas Shrugged_ for the rational humanist alternative.
3
There’s a difference between the (arguably) valuable influence of “communism” (as dissenters) on a solidly capitalist society to help to moderate its worst features and the clear failure of communist societies. All the homework assistance in the world wouldn’t compensate for the true (non-metaphorical) repression of such societies.
3
Karl Marx dead? The class struggle does not exist? There are many reasons why the CPUSA became very popular in the 20th century. These people built unions, went to Spain and led the fight against racism. Social Security, pensions and better conditions were part of their fight. Socialism might not be popular, but the struggles of working people, especially in the current administration of Trump are clearly there. As a matter of fact, Trump's base is workingclass, but very uneducated, and they put him in power. When they discover all of his promises are empty, look for these people to swing to the left.
3
In the 20s, 30s, and 40s, reasonable, high-minded people could still believe that the philosophy, economics, and ethics within the theory of Communism could be put into practice. However, history has shown that Communist revolutions have led to mass murder, poverty, and repression of human rights, without exception. Nor have supposedly Communist societies freed themselves from racism and inequality. The democratic, constitutional state with a regulated market economy and social supports for the needy is far from perfect, but it is infiniitely preferable to any Communist state. Those who critique the current system have no viable alternative in mind; certainly Communism must be judged a failure if history is taken seriously.
5
And has history not shown that the practice of capitalism itself has led to mass murder, poverty, and repression of human rights (not to mention slavery), without exception? Critics of capitalism must also be critics of past communist regimes, I give you that - but the failures of those states do not define all conceptions of communist systems, of which there are many interpretations (let alone all the various theories of socialism, anarchism, participatory economics, etc.).
7
Whereas laissez-faire capitalism in the US has led to poverty, (wage) slavery and genocide (e.g, trail.of tears, repeal of ACA)
4
> And has history not shown that the practice of capitalism itself has led to mass murder, poverty, and repression of human rights (not to mention slavery), without exception?
Progressive "education" is an evasion of the difference between causes and coincidences. Capitalism, of course, has benefited man vastly more than any other political-economic system. Virtually all people were dirt-poor and on the edge of daily starvation prior to capitalist productiveness. Many recent books by economic historians detail this. And capitalism is the only social system based on individual rights.
Progressive "education" is an evasion of the difference between causes and coincidences. Capitalism, of course, has benefited man vastly more than any other political-economic system. Virtually all people were dirt-poor and on the edge of daily starvation prior to capitalist productiveness. Many recent books by economic historians detail this. And capitalism is the only social system based on individual rights.
It's a historical fact that many American-born communists were motivated by systemic, institutionalized racism, legal injustice and economic exploitation. It's also a fact that the international Comintern focused on these issue precisely because they were the most prominent strategic weaknesses in the American polity, and thus the likeliest route to power over the Americas. Ultimately, the goals of the inspired American communist and Moscow were worlds apart.
4
> many American-born communists were motivated by systemic, institutionalized racism, legal injustice and economic exploitation.
They were motivated by hatred of man's independent mind, as taught by modernist-nihilist intellectuals. Concrete problems, real or not, were mere rationalizations of the powerlust needed for the brief, subhuman life without man's independent mind.
They were motivated by hatred of man's independent mind, as taught by modernist-nihilist intellectuals. Concrete problems, real or not, were mere rationalizations of the powerlust needed for the brief, subhuman life without man's independent mind.
Socialism and its offspring communism look good on paper but (alas!) do not always work out so well in practice (Scandanavia being one possible exception.) I think this is because we featherless bipods have not as yet evolved to the altruistic point wherein people are "good enough" to make socialism work.
That doesn't mean we should give up in trying to make some aspects of socialism a reality. A major fault in American society (as I see it) is that healthcare is treated as a business not a service. This capitalist quirk naturally places profits before people as their healthcare is left up to the care of private health-care "insurance companies" whose concern is the bottom line - not the good health of its "customers ".
The Germans had social security way back in the days of Bismarck. Americans didn't have social security until FDR (and the Republicans are still trying to take it away). All advanced nations have a National Health Service today except the poor, benighted United States of America.
That doesn't mean we should give up in trying to make some aspects of socialism a reality. A major fault in American society (as I see it) is that healthcare is treated as a business not a service. This capitalist quirk naturally places profits before people as their healthcare is left up to the care of private health-care "insurance companies" whose concern is the bottom line - not the good health of its "customers ".
The Germans had social security way back in the days of Bismarck. Americans didn't have social security until FDR (and the Republicans are still trying to take it away). All advanced nations have a National Health Service today except the poor, benighted United States of America.
3
> Socialism and its offspring communism look good on paper
They look bad on paper. Marxism is a systematic attack-from metaphysics to esthetics-of man the individual. Totalitarian dictatorship and mass murder are not historical accidents. They are necessary to "sweep away" man the individual. Environmentalist nihilism is a an even larger, bloodier broom.
They look bad on paper. Marxism is a systematic attack-from metaphysics to esthetics-of man the individual. Totalitarian dictatorship and mass murder are not historical accidents. They are necessary to "sweep away" man the individual. Environmentalist nihilism is a an even larger, bloodier broom.
1
I appreciate the Times publishing this enlightening essay on 20th c. social history. However, I can't wait till America puts the 19th c. economic bogeyman to bed, or under the bed. Karl Marx and his relevance died in 1883.
Clearly, America needs to reevaluate the boundaries of society's Commons. We don't negotiate costs while our houses burn. Not any more. Should we negotiate medical costs while our health deteriorates? We drive Freeways, not Toll Roads. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Clearly, America needs to reevaluate the boundaries of society's Commons. We don't negotiate costs while our houses burn. Not any more. Should we negotiate medical costs while our health deteriorates? We drive Freeways, not Toll Roads. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.
1
Last time I checked we still have an enormous low-income urban class whose labor is exploited by capitalists. Marx is experiencing a resurgence right now because his thought has become especially relevant in recent decades now that we're seeing the results of decades of neoliberal economic policy (especially coupled with Silicon Valley's techno-libertarianism). The gig economy offers no protections for workers today, like the ones organized labor had fought for throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, since they are classified as "contractors" rather than "employees." Sure, we can call it "flexibility" but at the end of the day we know it's exploitation, all to maximize returns for the shareholders.
6
I'm sorry but as someone who had ancestors who were involved in the creation of the Communist Party in the U.S. I believe Ms. Jaffe presents a somewhat distorted history of it.
The founders of the party may have cared about the rights of African-Americans but they were much more focused on workers' rights in general and, perhaps of even greater importance, on forming an international movement to prevent a recurrence of World War I which most had opposed. It's worth noting that the leadership of the party was essentially all white. African-American involvement in its leadership didn't occur till years later.
And by the time of the Scottsboro Boys case, the Communist Party had already split apart in this country between followers and opponents of Stalin (yes, there were already Communist opponents of Stalin in this country long before his pact with Hitler).
For many years, the CPUSA has been a joke so it's easy to forget that it was once a potent political force.
The founders of the party may have cared about the rights of African-Americans but they were much more focused on workers' rights in general and, perhaps of even greater importance, on forming an international movement to prevent a recurrence of World War I which most had opposed. It's worth noting that the leadership of the party was essentially all white. African-American involvement in its leadership didn't occur till years later.
And by the time of the Scottsboro Boys case, the Communist Party had already split apart in this country between followers and opponents of Stalin (yes, there were already Communist opponents of Stalin in this country long before his pact with Hitler).
For many years, the CPUSA has been a joke so it's easy to forget that it was once a potent political force.
3
Political war is war. The Soviets called it active measures." Lenin's Foreign Minister, Checherin, said, "Tell them what they want to hear." Sun Tzu said, "Make a noise in the east and strike in the West." His _Art Of War_ was part of the curriculum in 1950s KGB schools. So, of course, communist parties will protest real suffering. But they care like a fisherman keeps his worms moist and warm.
1
It is important to remember Racism is a system, not a personal set of values. Bigotry is personal. One can be un bigoted and support a racist system, just as one can be bigoted and support a system where race is not the determining factor. Popular usage confuses the two, which is in the interests of those who would obscure the foundational role racism has played in the United States culture
2
Slavery and racism are the original sins of the American experiment. They mocked everything else for which that experiment stood. Little wonder that communists, directed from Moscow via the Comintern, seized upon what was unarguably the greatest evil in American life. Combatting lynch-law, Jim Crow, segregation, and racial exploitation became mobilizing devices for the CPUSA. But they were merely mobilizing devices, never the Party's true goals. On the contrary, communist policy through much of the '30's championed black apartheid and separatism in the form of secession of "Black Belt" states. The communist design was to undermine American "bourgeois democracy," not to heal it.
Racial integration, equality, and social justice, as in Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, would not have done that. Dr. King's vision would have vindicated liberal democracy in America by extending full civil rights to all.
Whatever individual Americans may have been led to believe at the time, Party policy had other alien and ulterior purposes.
Racial integration, equality, and social justice, as in Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, would not have done that. Dr. King's vision would have vindicated liberal democracy in America by extending full civil rights to all.
Whatever individual Americans may have been led to believe at the time, Party policy had other alien and ulterior purposes.
3
You are entirely mistaken about the Black Belt Thesis. It is in fact about political power and economic control rather than apartheid and separatism. Anyone who wishes to actually study the question should read Harry Haywood's "Black Bolshevik".
I was not alive until the mid-60's so I admit I never saw how bad things were before the extension of civil rights in the letter of the law. I will say, if what we have right now is the best that American bourgeois democracy has to offer in terms of equality and social justice then we likely need something else.
I was not alive until the mid-60's so I admit I never saw how bad things were before the extension of civil rights in the letter of the law. I will say, if what we have right now is the best that American bourgeois democracy has to offer in terms of equality and social justice then we likely need something else.
3
Now Trump loves Putin, Russia and kleptocracy.
1
> Slavery and racism are the original sins of the American experiment. They mocked everything else for which that experiment stood.
Note the sleazy Leftist evasion of individual rights, America's founding politics in the only basically individualist culture in history, the Enlightenment. Slavery, racism and communism are the rejection of man the individual.
Note the sleazy Leftist evasion of individual rights, America's founding politics in the only basically individualist culture in history, the Enlightenment. Slavery, racism and communism are the rejection of man the individual.
Mixing pure ideologies is always a bad idea, no different than mixing oil and water that only ends up as a gooey mess on the beach. What else is supposed happen when you mix communism with white supremacy? When Marx came up with it he had the luxury of not having to deal with the other, it was the norm. Capitalism and Christianity is another bad mix that comes to mind as our current state of economic disparity clearly illustrates.
1
"Revelations after the war about Stalin’s crimes further damaged the party’s international prestige. " This sentence reflects the author's deep historical ignorance and fundamental ideological bent. Bertrand Russell and George Orwell were vocal critics of the USSR before the war. "Darkness at Noon", Koestler's magnificent novel about Stalins show trials, was published in 1940. The Communist Party-USA's efforts to co-opt African Americans were part of a wider strategy-the misguided of sincerity of some aside-to undermine the United States at all costs. These efforts were directed from and controlled by Moscow. That's a fact.
6
What a lot of rubbish. Just to take two points, the AFL-CIO's crackdown on "red" unions did not sideline anti-racism. The author is apparently unaware of the fact that there would have been no 1963 March on Washington without the strong sponsorship and support of many of the nation's most powerful unions. The Stalin-Hitler pacf didn't "seem" a betrayal of the USSR's "anti-fascist stance." It was a total betrayal, in fact, an alliance with Nazism to divide up eastern Europe. And the American party cravenly followed its orders from Moscow and spent two years attacking Britain.
12
American Communists were victims? Rise and explain...
3
Sarah Jaffe has thrown light on a subject long hidden by Cold War anti-communism. It is wonderful that she chose Claudia Jones as an example of the role the Communist Party played in the struggle for racial equality and for democracy. Deported from the U.S., she became a leader of East Indian immigrants in London and was honored a few years ago with a UK postage stamp. Jaffe's focus on the CPUSA's role in saving the Scottsboro frame-up victims in Alabama also illuminates. The Party helped organize the labor movement in the U.S., fought for unemployment compensation, anti-discrimination, and Social Security. Members of the Communist Party and Young Communist League volunteered to fight Franco fascism in Spain. Many died. The CPUSA defended the Soviet Union because it was the first socialist revolution and was threatened by counterrevolution and foreign intervention. The Soviets were an ally of the U.S. in World War II and lost over twenty million people defeating the Nazis. It is amazing, that Cold War critics are silent that the Soviet people saved humanity from Nazi enslavement. The Party deserves credit for fighting to free its leaders jailed under the Smith Act and McCarran Act during the 1950s when so many others caved in to the McCarthyite witch hunt. The CPUSA joined with millions against racist segregation and the War in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. The CPUSA is alive and well today, helping mobilize against Donald Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan, and their ilk.
2
What you say is true, but what you omit is important: the show trials and purges in the USSR where not a few American Communists were persecuted; the Hitler-Stalin Pact, during which the CPUSA opposed US entry into WWII; the CPUSA's support of McCarren Act persecutions of American Trotskyists in the Socialist Workers Party; the revelations of the XX Congress (which were not a secret to most of the non-Communist left BEFORE 1956); the destruction of the Hungarian Revolution and the Czech Revolution, in which the CPUSA supported Soviet intervention and expelled anyone who differed.
I am an active member of the Left and will march along side American Communists against Trump and other reactionaries, but I will not ignore the history of political slavishness to the Soviet Union which decimated progressive politics in the United States for decades.
I am an active member of the Left and will march along side American Communists against Trump and other reactionaries, but I will not ignore the history of political slavishness to the Soviet Union which decimated progressive politics in the United States for decades.
1
A well written piece but she is putting lipstick on the pig.
I suppose Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did a few old things, even a few kind things during their lives but that does not excuse the brutality they imposed on millions. I suppose we could hold up the good done by Fidel Castro, while minimizing the atrocities and wreckage of his regime.
Communism has always been a glorious mechanism which oppresses humanity in the name of freeing them.
Not enough lipstick for a seasoned veteran like me.
I suppose Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did a few old things, even a few kind things during their lives but that does not excuse the brutality they imposed on millions. I suppose we could hold up the good done by Fidel Castro, while minimizing the atrocities and wreckage of his regime.
Communism has always been a glorious mechanism which oppresses humanity in the name of freeing them.
Not enough lipstick for a seasoned veteran like me.
7
The Communist movement in America can't take hold because it cannot allow freedom of thought and speech. Many intellectuals have been attracted to the ideology, but backed off fast when they experienced the soul-less thought control that was required by membership... and then there was the death rate among defectors...
11
The flaws of laissez-faire capitalism were very much evident in the financial collapse of 2008 and have remained evident ever since. Here in the U.S., mergers and acquisitions continue to result in too-big-too-fail financial institutions and corporations; a narrow focus on the enhancement of shareholder value remains detrimental to the interests of employees and consumers; robots and other technological innovations reduce the demand for workers; competition decreases; entrenched wealth dominates the political and legal systems; disparities between the wealth and incomes of the top 1% and the lower 99% continue to increase; ordinary people feel in their bones that the system is rigged; lower-middle-class and working-class resentment flares and finds its expression in support for a superficially anti-establishment Leader who proclaims that he alone can set things right.
Trump has pretty much reneged on his "populist" promises. The pro-plutocratic agenda of Paul Ryan and the GOP Establishment is designed to return us to the laissez faire glories of the Gilded Age. Will this Gilded Age be once again followed by another Great Recession or Depression?
There is the Communist Party of the "Red Menace" days, but there is also the Marxist and Neo-Marxist critique of capitalism. Perhaps Americans, during this Era of Trump, should familiarize themselves with this critique and judge for themselves the extent to which it applies to capitalism as currently practiced in the U.S.
Trump has pretty much reneged on his "populist" promises. The pro-plutocratic agenda of Paul Ryan and the GOP Establishment is designed to return us to the laissez faire glories of the Gilded Age. Will this Gilded Age be once again followed by another Great Recession or Depression?
There is the Communist Party of the "Red Menace" days, but there is also the Marxist and Neo-Marxist critique of capitalism. Perhaps Americans, during this Era of Trump, should familiarize themselves with this critique and judge for themselves the extent to which it applies to capitalism as currently practiced in the U.S.
5
> The flaws of laissez-faire capitalism were very much evident in the financial collapse of 2008
Finance (along w/nuclear) is the most govt-controlled industry in America. Concrete-bound Pragmatists must squint very tightly, with scholarship, to spot a few, temporary islands of freedom there. Fed counterfeit is passed to political favorites, causing unsustainable investments which bubble and pop. This is the cue for the anti-capitalist chorus to gnash their teeth, rend, their garments and wail about...capitalism. Even Stalin complained, after his mass murders killed any opposition, about threats to his rule.
Finance (along w/nuclear) is the most govt-controlled industry in America. Concrete-bound Pragmatists must squint very tightly, with scholarship, to spot a few, temporary islands of freedom there. Fed counterfeit is passed to political favorites, causing unsustainable investments which bubble and pop. This is the cue for the anti-capitalist chorus to gnash their teeth, rend, their garments and wail about...capitalism. Even Stalin complained, after his mass murders killed any opposition, about threats to his rule.
2
Good article. In the early days of the Great Depression the US Labor movement made great strides primarily due to the combination of seismic rumblings of organized Labor strife in the previous decades, along with the consent and political support of NY Sen. Robert Wagner and newly elected Pres. F.D. Roosevelt.
But with the progression of th Labor movement there was still the gender, and especially, racial segregation goings-on (not secretly) inside big Labor. W.E.B. Du Boise wrote many powerful articles disclaiming Labor's high moral ground when it came to the equality inside union memberships. This issue was not lost on many of America's owners class such as Henry Ford. Ford purposely hired many AfriAmericans who emigrated from the South, which started primarily during WWI, as a way of keeping the unions from organizing in any of his plants; which worked well for many years. When a critical organizing move by the UAW, in the 30's, occurred at the Ford Motor Co. the prospects for the union movement were not good, due to the black workers resistance. It took organizers from the American Communist Party to go to Detroit to campaign tirelessly in getting the black Ford workers to side with the UAW and then turn the American automotive industry almost entirely UNION!
Needless to say, those organizers were sold out by union bosses and unionists themselves just a decade later.
But with the progression of th Labor movement there was still the gender, and especially, racial segregation goings-on (not secretly) inside big Labor. W.E.B. Du Boise wrote many powerful articles disclaiming Labor's high moral ground when it came to the equality inside union memberships. This issue was not lost on many of America's owners class such as Henry Ford. Ford purposely hired many AfriAmericans who emigrated from the South, which started primarily during WWI, as a way of keeping the unions from organizing in any of his plants; which worked well for many years. When a critical organizing move by the UAW, in the 30's, occurred at the Ford Motor Co. the prospects for the union movement were not good, due to the black workers resistance. It took organizers from the American Communist Party to go to Detroit to campaign tirelessly in getting the black Ford workers to side with the UAW and then turn the American automotive industry almost entirely UNION!
Needless to say, those organizers were sold out by union bosses and unionists themselves just a decade later.
7
A common flaw in almost all Idealist political movements- ones that posit a total solution to all woes - is the over reliance on an economic system to solve complex human conflicts. They tend to claim everything is economic and adhere to a rigidity that is both crucial for clarity & tenacity, but faulty for real pragmatic progress.
Many fringe parties simply fail to understand true emotional elements and get jammed blaming their lack of popular appeal on The System. Failure to come to grips with complex psychological factors makes their vision a doomed fantasy.
Many fringe parties simply fail to understand true emotional elements and get jammed blaming their lack of popular appeal on The System. Failure to come to grips with complex psychological factors makes their vision a doomed fantasy.
6
A well-spoken comment but you betray the possibility that we live in a society that is already built around 'an economic system to solve complex human conflicts'. It comes across as hollow to criticize someone who desires progressive change in society as simply an idealist fetishizing economics. In most cases, a socialist critique of capitalist society (though many socialists aren't necessarily anti-capitalists) would focus on the fact it is actually market relations that reduce everything to 'economics' in a process most generally known as commodification. In the pursuit profits/rents, complex social relations are broken down into market relations. Even traditional conservatives should understand how this process undermines something they would value deeply such as the family structure.
7
This accounts for 'the people's' annoying tendency, in Gaza or Kansas, to vote against what is seen as their economic interests in favor of taking stands that vindicate their sense of self worth or identity. Victor Frankel has written about the central importance of meaning in human life.It is so important people will choose actions that reinforce meaning at the ( apparent) expense of economic benefit.
Sounds like a description of capitalism, which relies overmuch on an economic system to solve complex human conflicts. Just sayin.
Fascinating essay by Sarah Jaffe with some penetrating insight into our history. I guess that the Black population turned to another religion, communism, to try to right social wrongs.
Today, Trump people turn to a purely emotionally motivated trumpism to address their confused frustrations. Only Trump and his close retinue, if there really is one, benefit. Communism was much more firmly based on written doctrine; benefits were to the power of the Communist Party. No one knows how to formalize Trump's simple-minded tweets.
A clever high school teacher of geopolitics once gave us the insight that the political spectrum wasn't a straight line between the Left and the Right, it was more like a horseshoe, because the more extreme these groups become, the more alike they become. That observation should sufficiently anger both sides.
But communism and trumpism, whatever that is, arise due to the failure of governments to address their citizens' problems. In the case of racism, the U.S. government could not confront it, and, as Ms. Jaffe notes, in large part supported it.
One well known sociologist in my university days admonished us at a liberal rally that there can be no liberal leadership. We are seeing the same problem in the Right Wing today; there is no leadership, with only an egomaniac as president and his obsequious Republican congress.
Instead of communism, Blacks need a powerful presence in our democracy. It's a fight, but a fight to assure *real* gains.
Today, Trump people turn to a purely emotionally motivated trumpism to address their confused frustrations. Only Trump and his close retinue, if there really is one, benefit. Communism was much more firmly based on written doctrine; benefits were to the power of the Communist Party. No one knows how to formalize Trump's simple-minded tweets.
A clever high school teacher of geopolitics once gave us the insight that the political spectrum wasn't a straight line between the Left and the Right, it was more like a horseshoe, because the more extreme these groups become, the more alike they become. That observation should sufficiently anger both sides.
But communism and trumpism, whatever that is, arise due to the failure of governments to address their citizens' problems. In the case of racism, the U.S. government could not confront it, and, as Ms. Jaffe notes, in large part supported it.
One well known sociologist in my university days admonished us at a liberal rally that there can be no liberal leadership. We are seeing the same problem in the Right Wing today; there is no leadership, with only an egomaniac as president and his obsequious Republican congress.
Instead of communism, Blacks need a powerful presence in our democracy. It's a fight, but a fight to assure *real* gains.
4
Very interesting, in the midst of the the rise of neo-Stalinism on campus (particularly at Berkeley, Middlebury and Evergreen College), to read this exculpatory essay on American Communism.
It contained many howlers, chief among them was this doozy: "Revelations after the war about Stalin’s crimes further damaged the party’s international prestige.”
Only after WWII Stalin's horrors were learned? Really? Did the writer ever hear of a fellow named Malcolm Muggeridge and his book “Winter in Moscow”?
With this piece the paper returns to its shameful Duranty heritage.
“American Communists at their best” will hang the liberal legacy media with the rope they have provided to them.
It contained many howlers, chief among them was this doozy: "Revelations after the war about Stalin’s crimes further damaged the party’s international prestige.”
Only after WWII Stalin's horrors were learned? Really? Did the writer ever hear of a fellow named Malcolm Muggeridge and his book “Winter in Moscow”?
With this piece the paper returns to its shameful Duranty heritage.
“American Communists at their best” will hang the liberal legacy media with the rope they have provided to them.
16
Maybe you should read the history of the Milwaukee Socialists, who gave us the finest years for the entire population from the leadership that ran from Hoan to Frank Zeidler and ended after WWII. Unlike the rule of big greed that we see today, this era brought true stability to all classes and the German backbone of much of the thrifty population underscored it.
3
You forgot to mention the most prominent neo-Stalinists in the Country: Donald Trump and Steven Bannon, both avowed admirers of Stalin, the author of the Trump/Bannon worldview. With that in mind, you can see that there hasn't been a rise in Stalinism on liberal college campuses but a vocal rejection of it. Being intolerant of fascism, racism, anti-intellectualism, i.e. Stalinism, isn't Stalinism obviously. Labeling the folks on the left, who apparently are the only people concerned about the rise of neo-Stalinism/Trumpism, won't change the fact that conservatives have fully re-embraced an authoritarian tradition targeting democracy and freedom.
4
Absolutely correct. There is a tendency of former Communists to state that when they "found out" about Stalin's crimes they walked away. But why did so many other people know the truth of the show trials, like American Socialist Norman Thomas who described the ludicrous justifications brilliantly in his book, "Socialism on the Defensive" in 1938? He points out that one would have to believe the the head of the NKVD, Comrade Yezhov, after purging all the Trotskyist/Fascist traitors and spies from the CPSU, he turned around and became a Trostskyist/Fascist traitor and spy himself, as he stated in his "confession." Many, many people saw the truth, and many others remained willfully blind to it.
2
In a sense, we didn't have any real, or truly revolutionary commies in this country before the 70, with Bettina Aptheker, Mark Rudd and Kathy Boudin. These kids were actually willing to blow things up. The older commie generations were so law abiding they wouldn't break the speed limit. The kids of course were red diaper babies. They made the mistake of taking their parents' class struggle rhetoric seriously.
2
An American politician is purported to have quipped, "Socialism is jes like com'nism, only slower;" but he was wrong, for communism rejects representative governments, socialism doesn't. Conflating socialism and communism is a common mistake, and Ms Jaffe's op-ed doesn't help us see more clearly.
Communists may have fought for many just causes, but their end goal is a revolution to replace capitalist legal institutions. While communists are counting votes, they're also counting the days until they can do away with voting in competitive elections. Most democratic socialists are content to play by the current rules and believe in democratic institutions.
Unfortunately Ms Jaffe's essay fails to make this important distinction, as do many other journalists. The violent clashes between German communists and socialists at the end of World War I graphically show how this philosophical difference went beyond political debating societies.
While American communism seems to lurk at the very edges of our body politic, I strongly doubt that it is necessary for any significant societal reforms, even if its members are ready to dash to center stage and take bows from time to time.
Communists may have fought for many just causes, but their end goal is a revolution to replace capitalist legal institutions. While communists are counting votes, they're also counting the days until they can do away with voting in competitive elections. Most democratic socialists are content to play by the current rules and believe in democratic institutions.
Unfortunately Ms Jaffe's essay fails to make this important distinction, as do many other journalists. The violent clashes between German communists and socialists at the end of World War I graphically show how this philosophical difference went beyond political debating societies.
While American communism seems to lurk at the very edges of our body politic, I strongly doubt that it is necessary for any significant societal reforms, even if its members are ready to dash to center stage and take bows from time to time.
12
Interesting that you cite the clashes between KPD/the Sparticist League and the SPD after WWI as an example of the tension between communists' supposedly anti-democratic ideals and the liberal heritage of "democratic socialists." If I recall correctly, it wasn't the communists who called in the military and fascist thugs to violently suppress protests by striking workers. It wasn't the communists who sought to protect anti-democratic control of industry by tycoons and oligarchs.
The facile equation of capitalist representative institutions with democracy (and its converse, the equation of communism with Stalinism) is precisely the problem with "democratic socialism." The Spartacist League sought direct control of society and industry by workers' councils; the SPD and their fascist allies defended a top-down capitalist oligarchy.
The facile equation of capitalist representative institutions with democracy (and its converse, the equation of communism with Stalinism) is precisely the problem with "democratic socialism." The Spartacist League sought direct control of society and industry by workers' councils; the SPD and their fascist allies defended a top-down capitalist oligarchy.
Finally the NYT promotes communism. We always know it, glad they're now admitting it.
10
Jaffe is correct that the Party was THE leader on African American rights and self-determination in the 1930's, founding trailblazing organizations like the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the American Negro Labor Congress, leading the fight to save the Scottsboro Boys and pushing the labor movement to integrate. They had a deep analysis that also led to a theory that certain southern states belonged to a historic "Black Belt" and should struggle toward national autonomy, consistent with Lenin and Stalin's theory of national minorities. But while that is all admirable, there was little concrete connection between those efforts and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's. A stronger historical connection exists between the Socialist Party and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters led by A. Philip Randolph. Even now, when a storied history is about all the CPUSA has going for it, they like to claim patrimony for the Civil Rights movement. They were important forerunners but were not the progenitors.
13
It seems that you're focusing on the wrong point. I took the article's claim your comment pertains to as merely pointing out the importance of black communists in many disparate movements rather than simply attempting to trace a lineage between organizations. Critiques of those organizations' positions on race/gender are widespread. The point is that American communists were some of the first groups embrace a racial facet of class exploitation while acknowledging depth of exploitation represented by slavery and its aftermath.
3
Just goes to show you the harm that can be caused by labels...and propaganda that comes out of a lot of the media, including...sorry to say...the New York Times.
I'm hardly an expert on the period or the movement, but I would be greatly surprised if any of these were ready to join causes with the Red Army and conquer the planet. Marx was not Engles was not Lenin was not Claudia Jones. Each of these people were unique.
There are a lot of things appealing in socialism, especially to people who are socially and economically marginalized, something it shares with Christianity for that matter.
Capitalism as an ideology doesn't leave much to hope for those that don't have Capital. The market system leaves little succor for the losers ...and let's not fool ourselves, Free Market Capitalism requires that there be 'losers'.
Most people, discovering that they've 'lost the game' aren't really looking for ideologies that explain in exquisite detail why they are such losers. No...they look for redemption. That is what Communism and Socialism seemed to offer a lot of people in the past...an alternative to the world view that cast them as 'inefficient' or 'non-competitive'
Much more appealing is the vantage point of the virtuous man or woman that has been dealt a great injustice.
Hell, these kind of themes are all over our television and box office dramas.
The movement never would have been so maligned if it hadn't had the potential of mass appeal to many Americans.
I'm hardly an expert on the period or the movement, but I would be greatly surprised if any of these were ready to join causes with the Red Army and conquer the planet. Marx was not Engles was not Lenin was not Claudia Jones. Each of these people were unique.
There are a lot of things appealing in socialism, especially to people who are socially and economically marginalized, something it shares with Christianity for that matter.
Capitalism as an ideology doesn't leave much to hope for those that don't have Capital. The market system leaves little succor for the losers ...and let's not fool ourselves, Free Market Capitalism requires that there be 'losers'.
Most people, discovering that they've 'lost the game' aren't really looking for ideologies that explain in exquisite detail why they are such losers. No...they look for redemption. That is what Communism and Socialism seemed to offer a lot of people in the past...an alternative to the world view that cast them as 'inefficient' or 'non-competitive'
Much more appealing is the vantage point of the virtuous man or woman that has been dealt a great injustice.
Hell, these kind of themes are all over our television and box office dramas.
The movement never would have been so maligned if it hadn't had the potential of mass appeal to many Americans.
2
Both Ms. Jaffe's Op-Ed and the related comments exhibit the considerable confusion and damage done to historical consciousness on the topic of communism. That's a great tragedy because an understanding of the fundamental conflicts of the 19th and 20th Centuries is central to addressing their unresolved state in the 21st.
Communism sprang as a contemporary political trend out of the nascent struggles (the revolutions of 1848) of the European working class. These were first given a scientific appreciation by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Then, as now, the fundamental (and revolutionary) conflict is between a modern, technologically developed society capable of eliminating poverty (where the market is global and production is social) and the outmoded, private ownership of those means of production. The primary classes in this conflict are the working class and the capitalist class.
This explosive dynamic was clearly expressed in WWI and WWII when the national politics of defending competing propertied interests led to repeated military conflict. The Russian and Chinese revolutions (1917 and 1949) were, of course, a direct product of these upheavals.
For anyone interested in pursuing a more profound understanding of this history I recommend the works of Leon Trotsky and James Cannon. Whether it's the degeneration of the CPUSA or the betrayals of Stalinism/Maoism - none of this can be understood outside of studying the international, historical context.
Communism sprang as a contemporary political trend out of the nascent struggles (the revolutions of 1848) of the European working class. These were first given a scientific appreciation by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Then, as now, the fundamental (and revolutionary) conflict is between a modern, technologically developed society capable of eliminating poverty (where the market is global and production is social) and the outmoded, private ownership of those means of production. The primary classes in this conflict are the working class and the capitalist class.
This explosive dynamic was clearly expressed in WWI and WWII when the national politics of defending competing propertied interests led to repeated military conflict. The Russian and Chinese revolutions (1917 and 1949) were, of course, a direct product of these upheavals.
For anyone interested in pursuing a more profound understanding of this history I recommend the works of Leon Trotsky and James Cannon. Whether it's the degeneration of the CPUSA or the betrayals of Stalinism/Maoism - none of this can be understood outside of studying the international, historical context.
8
> Communism sprang as a contemporary political trend out of the nascent struggles (the revolutions of 1848) of the European working class.
Communism sprang from Kant's nihilist attack on man's mind. Thus the appeal to intuition, later accepted by Nazism. Those, having failed, are now replaced by nationalist and religious intuitions. See _Return To The Primitive_ by Ayn Rand.
Communism sprang from Kant's nihilist attack on man's mind. Thus the appeal to intuition, later accepted by Nazism. Those, having failed, are now replaced by nationalist and religious intuitions. See _Return To The Primitive_ by Ayn Rand.
Mr. Grossmans contribution illustrates the difference between science and... confused, self-serving rubbish. Ayn Rand came into her own as a marketing and PR agent of the Cold War. She was nothing more than that. Return to the Primitive? Aptly named.
Grossman does not realize it but the Communist Manifesto was written by Marx as a response to the revolutions of 1848. Grossman would not know the difference between Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, or Howdy Doody.
Grossman does not realize it but the Communist Manifesto was written by Marx as a response to the revolutions of 1848. Grossman would not know the difference between Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, or Howdy Doody.
Funny how the communists seemed to be on the right side of many issues that the republican and democratic parties were not.
11
This is a good read, but it does ignore the fact that many black intellectuals have turned away from the Communist party out of frustration for its subordination of black issues to the party line.
4
To advance her agenda the author clearly chooses to neglect the fact that the American Communist Party was 100% controlled from Moscow. It was never a domestic political party. It was part of international Communist parties (Comintern). She also understates CPUSA's support for the destruction of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Nazi-Soviet alliance, and the Soviet attack on Finland. The CPUSA opposed UK/French/US support for Finland as they battled Soviet invaders! So much left out, Ms. Jaffe, why?
12
How about a series on the Unexpected Afterlife of American Fascism. If we are celebrating dupes or barbarians, let's be equal time....
6
The 60s destroyed American Communism. 60s communism was about sex drugs rock and roll, and not about equality or duty to society. Most people nowadays have no interest in Communism, because it is culturally conservative and rigidly forbids drug use and other forms of decadence the are the staple of 21st Century America.
2
My understanding of Communism started with the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade of Dr. Fred Schwartz, in my Baptist church of my childhood, and went as far as Whittaker Chambers' Witness, discovered in grad school. Clearly my understanding needs some up-dating.... thank you, NYT, for this thoughtful aid.
4
I visited Russia when it was under Communist rule with a tour and it was a very sad place indeed. Certain areas were restricted and off limits as they did not want us to see the "real" Russia where there was poverty and glum. The tour guides lived lavishly as did those in government while the rest of the country starved. Americans with tours were treated like royalty and taken only to the best places.
We had a chance meeting with a Russian man who wanted us to get word to his sister in the US but we were told he was intoxicated and pulled away quickly. He was very sober but they did not want us to mingle with the locals as they were afraid we would see the real Russia of despair and poverty. This man by the way was very intelligent but kept back by Communist rule as were all the citizens of the country. There was no incentive to work hard as you were not rewarded for your input.
The few Russians we were able to meet were lovely but I hated and despised what Comminism had done to these fine people. They had become demoralized and puppets by their own country.
I am extremelyly anti-Communist, was before I went to Russia and even more so upon returning from the trip. It does not work. The people are held down and treated like children. It was quite an experience but one I would never want to repeat. Communism is horrible, immoral and must never be accepted.
We had a chance meeting with a Russian man who wanted us to get word to his sister in the US but we were told he was intoxicated and pulled away quickly. He was very sober but they did not want us to mingle with the locals as they were afraid we would see the real Russia of despair and poverty. This man by the way was very intelligent but kept back by Communist rule as were all the citizens of the country. There was no incentive to work hard as you were not rewarded for your input.
The few Russians we were able to meet were lovely but I hated and despised what Comminism had done to these fine people. They had become demoralized and puppets by their own country.
I am extremelyly anti-Communist, was before I went to Russia and even more so upon returning from the trip. It does not work. The people are held down and treated like children. It was quite an experience but one I would never want to repeat. Communism is horrible, immoral and must never be accepted.
10
Honestly I miss World Communism even though internally it was a sham and a horror in many ways. While its ideology was actively competing with capitalism, the US government had to react by creating social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, farm aid, rural electrification, War on Poverty and so on. I'll bet that we would still be in the pure robber capitalist state had we not pretty much been forced into setting up these programs to share the wealth when the Communist example appeared to be viable. To support my hypothesis I suggest that people take a look at how over the past twenty years all this is being dismantled in the US. We no longer need to be ashamed of being mean-spirited.
13
Excellent. Helpful narrative background for a phenomenon that for most of us lived mostly in shadow, so we really never understood as much as we would have wanted and needed to know. Thank you, NY Times & Sarah Jaffe.
5
Ronald Reagan in his campaign to bust unions duped American workers into believing they were entrepreneurs. Lubricated by the balm of consumerism, many, perhaps the majority of workers fell for this ruse. But workers are inescapably subject to the labor market and as such they are economically little different from iron ore and pork bellies - commodities subject to market forces beyond their control. Unions in spite of their faults mitigated this inhuman commodification. In contrast to this mitigation, offering some degree of security and benefits, the neoliberal path has been, in the words of Alan Greenspan, to increase worker anxiety. And that to the Ayn Randian "is a good thing". But workers - who are in no way an entrepreneurs in the heroic sense that American mythology implies - are victims in their anxiety, of false consciousness which is reaching heightened levels under the so-called populism of the Trump era. And false conscious is a term of Marxism which is the only basis of a critique of capitalism.
4
There is a big difference between Socialism and Communism. Communism undermined the Socialist parties of the 1920s and 30s and, in Eastern Europe after WW2, co-opted Socialist parties, exiling, imprisoning and even killing their leaders. This has been to the detriment of workers, as communism revealed itself, in practice, to be about loyalty and power more than workers' rights.
What we should be striving for is a balance of power, not the victory of any class over the others. Each class has its purpose: workers of all stripes, entrepreneurs, managers, even corporations, both private and state-run, have specific roles to play in a prosperous society. At this time, the balance seems to have shifted towards global corporations that seek to exploit labor throughout the world. There needs to be a resurgence in workers power and certainly this cannot occur without overcoming the traditional divisions that have undermined these efforts in the past. These include not just racism but nationalism as well. In this regard, the long-ago abandoned ideas of the Comintern might be worth re-examining.
What we should be striving for is a balance of power, not the victory of any class over the others. Each class has its purpose: workers of all stripes, entrepreneurs, managers, even corporations, both private and state-run, have specific roles to play in a prosperous society. At this time, the balance seems to have shifted towards global corporations that seek to exploit labor throughout the world. There needs to be a resurgence in workers power and certainly this cannot occur without overcoming the traditional divisions that have undermined these efforts in the past. These include not just racism but nationalism as well. In this regard, the long-ago abandoned ideas of the Comintern might be worth re-examining.
7
Great to see the intersectional prescience of Claudia Jones lifted up. And we should remember that after she was deported, Jones went on to a remarkable career as a writer, editor, and activist in the West Indian community in London:
https://oldestvocation.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/finding-claudia-jones/
https://oldestvocation.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/finding-claudia-jones/
8
My Slovak-Catholic mother grew up out East in the Depression. Her family was smart, but poor. Grandpa was a union steel-worker in Pittsburgh. She never forgot the lessons of poverty -- chief among them the equality and value of ALL people. I contrast this with the Korean War generation who grew up in the '50s. My mother-in-law is a dear lady, but "social justice" always had the tang of Commie sympathizer. She holds this dear, even in 2017. Her God doesn't seem to mind that some folk suffer more than others. And me? I'm ramping up to visiting North Omaha from my comfortable West Omaha home. Copernicus was right: No one person or tribe is the center of the Universe.
9
The American's usually conflated communism with the Soviet Union. The crimes committed by its leaders in the name of "communism" are well known. What is less well known is that the Soviet form of government was vehemently criticized from the very beginning by communist who rightly saw its distortion of a system that was at it's core amazingly idealistic.
It was this belief in the possibility of human kind to live in a world free of hunger, want, disease and oppression that attracted many young activists to its ranks and led many of them to the south to work for Black liberation.
The excesses and failures of the so called communist states of the Soviet Union and China need no discussion. Case closed. But communists from the CPUSA went south and risked their lives to organize communities that had been abandoned by both political parties and condemned to an American form of serfdom.
We can and should celebrate the successes of the civil rights movement. But the foundation and many of the foot soldiers in that movement owe a debt to the communist organizers from the 1930's and 40's. Despite being abandoned by their own CPUSA for ideological transgressions, they surface two decades later to help lead the freedom movement.
Were they still communists? Some ares still alive to ask. But regardless of any political labels they were freedom fighters to a man and woman and for that I for one am grateful.
It was this belief in the possibility of human kind to live in a world free of hunger, want, disease and oppression that attracted many young activists to its ranks and led many of them to the south to work for Black liberation.
The excesses and failures of the so called communist states of the Soviet Union and China need no discussion. Case closed. But communists from the CPUSA went south and risked their lives to organize communities that had been abandoned by both political parties and condemned to an American form of serfdom.
We can and should celebrate the successes of the civil rights movement. But the foundation and many of the foot soldiers in that movement owe a debt to the communist organizers from the 1930's and 40's. Despite being abandoned by their own CPUSA for ideological transgressions, they surface two decades later to help lead the freedom movement.
Were they still communists? Some ares still alive to ask. But regardless of any political labels they were freedom fighters to a man and woman and for that I for one am grateful.
24
In the 1950s, there was a lot of discussion about what Communism meant and how bad it was. One problem was that the discussion often attacked any attempts to promote social or economic justice. The US could do almost anything in the international arena in the name of opposing Communism.
A lot of our problems today are a residue of that heritage. We've forgotten them, but people in Africa, Asia and South America remember.
People in the USA talked about totalitarianism and how absolute dictators like Stalin and Mao were able to control their populations. It was big news in the 1960s when it was "discovered" that International Communism was an illusion.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the US lost a unified enemy and the idea that capitalism "won" took hold. Free markets were the answer. We began a journey into a world where inequality was increasing and opportunity declined. Socialism became a term of opprobrium. That's where we are today.
Authoritarians can use political philosophy to manipulate the people they rule. Perhaps Stalin was evil, not because he was a Communist, but because he was ruthless in pursuing his political goals. Mao thought his revolution was more important than the lives of millions who were sacrificed. Hitler and Mussolini weren't that different when it comes to the damage they inflicted on their nations and the world.
A lot of our problems today are a residue of that heritage. We've forgotten them, but people in Africa, Asia and South America remember.
People in the USA talked about totalitarianism and how absolute dictators like Stalin and Mao were able to control their populations. It was big news in the 1960s when it was "discovered" that International Communism was an illusion.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the US lost a unified enemy and the idea that capitalism "won" took hold. Free markets were the answer. We began a journey into a world where inequality was increasing and opportunity declined. Socialism became a term of opprobrium. That's where we are today.
Authoritarians can use political philosophy to manipulate the people they rule. Perhaps Stalin was evil, not because he was a Communist, but because he was ruthless in pursuing his political goals. Mao thought his revolution was more important than the lives of millions who were sacrificed. Hitler and Mussolini weren't that different when it comes to the damage they inflicted on their nations and the world.
3
The problem with communism - or leninist, party-centered communism - is that it tends towards authoritarianism. It's inevitable without political opposition, without a functioning democratic accountability mechanism. But often communism eschews parliamentary bodies, relegating them to "bourgeois capitalistic epiphenomena." So what goes in its place? Marx certainly never answered that question. For him, when the material conditions of society were re-made, utopian (messianic?) style, another kind of governance would emerge. But he couldn't imagine what it might look like.
What I find most interesting about this piece is how very DEMOCRATIC the American communists were, though. They are the democratic social movement par excellence. At least in the "revolution" stage, before the governing begins.
What I find most interesting about this piece is how very DEMOCRATIC the American communists were, though. They are the democratic social movement par excellence. At least in the "revolution" stage, before the governing begins.
6
Enjoyed this piece, but the author, like most takes communism back to Marx or Lenin. They were simply the world's reactions to unbridled capitalism. But communism goes back to human beginnings. For 99% of human history we shared everything hunter-gatherers tribes had with no class system. We were communists. White Christians, Europeans, decided they wanted the lands and workers of the Americas and Africa. Ownership was and is the issue.
9
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" makes sense in a hunter-gatherer society. Inasmuch as we evolved for a hunter-gatherer society, the philosophy will resonate across cultures and time. Nevertheless, we no longer hunt or gather. The Marxist slogan presumes that a bounty of goods and services will emerge under socialist management, where individual incentives are few. The experiment has been run and the evidence is not good.
6
The idea that previous communist experiments have failed, so communism therefore must be bad, seem problematic though. How many countries today are capitalist nations that are economically failing with extremely low qualities of living and governments headed by dictators? Does capitalism have a very good track record either, if only a select group of western countries are revelling in it with periodic economic crises in between?
5
Re: McCarty: What of Asia? Do they have no part in your diatribe? China was an ancient civilization long before Europe. How did they organize things? Perhaps you're just a racist. Your take on Europeans is simplistic in the extreme. You need to read more history.
I have evolved from the time I read about Marx & his 12 basic rules of Communism. The two rules that convinced me to look upon Communism
negatively was No parental care or something to that effect, & it’s anti religious position.My mother used to say you can spot a Communist by the way they part their hair, which was in the middle of their head,I looked upon many balding men as Communists, I was only about 8 years old when she told me that.The early settlers in Israel were from eastern Europe & brought with them Marxism. The Kibbutz, or Cooperative was based on Marxism, where religion was taboo, & the children were razed in dormitories.Out of this environment came the early leaders of Israel.The Kibbutz has gone from being agricultural to industrial & from Marxist to Capitalist, although some still retain their Marxist identity.Today I identify with secular progressive liberals, & find myself spouting Marx’s comment that religion is the opiate of the masses. I am a strong supporter of the separation of Church & State, & believe that organized religion is reactionary,& restricts scientific progress,& does far more harm than good.In this case Marx was right on the money.
negatively was No parental care or something to that effect, & it’s anti religious position.My mother used to say you can spot a Communist by the way they part their hair, which was in the middle of their head,I looked upon many balding men as Communists, I was only about 8 years old when she told me that.The early settlers in Israel were from eastern Europe & brought with them Marxism. The Kibbutz, or Cooperative was based on Marxism, where religion was taboo, & the children were razed in dormitories.Out of this environment came the early leaders of Israel.The Kibbutz has gone from being agricultural to industrial & from Marxist to Capitalist, although some still retain their Marxist identity.Today I identify with secular progressive liberals, & find myself spouting Marx’s comment that religion is the opiate of the masses. I am a strong supporter of the separation of Church & State, & believe that organized religion is reactionary,& restricts scientific progress,& does far more harm than good.In this case Marx was right on the money.
5
Someone here wrote: "This [the Communist Party in the USA] is not a usable past for today's American Left." Au contraire, the vision and tactics of the CPUSA is quite useful today as a means of putting Marxism to practice in this country at this historic moment. Americans, however, have an educational system, part of what Louis Althusser called, ideological state apparatuses that work to nourish and maintain capitalism. Marx provided a lens, a framework, the most potent, by the way, in history that contests capitalism. The Marxist Althusser provided a central theory about how relations of production is reproduced via repressive apparatuses (police, military, etc) and the ideological (education, media, religion, etc). These act to perpetuate the exploitative system of capitalism and reproduces sentiment contained in the opening quote.
Here's another: "You're ignoring all the people who's lives were destroyed in the 20th century by this terrible political system. Please stop celebrating communism." I wonder if these poster would consider the whole colonial project under capitalism and its historical genocides from the Atlantic Slave Trade to the genocide of native peoples across the Americas. First, to correct this poster, Communism is an economic system. That's another of the accomplishments of the ideological state apparatuses: Creating an ideology that sees capitalism and communism as political systems, rather than economic systems.
Here's another: "You're ignoring all the people who's lives were destroyed in the 20th century by this terrible political system. Please stop celebrating communism." I wonder if these poster would consider the whole colonial project under capitalism and its historical genocides from the Atlantic Slave Trade to the genocide of native peoples across the Americas. First, to correct this poster, Communism is an economic system. That's another of the accomplishments of the ideological state apparatuses: Creating an ideology that sees capitalism and communism as political systems, rather than economic systems.
7
It is not even close. The hunger in Ukraine in late 1920's early 1930's killed millions, millions died in Russian civil war, 20 millions died in Soviet Union during WW2, then millions died in the GULAG and its all just in the Soviet Union for a total of 60 million for the period (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Antiquity_and_Middle_Ages). This alone would be more then all colonization combined. Add China, Cuba, North Korea, Cambodia, and others and then you are looking at even greater numbers.
US communism and other US resistance movements working for social and ecological justice are to start thinking more globally in this globalizing world where large international corporations have an overbearing economic and political influence.
One way to extend their national focus is to start thinking about the looming climate catastrophe not only in resistance to Trump’s foolish national climate actions, but in looking for new pathways that would deal with the global climate challenges.
One of the possibilities for such global climate approach would be the transformation of the unjust, unsustainable and, therefore, unstable international monetary system by basing it on a monetary carbon standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person. The conceptual, institutional, ethical and strategic dimensions of such carbon-based international monetary system are presented in Verhagen 2012 "The Tierra Solution: Resolving the climate crisis through monetary transformation" and updated at www.timun.net. Of this transformational approach to the looming climate catastrophe Bill McKibben wrote on May 17, 2011: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.”
One way to extend their national focus is to start thinking about the looming climate catastrophe not only in resistance to Trump’s foolish national climate actions, but in looking for new pathways that would deal with the global climate challenges.
One of the possibilities for such global climate approach would be the transformation of the unjust, unsustainable and, therefore, unstable international monetary system by basing it on a monetary carbon standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person. The conceptual, institutional, ethical and strategic dimensions of such carbon-based international monetary system are presented in Verhagen 2012 "The Tierra Solution: Resolving the climate crisis through monetary transformation" and updated at www.timun.net. Of this transformational approach to the looming climate catastrophe Bill McKibben wrote on May 17, 2011: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.”
The Communist, in the intelligent rational mind, has always been a violent worshipper of death and destruction. The truth of this can be seen in the violence, death, and destruction in the wake of all the Communist regimes. Ignoring the violence, death, and destruction that is Communism's path and the Communist's hope and dream, is childishly stupid.
Communism is the belief that an individual is just a part of a larger organic something. It ignores the rational mind of the individual, and replaces it with groupthink. It ignores the achievements of individuals, and replaces it with equality of misery.
The history of Communism shows the world what it is: A murder machine. That is the reality of Communism - and it is the reality of Communists, for they cannot operate without producing death and destruction. Anyone who disagrees with the true believers must be silenced - and death is the best silencer. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Kim, Castro - they all understood this, and they all followed this path.
Communism is the belief that an individual is just a part of a larger organic something. It ignores the rational mind of the individual, and replaces it with groupthink. It ignores the achievements of individuals, and replaces it with equality of misery.
The history of Communism shows the world what it is: A murder machine. That is the reality of Communism - and it is the reality of Communists, for they cannot operate without producing death and destruction. Anyone who disagrees with the true believers must be silenced - and death is the best silencer. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Kim, Castro - they all understood this, and they all followed this path.
24
EXACTLY! Thank you!
1
A surprisingly uninformed post given how well you write, Karlos. Although Stalin certainly moved to brutally silence opponents and essentially all debate, the formative years of the what became the official communist party in Russia was rife with internal insults, denigration, debate and criticisms of the party. And let's not forget the hate and fear so wonderfully expressed by you and the murderous, slaughtering foreign invaders of the Russian homeland and the role it played in the development of the murderous paranoia of Stalin and others. God bless.
4
Yours is a naively incomplete post, @Karlos. It can be applied to Right Wing ideals as well. There is the typical latent fear of social organization embedded in your complaint that is prevalent in Right Wing thought.
The extreme Left is based on misguided idealism as is the extreme Right. Their idealism leads these groups into seamy territory and raises the hackles of writers such as yourself.
Communism is an economic theory that cannot address economic laws, just as pure capitalism cannot completely address the needs of a society. Your naiveté lacks that observation.
When either of these extremes on the Right and Left fail to form functioning governments, they turn to totalitarianism to address their inadequacies. The idealism of their followers fails them.
But you ignore the fact that the world is still struggling with capitalism. It's trying to strangle that goose to lay enough golden eggs to prevent an unstable world. It just came out of another major economic crash by creating an effective government stimulus that kept capitalism alive. The big financial interests that fuel capitalism are alive, and far better than well, from the benefit of a a strong central government.
I expect that we'll always have this conversation, @karlos, that is, if trumpism doesn't subvert the reasoning that enables it to exist.
The extreme Left is based on misguided idealism as is the extreme Right. Their idealism leads these groups into seamy territory and raises the hackles of writers such as yourself.
Communism is an economic theory that cannot address economic laws, just as pure capitalism cannot completely address the needs of a society. Your naiveté lacks that observation.
When either of these extremes on the Right and Left fail to form functioning governments, they turn to totalitarianism to address their inadequacies. The idealism of their followers fails them.
But you ignore the fact that the world is still struggling with capitalism. It's trying to strangle that goose to lay enough golden eggs to prevent an unstable world. It just came out of another major economic crash by creating an effective government stimulus that kept capitalism alive. The big financial interests that fuel capitalism are alive, and far better than well, from the benefit of a a strong central government.
I expect that we'll always have this conversation, @karlos, that is, if trumpism doesn't subvert the reasoning that enables it to exist.
3
"... the gap between the narrative of American greatness and the realities of people’s lives." A spot on, description of what has troubled me since the 60s.
In the long run, democracy must be a balance between socialism and capitalism. There must be a yin and yang between what appears to be opposite or contrary forces. From a middle class point of view it is clear that these two ways of organizing society -socialism and capitalism- are actually each better when they are complementary, interconnected, and interdependent.
There must be a balance between the philosophies of Rand and Marx, between the Warren Buffet view of the world and Paul Ryan view of the world. The country's leaders should look to Joseph Stiglitz not Arthur Laffer in shaping the economy and our government.
Only balance in the way our society is organized will bring the liberty and justice for all so many leaders claim to seek.
In the long run, democracy must be a balance between socialism and capitalism. There must be a yin and yang between what appears to be opposite or contrary forces. From a middle class point of view it is clear that these two ways of organizing society -socialism and capitalism- are actually each better when they are complementary, interconnected, and interdependent.
There must be a balance between the philosophies of Rand and Marx, between the Warren Buffet view of the world and Paul Ryan view of the world. The country's leaders should look to Joseph Stiglitz not Arthur Laffer in shaping the economy and our government.
Only balance in the way our society is organized will bring the liberty and justice for all so many leaders claim to seek.
10
There is some truth here but it is hard to dig out from beneath the hostility. This statement to start, "The Communist, in the American imagination, has always been the ultimate outside agitator." The agitator in this case was not the Communists. The Communists were a result of the hangings, brutal oppression of the poor and the killing of union organizers. The Agitators are and have always been the wealthy. When farmers quietly and peacefully lived on the land in England refusing to move to the cities to work in factories for the wealthy elite, the wealthy elite made new laws to throw them from their land and peaceful existence into the horror of the "Workhouse". The wealthy elites need labor and when they cannot get it legitimately they will get it illegally or change the rules. The interesting problem now is that with a planet full of poor compliant workers the wealthy elite don't need the workers anymore because of automation. The problem of what to do with them is looming large, so far the wealthy elite are opting for fascism in the hope they can maintain control with force. There are better ways but they might involve the wealthy giving up some wealth for the good of all, (here that would be social democracy), is a form of communism or socialism, which is historically the last thing the wealthy wants. The wealthy will always choose fascism over any form of sharing, they'd rather give it away to "Causes" a la the David Brooks op ed of today.
18
The fact is, the communists continue to provide the only cogent and empirically sound theory of global society and polity, and that's why they are and will continue to be relevant. Truth prevails.
11
Talk to some Hungarians, Czechs, Latvians, etc for some truths about communism. They lived under the reality!
2
The regimes you lived under were perversions of Marxist ideology; like terrorism is a perversion of Islam, or the Inquisition was a perversion of Christianity, and populism is a perversion of democracy.
1
How little history we know and how much we try to destroy. As an educator, I watched the erasure of this particular history through the use of "To Kill a Mockingbird," for instance, that allows African-Americans no agency at all. That was written about 30 years after the fact, and I have no idea whether the author knew the truth or wanted to extinguish the truth. I watched as it became mandatory indoctrination with one student after another. Carson McCullers, on the other hand, writing during the 1930s in "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" included a powerful and memorable doctor who was a dedicated Communist. The second book whetted my appetite to begin digging for this story of Communism in the South particularly.
10
Human Nature -
Here, in this green paradise,
where everyone and everything
is "red in tooth and claw",
we all seek peace and freedom,
though ever and always
at the uttermost expense of other beings.
This universal truth obtains,
no matter the system -
familial, religious or political.
Here, in this green paradise,
where everyone and everything
is "red in tooth and claw",
we all seek peace and freedom,
though ever and always
at the uttermost expense of other beings.
This universal truth obtains,
no matter the system -
familial, religious or political.
1
Its much harder to seek peace and freedom when the govt owns all business and property and they wont let you vote.
4
The threat of Communism is a favorite bogeyman of moneyed interests.
Doing research I was stunned to read about the evils of communism in a 1870 newspaper.
I just simply prefer the native Indian view of the world.
They would be communists in today's world sharing resources.
You don't inherit the world from your father you borrow it from your children.
Doing research I was stunned to read about the evils of communism in a 1870 newspaper.
I just simply prefer the native Indian view of the world.
They would be communists in today's world sharing resources.
You don't inherit the world from your father you borrow it from your children.
24
Thank you for your comments, especially your last sentence. I don't believe I have ever heard the idea of using what we have been given wisely, so that we have something to leave to future generations, expressed so well.
1
Sharing isnt taking away voting and property rights.
Its called stealing.
Its called stealing.
5
Thanks for the sanitized commercial, Ms Jaffe but I'll pass on Communism. The social problems that fuel resentment are often real but Communism is not the solution. See tens of millions of dead Chinese, Soviets, Cambodians, and North Koreans who died at the hands of their own "enlightened" Communist rulers. So much blood. Red Century, indeed.
16
How much of what we think we know is Cold War propaganda? Communists fought for workers rights and against racist terror and segregation when not just conservatives, but also liberals, would not. That their critical role in securing the rights of all Americans is not taught in US history classes should be a clue that not everything we think we know about the communist-led socialist revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere is true either. Read William Hinton's "Fanshen" or J Arch Getty's studies of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union or just google "did Mao really kill millions." Real crimes and serious errors were committed in these revolutions, but they also dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in what were some of the poorest parts of the world. Those concerned with inequality today should study their histories with an eye for what our ruling elites have sought to conceal, suppress or discredit.
8
What improved the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese more? Capitalism or Communism? Contrast China today with China in 1979! Get your head out of the sand and face the real world!
1
Dude, what you say is exactly what Soviet communists were saying before being shipped to GULAG to die. I know, my parents' families were among those who died there.
The CPUSA attracted some of the best minds of the generation. And those who gave their lives for it and its lofty ideals signed a pact with the devil. No criticism of the USSR was ever permitted.
Ultimately, this endless stream of lies and denial killed the party.
With the revelations by Khruschev of the crimes of Stalin, all of which the US Communists denied for years despite much evidence, most American Communists quit in disgust. Then the CPUSA, like a balloon with a leak, collapsed and died.
Those who continued on in its name were the hard liners, the red fascists, who like fundamentalists everywhere, couldn't care less about truth or decency.
The party deserved to die.
Ultimately, this endless stream of lies and denial killed the party.
With the revelations by Khruschev of the crimes of Stalin, all of which the US Communists denied for years despite much evidence, most American Communists quit in disgust. Then the CPUSA, like a balloon with a leak, collapsed and died.
Those who continued on in its name were the hard liners, the red fascists, who like fundamentalists everywhere, couldn't care less about truth or decency.
The party deserved to die.
15
IMHO, the 'best minds of the generation' wouldn't allow themselves to be fooled by a political system so committed to a model of human nature, or 'the essence of man', as defined wholly by 'the ensemble of social relations'.
1
Kudos to the NYT, which I never hesitate to criticize, for publishing a calm, well-reasoned article (op-ed) on this topic. It's a sign of institutional (and even national) health that we have grown up enough to be able to discuss these things rationally, and, no, I'm not a communist -- and? In a political culture that has for too long shifted to the right in every possible way, where the more-or-less equivalent in many ways of Eisenhower (ie, Sanders) is considered deeply radical, where a Democratic Party has long since abandoned anything remoted social-democratic, where a authoritarian-possibly-proto-fascist is in the White House, yes, I think we can have a mature discussion on left ideas both good and bad without moral panic. Perhaps even outside the op-ed pages or centennials.
56
Many decent, principled, and well-meaning people joined the Communist Party in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. The Party's commitment to racial equality, at a time when few white Americans, even liberal white Americans (see Franklin Delano Roosevelt) displayed similar commitment, was admirable. But the Party's commitment to supporting a murderous tyranny in the Soviet Union, and its authoritarian Leninist structure, tainted and ultimately destroyed everything it touched. This is not a usable past for today's American Left.
75
Then what is a "usable past?"
Everything in our country is tainted. The Democratic Party created the broadly reformist New Deal yet it was—until the rupture of the 1960s brought on by the civil rights movement—also the agent of white supremacy and segregation.
There is no pristine "usable past." One can glean lessons both positive and negative from an objective reconsideration of the history of the Communist Party in the USA.
Everything in our country is tainted. The Democratic Party created the broadly reformist New Deal yet it was—until the rupture of the 1960s brought on by the civil rights movement—also the agent of white supremacy and segregation.
There is no pristine "usable past." One can glean lessons both positive and negative from an objective reconsideration of the history of the Communist Party in the USA.
23
The usable past of the CPUSA extends to the earliest days of the party when they saw a chance for an international movement focusing on improving the lives of ordinary people. This is a history of the party that is largely forgotten about today.
The reality is that the vast majority of those who call themselves communists in the world lack a deep understanding of the theory of history that led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that only communism can be viable in a world where productivity is so high. They themselves talked about “utopian communism” and “scientific communism”. Only a utopian communist would believe the USSR, China or North Korea are, were, or could have become truly communist. Here is the problem in one word: productivity. When human productivity increases so much that on the one hand just a handful of people are needed to work, and on the other hand, according to the rules and ideology of capitalism, one person can own all the means of production in this world, what is going to happen? What are the reamining 99,99% “unneeded” people going to do to make a living? Is private property (of the means of production, not of your shirt or underwear as anti-communists would have you believe) a “natural” thing or is it a product of a given ideology?
Sooner or later there will be a compelling need to answer that question...unless of course, man blows up the planet before coming to terms with it.
I personally don’t believe the time has arrived yet for capitalism to die out. It still has plenty of juice left in it, but it is going to outlive its usefulness. Only question is when.
Sooner or later there will be a compelling need to answer that question...unless of course, man blows up the planet before coming to terms with it.
I personally don’t believe the time has arrived yet for capitalism to die out. It still has plenty of juice left in it, but it is going to outlive its usefulness. Only question is when.
14
They were not Marxist. Nationalism was their main concern. That included Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Min, Castro, (Che was the only Marxist)
1
Indeed the Communist Party, wherever it has gained power, is not interested in your shirt or your underwear. However it is VERY interested in your house, your farm, your business or professional practice and whatever else of value you may have. Ask the Ukrainian Kulacs about what the party was interested in or watch the classic movie "Dr. Zhivago" for a very realistic depiction of how the dictatorship of the proletariat destroyed the homes and foster family of the doctor - a microcosm of what took place all over Russia. Communist philosophy inevitably leads to dictatorship. It is a logical impossibility for an entire social class to be 'dictator.' Hence, the concept of dictatorship having been accepted, power naturally gravitates into the hands of a few or even a single person. The "proletariat" elected Donald Trump -not perhaps the best evidence of its qualification to rule.
Nationalism is a stage in the dialectical evolution to communism. Its also a good method to defraud anti-ideological Pragmatists.
YEs, "the specter of Communism haunts us still" today. It lives on in the Democratic party and Elizabeth Warren.
5
No, wrong. You suffer from the common misperception confusing socialism with communism.
1
You're ignoring all the people who's lives were destroyed in the 20th century by this terrible political system. Please stop celebrating communism.
20
Omelets require broken eggs. Ask the national socialist, Hitler.
1
Rfam is totally correct. The Sarah Jaffe article and most of the responses decidedly ignore the true horror of Communism in the world. the hundreds of millions who were destroyed and murdered by Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, the Castro brothers - is almost beyond comprehension. That there was a positive side to the activities of American communists is true, but why did so many thousands quite the American Communist Party after Kronstadt, after the Kruschev revelations - all due to McCarthy and McCarran - I don't think so - they quite because the horrors of communism, the stupidity of its utopian vision, the very religious nature of its believers (as sited by my Father, who they responded to by calling him a "social fascist"), the arrogance and ignorance of true believers - see Kati Marton's new book about Noel Field and Alger Hiss - led folks to finally want to find a more balance and truthful life. The Communist romantics, such as Ms. Jaffe and the rest of the letter writers need to wake up - instead of soft pedaling the most terror filled regimes of modern history. Shalom, Cantor Bob
1
How amusing it is today to see academics at Middlebury, Yale, Wesleyan blame "outside agitators" for unrest on their own campuses. We need to establish a "George Wallace/Bull Connor Award" to be handed, each year, to the college president who makes the most use of that odious term in order to avoid responsibility for happenings on his/her campus.
10
100 million people died under communism in the 20th century. What's next NYT? Can we expect a nostalgic look at the American Facist Party tomorrow?
15
No need. We're living in it.
2
Hardly. I'm sure it makes you feel so good that you're in the 'resistance', but if real fascism were here, you would not be so glib. It's beyond disgusting how people throw that term around and have no knowledge of what it really means.
The seeming commitment to social justice and racial quality attracted some Americans to the CPUSA and Communist front organizations in the 30s and 40s. For many, it was sincere, but Herbert Philbrick (I Led Three Lives) did an excellent job of exposing the reality behind the idealism. More talk than change came out of American Communism.
2
My personal experience of American Communism is one of parasitism. My spouse ended her first marriage, to a card-carrying Communist in Philadelphia whose granny had impeccable credentials--she visited the USSR, was feted by high-ranking officials, worked closely with Gus Hall and so on. But these grandkids were nothing but freeloaders, parasites in Communist parlance. When I attended university in Canada, there were numerous agitators sent by the Labour Party of England as well as by the KGB, who loved the climate of Montreal and who willingly hosted parties and bought massive quantities of controlled substances to make their inroads on susceptible American recruits. The moment one of these dupes encountered resistance, there was inevitably abuse with invective and the expression of disgust. They worked on a quota basis. Communism collapsed like a failed souffle and cannot be revived in any viable form. Examine it and leave the parasites to feast on its remnants as best they can.
16
If all you know of the history of the CPUSA is the Gus Hall era and later, you don't know much. You should read Theodore Draper's book on its history sometime.
1
America has always had a disconnect between its promise--The American Dream--and its selfish, libertarian reality. Unchecked capitalism foments disparity of classes, peoples.
This disconnect grows as discourse shrivels; social media and their pathos driven echo chambers create insular shells for each faction separating them further and making us more divided and easier to rule over.
Sanders is still demonized for not being enough of a feminist or minority crusader when his economic policies could have given voice to millions more than any American politician in decades.
This disconnect grows as discourse shrivels; social media and their pathos driven echo chambers create insular shells for each faction separating them further and making us more divided and easier to rule over.
Sanders is still demonized for not being enough of a feminist or minority crusader when his economic policies could have given voice to millions more than any American politician in decades.
19
> America has always had a disconnect between its promise--The American Dream--and its selfish, libertarian reality.
The American Dream is a selfish libertarian reality. It caused the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and voting-with-their -feet immigration. See Atlas Shrugged for more.
The American Dream is a selfish libertarian reality. It caused the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and voting-with-their -feet immigration. See Atlas Shrugged for more.
1
Americans need to become more familiar with the McCarran and Smith Acts. They were the legal core of government abuse during the Red Scare. The McCarran Act for example allowed taking away citizenship.
The McCarran Act was used against Bradley/Chelsea Manning. It has not gone away.
The Smith Act is still with us too. An early victim was released early after serving 15 months for being a member of a subversive organization, when President John F. Kennedy commuted his sentence in 1962, which means both we've known it is a problem since Kennedy, and even Kennedy waited half way through his term to do something about its abuses.
The legal structures needed for a return to old abuses are still with us, and still rear their heads even now when the government is angry, as at Manning.
The McCarran Act was used against Bradley/Chelsea Manning. It has not gone away.
The Smith Act is still with us too. An early victim was released early after serving 15 months for being a member of a subversive organization, when President John F. Kennedy commuted his sentence in 1962, which means both we've known it is a problem since Kennedy, and even Kennedy waited half way through his term to do something about its abuses.
The legal structures needed for a return to old abuses are still with us, and still rear their heads even now when the government is angry, as at Manning.
23
It is shocking to me to witness certain debates now ongoing int he USA, (shocking but not heart-stopping.) The rural-urban divide. Needs for affordable, universal healthcare. The power of wealth and its unequal distribution. I lived with these issues and debates for most of my life, and now, I hear some Americans moaning about the forgotten rural poor as if this is a new problem. The American "Education" System, indeed.
Even my Irish Christian Brothers teachers were not so crass as to confine the word "communist" to a single meaning, that which described Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and their acolytes. Any discussion of communism began with the concept, and quoted Acts 2:44: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common."
Nibbling around the edges of our problems may be the best we can do for now. But we must ask if our economy is not wrong-headed, not just because some keep on getting wealthier, but because our "economy" is driven by consumption. Consumption is a major problem now because it is driven largely by mindless greed and envy. We can opt out of that, of course, but if many of us do, who is hurt? Not the wealthy, but the minimum wage folk who lose their jobs.
Even my Irish Christian Brothers teachers were not so crass as to confine the word "communist" to a single meaning, that which described Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and their acolytes. Any discussion of communism began with the concept, and quoted Acts 2:44: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common."
Nibbling around the edges of our problems may be the best we can do for now. But we must ask if our economy is not wrong-headed, not just because some keep on getting wealthier, but because our "economy" is driven by consumption. Consumption is a major problem now because it is driven largely by mindless greed and envy. We can opt out of that, of course, but if many of us do, who is hurt? Not the wealthy, but the minimum wage folk who lose their jobs.
31
Good works like bad have often been motivated in some large part by grand visions. So, for example, there were Catholic activities during the era of the inquisition as diverse as the caring for the poor of the Vincentians and the at once Machiavellian policemen and foreign agents against heresy of the early Jesuits. There have been both the activists of the Catholic Workers Movement and those of Father Caughlin's "social justice" movement. Communist are most often remembered in the United States as agents of an insidious power -- something Communists often were at risk of being, indeed often were. It is good to see the more Vincentian ( more Franciscan, more charitable) Communists remembered.
By folks' works we should judge them.
By folks' works we should judge them.
12
The movement killed and ruined millions upon millions of people. That is indeed what I judge it on. All this celebration of communism is just sick.
4
Let me be the first agnostic to reply with "Amen!"
1
Would Communists still seize private property and private businesses?
Would they still run "elections" like they did under Stalin and Lenin?
How would taking voting rights and property rights away from minorities help them exactly?
I noticed that questions like these go unasked in the piece.
Would they still run "elections" like they did under Stalin and Lenin?
How would taking voting rights and property rights away from minorities help them exactly?
I noticed that questions like these go unasked in the piece.
14
"Would Communists still seize private property and private businesses?"
Yes.
"Would they still run "elections" like they did under Stalin and Lenin?"
I don't know. One thing is certain though: it wouldn't be "elections" like the farce it is and has been in the USA.
"How would taking voting rights and property rights away from minorities help them exactly?"
I don't know where did you take it that communists are against democracy. But abolishing private property would be extremely beneficial to humanity as a whole, including what you capitalists call "minorities".
Yes.
"Would they still run "elections" like they did under Stalin and Lenin?"
I don't know. One thing is certain though: it wouldn't be "elections" like the farce it is and has been in the USA.
"How would taking voting rights and property rights away from minorities help them exactly?"
I don't know where did you take it that communists are against democracy. But abolishing private property would be extremely beneficial to humanity as a whole, including what you capitalists call "minorities".
"I don't know where did you take it that communists are against democracy."
I take it from the history and practice of communism in every communist country ever.
Under communism (where voting is even allowed) voters are not allowed to choose the candidates or vote for anyone they choose. They must choose from a list of candidates chosen by the party leaders.
This practice is in no way democracy.
I take it from the history and practice of communism in every communist country ever.
Under communism (where voting is even allowed) voters are not allowed to choose the candidates or vote for anyone they choose. They must choose from a list of candidates chosen by the party leaders.
This practice is in no way democracy.
1
And would they still hate and persecute homosexuals?
There was a party here that actually had candidates on the ballot. I would continually vote for them- this place is a mafia of cronies, mostly, although that's becoming the norm everywhere. Pure communism sets down on paper very like pure democracy. Both are impossible governing solutions for complex societies, so both turned in different paths of hierarchies. Which is better? So far, we haven't had the opportunity to see either mode satisfactorily explored, and the experiment in this country has, with a con man in place, failed. Something else needs to take over.
4
Every ideology is, if you take it letter by letter, "impossible".
But that's not the role ideology plays in human history. Ideology is a model humans use in order to plan its own long-term future. Just like science is not the real thing: it's an interpretation humans make on some facts according to the scientific model.
The same thing could be said about capitalism: real capitalism is not like capitalism in the mainstream and the old liberal economics theories. Free Market doesn't exist in reality etc. etc.
But that's not the role ideology plays in human history. Ideology is a model humans use in order to plan its own long-term future. Just like science is not the real thing: it's an interpretation humans make on some facts according to the scientific model.
The same thing could be said about capitalism: real capitalism is not like capitalism in the mainstream and the old liberal economics theories. Free Market doesn't exist in reality etc. etc.
7
So your choice did not win and you don't like it. Let's take over and change things! Yes, I cannot wait to be ruled by such people.
I think that both modes HAVE been satisfactorily explored.
Lets take Russia and the USA as examples of both.
Which system has given more freedoms, opportunity and road to prosperity to its citizens?
Unfortunately for the commies the answer is clear.
Lets take Russia and the USA as examples of both.
Which system has given more freedoms, opportunity and road to prosperity to its citizens?
Unfortunately for the commies the answer is clear.
Thank you for bringing this rather little-known history to light. The sophisticated understanding of race and racism are particularly poignant and important, as are the connections to the Caribbean (a much under-recognized dimension of U.S. history).
I'm using this to revisit something I posted in 2011 during the heyday of Occupy: Anthropology, Moral Optimism, & Capitalism: Four Field Manifesto. http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2011/10/22/anthropology-moral-opt...
I'm using this to revisit something I posted in 2011 during the heyday of Occupy: Anthropology, Moral Optimism, & Capitalism: Four Field Manifesto. http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2011/10/22/anthropology-moral-opt...
4
In the American landscape of culture, economics, and politics, more than any other nation in the world, race and class status are fastened to a central historic formation: the idea that equality is the enemy of freedom.
From colonial writings to modern conservative scholarship, from Supreme Court decisions to Senate floor speeches to Civil War soldiers letters home to campaign rhetoric over healthcare, voting rights and protections for women and the environment, the idea endures that merit-based freedom denies individual and corporate liberties--conservatives separate freedom from fair play, a case witnessed daily in the assumptions and actions of Trump's administration.
In the case of communism, attempts to organize southern farmers dismally failed. Two African-American brothers in Alabama made little headway, so rigid was the color caste, which reflected and supported the larger belief: equality was and is the enemy of freedom (the meta-concept behind racism).
Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" covers these clashes and conflicts inside of a variety of left/socialist/communist organizations. Langston Hughes and Richard Wright ("The God That Failed") flirted with and rejected allegiance to the left; in the civil rights movement, the organized left show up in the persons of Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison, aides to Dr. King.
Incidentally, The Daily Worker put out a good sports column, "Out In Left Field."
From colonial writings to modern conservative scholarship, from Supreme Court decisions to Senate floor speeches to Civil War soldiers letters home to campaign rhetoric over healthcare, voting rights and protections for women and the environment, the idea endures that merit-based freedom denies individual and corporate liberties--conservatives separate freedom from fair play, a case witnessed daily in the assumptions and actions of Trump's administration.
In the case of communism, attempts to organize southern farmers dismally failed. Two African-American brothers in Alabama made little headway, so rigid was the color caste, which reflected and supported the larger belief: equality was and is the enemy of freedom (the meta-concept behind racism).
Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" covers these clashes and conflicts inside of a variety of left/socialist/communist organizations. Langston Hughes and Richard Wright ("The God That Failed") flirted with and rejected allegiance to the left; in the civil rights movement, the organized left show up in the persons of Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison, aides to Dr. King.
Incidentally, The Daily Worker put out a good sports column, "Out In Left Field."
29
Opponents of the "Left" in American history have always presupposed that any fairness we might want as a balance to and fulfillment of an allegedly color-blind freedom will automatically arrive through the "fair" workings of that God-substitute we worshipped under the name of laissez-fire capitalism. Such is how our dominant ideology has always and distortedly seen reality.
1
What are the colonial era writings to which you refer, please?
To all, thanks for reading, replies. Discussions of slavery in the 15 volumes of original letters of Henry Laurens, a South Carolina President of the Continental Congress and one of four Peace Commissioners for the treaty ending the Revolutionary War. He was one of America's wealthiest men and one of the colonies most active slave brokers, a Huguenot, a thoughtful intellectual man who once fired an overseer for attempted sexual liberties with enslaved women, his son an aide-de-camp to Gen. Washington.
His letters are fascinating reading! They cover all aspects of colonial life and politics; he writes to and knows everybody; he loves good stories; he is a visionary and conceptual thinker.
Major libraries have his works. He offers unparalleled insights.
For 19th century, see, "A Glory Over Everything," Walter Rhett [https://archive.org/stream/aGloryOverEverythingHistorysInvisibleVeil/Glo...]. pdf format.
His letters are fascinating reading! They cover all aspects of colonial life and politics; he writes to and knows everybody; he loves good stories; he is a visionary and conceptual thinker.
Major libraries have his works. He offers unparalleled insights.
For 19th century, see, "A Glory Over Everything," Walter Rhett [https://archive.org/stream/aGloryOverEverythingHistorysInvisibleVeil/Glo...]. pdf format.
This is an utterly sanitized version of the history of the American Communist Party, which skips over the issue of Stalinism as if it were a secondary and external element of the organization's identity. The political program, activities and leadership of the Communist Party were dictated by the Stalinist regime in the USSR. The Communist Party was deeply implicated in its crimes, which included unflagging support for the Moscow Trials of 1936-38 and Stalin's extermination of an entire generation of revolutionary socialists. Leaders of the Communist Party abetted (and provided physical support for) the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940. In 1941, the Communist Party collaborated with the FBI in the use of the Smith Act to send the leaders of the American Trotskyist movement to prison on bogus sedition charges. As all serious students of the history of the American Communist Party know, its long-term "Popular Front" program of subordinating the labor movement to the Democratic Party was determined by the foreign policy interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. No doubt there were many courageous members of the Communist Party who were personally dedicated to democratic ideals, believed deeply in civil rights, and were themselves subjected to persecution during the Cold War. But these individuals were politically miseducated by the Communist Party. Nothing has done more damage to the fight for socialism in the United States than the false identification of Stalinism with Marxism.
74
Your final sentence is undoubtedly correct.
Yet just recently a California assemblyman from the Bay Area, Rob Bonta, the first Filipino-American ever elected to the California Legislature, introduced a bill which would have rolled back law precluding members of CP-USA from California state employment. Fortunately thriving Americans who had escaped Vietnam, with support of veterans, educated the state senate as to the folly of their plan and he was pressured into pulling the legislation after it passed in the assembly.
It is a sanitized version, but the version you present is the version that everyone knows--the version belonging to most official histories. Also, Jaffe is careful to avoid direct endorsement of the party in favor of endorsement of the issues and people that drove it. These issues and people still largely do not have a voice in our official history and their lives and thoughts are also of importance. If communism has proven itself a failure on the world stage, capitalism has only proven itself a success where it controls the narrative.
So to summarize, communists were good, and the people who opposed them were bad. Just as, progressives are good, and the people who opposed them are bad.
No matter how many times the rest of us save you and society from the terrible consequences of your self-assuredly good intentions, you will never forgive us for doing so, calling us classist, racist, bigot, sexist, homophobic, and islamophobic oppressors. no name-calling will ever be enough for those of us who do the thankless work of obstructing your seemingly utopian but terribly flawed coercive schemes at reworking society at the point of a gun in defiance of human nature.
No matter how many times the rest of us save you and society from the terrible consequences of your self-assuredly good intentions, you will never forgive us for doing so, calling us classist, racist, bigot, sexist, homophobic, and islamophobic oppressors. no name-calling will ever be enough for those of us who do the thankless work of obstructing your seemingly utopian but terribly flawed coercive schemes at reworking society at the point of a gun in defiance of human nature.
42
Yes, from Scottsboro to Hitler's invasion of the USSR, to Vietnam, anti-communism and racism have gone hand in hand. It's time you anti-communists looked as hard at your own sordid past as you keep telling us to look at ours.
43
Good and bad (evil) are Christian values. They do not apply in the real world, in a serious conversation about human societies and they are certainly not used by communists.
1
Thank God it's thankless.
1
I always understood the American Communist Movement as a mostly social issue. That the party was so harsh being fought is a sad fact but demonstrates the attitude of todays riches in blocking social advantages as a general medical insurance or better wages.
As a European you get sometimes the darn impression that the United States are way, way backward. Not a nice fact.
As a European you get sometimes the darn impression that the United States are way, way backward. Not a nice fact.
46
Actually they are being treated very well considering the tendency for communist regimes to slaughter their citizens in large numbers.
11
Well, if we didn't have to spend over 50 years 'defending' Europe we might have universal coverage today too. It's very easy when you don't need to spend any money on your own defense.
2
Fake Russian Communism had less to do with communism than with the history and traditions of Russia; just as fake American Democracy has less to do with democracy than with the history and traditions of America.
1
While I agree that the threat posed by terrorism is exaggerated, the fact remains that the Communists never actually came to America and murdered our citizens, wheras jihadists have done just that multiple times.