New Studies in the Politics

330 Pages·1993·7.973 MB·English

by  Michael E. Brown, editor

NEW STUDIES IN THE
POLITICS AND CULTURE OF
U.S. COMMUNISM
edited by
Michael E. Brown, Randy Martin,
Frank Rosengarten, and
George Snedeker
(M\)
Monthly Review Press
New York
Copyright © 1993 by Michael E. Brown, Randy Martin,
Frank Rosengarten, and George Snedeker
All rights reserved
“McCarthyism and the Decline of American Communism, 1945-1960”
copyright © 1993 by Ellen Schrecker
“The New York Workers School, 1923-1944: Communist Education in
American Society” copyright © 1993 by Marvin E. Gettleman
“Culture and Commitment: U.S. Communist Writers Reconsidered”
copyright © 1993 by Alan M. Wald
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Michael E., et al., editors
New studies in the politics and culture of U.S. communism / edited by
Michael E. Brown ... [et al.],
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-85345-851-0 : $38.00. ISBN 0-85345-852-9 (pbk.) : $18.00
1. Communist Party of the United States of America—History. 2.
Communism—United States —History. I. Brown, Michael E.
JK2391.C5N49 1992
324.273’75—dc20 92-44884
CIP
Monthly Review Press
122 West 27th Street
New York NY 10001
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 987654321
CONTENTS
Editors’ Preface 7
Introduction: The History of the History
of U.S. Communism Michael E. Brown 15
Remaking America: Communists and Liberals
in the Popular Front Mark Naison 45
The Comintern, the Fronts, and the CPUSA
John Gerassi 75
Purging the Profs: The Rapp Coudert Committee
in New York, 1940-1942 Stephen Leberstein 91
McCarthyism and the Decline of American Communism,
1945-1960 Ellen Schrecker 123
The Question Seldom Asked: Women and the CPUSA
Rosalyn Baxandall 141
The Communist Influence on American Labor
Roger Keeran 163
The Red and the Black: The Communist Party
and African-Americans in Historical Perspective
Gerald Horne 199
The Cultural World of the Communist Party:
An Historical Overview Annette T. Rubinstein 239
The New York Workers School, 1923-1944:
Communist Education in American Society
Marvin E. Gettleman 261
5
6 NEW STUDIES IN U.S. COMMUNISM
Culture and Commitment: U.S. Communist Writers
Reconsidered Alan Wald 281
Interview with Gil Green Anders Stephanson 307
EDITORS' PREFACE
On November 9, 1989, the Research Group on Socialism and
Democracy held an all-day conference at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York to mark the seventieth anniver-
sary of the founding of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Ten
of the eleven essays contained in this volume are revised versions
of papers presented at that conference. Stephen Leberstein’s essay
was added later since its subject is so closely related to the other
papers. Anders Stephanson’s interview with Gil Green was also
added because it provides unusual insights and information about
the history of the CPUSA, in particular the events of the past
several years. We are especially pleased to publish this interview
because it was Gil Green who first proposed to us that we sponsor
the 1989 conference.
From its inception in 1984, the Research Group on Socialism and
Democracy has committed itself to finding a way of discussing the
history of Communism that avoids simplistic labels and excessive
rhetoric in favor of analysis and critique. We are particularly
interested in freeing the discourse about Communism in this coun-
try of its uncritically negative biases. It was because of this point
of view that we were approached by Gil Green in the early months
of 1989. Green, a long-time member of the CPUSA, had read several
issues of Socialism and Democracy, and had reached the conclusion
that the journal was making an important contribution to the turn
in Communist historiography exemplified by the authors in this
volume; a turn that has helped to remove the barriers to under-
standing erected over a very long time by historians who have
insisted on seeing the CPUSA as nothing but an outpost of the
foreign policy and expansionist ambitions of the Soviet Union.
Many younger historians have directed their attention to the
social and cultural history of the party. Less imbued than their
7
8 NEW STUDIES IN U.S. COMMUNISM
predecessors with the enthusiasms and prejudices of the cold war,
they have begun to read the documents in a new way, and above
all to ask new questions. One of these questions might be phrased
this way: How was it possible for a political party presumably
acting as the surrogate of the foreign office of the Soviet government
not only to attract a sizeable membership in the 1930s and 1940s,
but also to have played an important role in a mass political
movement composed of millions of people espousing a wide variety
of causes and engaging in militant struggles on many fronts? In
seeking the answers to this and similar questions, the writers in
this volume and their colleagues elsewhere in and out of the
academy have produced a body of work that deserves an attentive
reading.
In response to Green’s suggestion and to the efforts of the new
historiography of Communism, the Research Group saw a real
opportunity to deal with some of the issues it had been discussing
in the pages of Socialism and Democracy and in a series of lectures
and panel discussions at the Socialist Scholars Conference and in
other settings. We felt that there was a need to situate the history
of U.S. Communism in a context of struggles and conflicts that
could not be adequately accounted for by referring only to Soviet
policy and aims. At the same time, we were convinced that the time
was ripe for some new thinking about Soviet policy. This occurred
coincidentally with the advent of the Gorbachev era. The rise of a
new generation of Soviet leaders committed to wide-ranging re-
forms of the Soviet polity and economy seemed to offer evidence in
support of our belief that there was a critical public in the USSR
whose needs and aspirations constituted a dynamic force in Soviet
life.
On the basis of our perception of a changeable and changing
Soviet Union, and operating on the assumption that the CPUSA,
whatever questions remained about its relations to the Comintern
and its internal political structures and processes, had fulfilled a
important oppositional role in U.S. society over the past seventy
years, the Research Group proceeded to plan what turned out to be
a well-attended and memorable conference. About 300 people came
to hear papers and to enter into lively debate concerning the
significance and implications of what the various speakers had to
say. We shall return to the dominant themes of these papers. At
this point, there is an issue that has to be addressed, namely why,
EDITORS’ PREFACE 9
in the wake of the devastating defeats suffered by the world
communist movement since 1989, especially the demise of the
Soviet Union as a political entity, are we following through with a
publishing venture concerned with the political and cultural his-
tory of the U.S. Communist Party?
We believe that the study of history is always fruitful, provided
that the historical record is probed and interrogated with appropri-
ate respect for the complex and contradictory nature of human
activity. Such complexity is certainly to be found in the history of
movements that assume the burden of advancing the cause of
equity and justice. In other words, the current crisis of world
Communism does not and cannot efface the significance of what
has been risked and accomplished by people involved in progressive
struggles that are still very much a part of our reality today. Think
of the gross inequalities of class, race and gender in this country.
Think of the still inadequate means at the disposal of ordinary
working people to safeguard their health, and provide for them-
selves in times of economic distress and dislocation. Think of the
still unused or underutilized human potential of the inner cities,
which exist side by side with forms of economic accumulation
unprecedented in their scope and magnitude. These are among the
problems which the CPUSA has placed at the top of its political
agenda for the past seventy years. The party’s engagement in
grassroots and community efforts to right the inequities of racism,
poverty, and exploitation, and the strong presence it has had in the
resistance of workers in the factories and fields of the U.S. heart-
land, are of sufficient importance to warrant the claim that its story
should be better integrated into the study and teaching of U.S.
history.
It is our hope that these essays will serve as a catalyst for
discussions that go against the grain of the prevailing schemes of
political thought. We envision discussions and debates in which it
will be possible to examine all facets of the story of U.S. commu-
nism, and not just those that point to servility vis-a-vis a "foreign
power.” We hope that this volume will assist teachers and students
to situate the history of the CPUSA in the general history of the
U.S. left, which in turn requires consideration of Communism as
one of many radical political projects that came into being here and
elsewhere in the world as a consequence of widespread popular
alienation from the capitalist system in crisis. The “elsewhere” is
10 NEW STUDIES IN U.S. COMMUNISM
located on all five continents, in agrarian and industrialized areas,
in town and country. One of the fascinating aspects of the Commu-
nist movement that easily gets lost today as the interlocking
network of Communist governments dissolves, is that it presents
to the researcher a treasure trove of resources for the study of
internationalism, of coordinated and solidaristic political activity
on a global scale on behalf of social groups and classes that have
borne the brunt of exploitation, war and oppression. The study of
the CPUSA leads inevitably to the study of other Communist
parties and movements, which taken together present a far from
uniform picture. On the contrary, no sooner has one begun to look
seriously at the history of these parties and movements than one
is struck by the extent to which they have been shaped by the
contours of their national political and cultural landscapes. Fresh
investigation of the CPUSA, therefore, means fresh investigation
of world Communism, whose history has been marked by interna-
tionalism on the one hand, and by remarkable diversity and variety
on the other.
There is a tendency for people in media-saturated societies to
assume the same attitude toward the great issues of the day as the
purveyors of the news. One of the outcomes of this amalgamation
of media-generated opinion and public opinion is that the dominant
ideology, which in the United States bears the imprint of the
culture of capitalism, assumes the aspect of an ineluctable force.
This book is designed to provide readers with an alternative under-
standing of contemporary history, one that moves beyond labels
and stereotypes to substantive issues.
We think that the current crisis of world Communism does not
signal the end of ideas and ideals that have animated communist
movements since the days of Karl Marx. There are continuities,
there are processes and struggles that link past and present, and
that allow human beings in different times and places to relate to
each other sympathetically, but these are not necessarily to be
found in specific political formations. Thus it behooves us today to
appreciate what is distinctive and original in the experience of the
CPUSA, as well as in that of other Communist parties, while at the
same time remaining alert to their historicity, which is to say to
their ways of responding to a very particular set of problems and
challenges. By adopting an approach that takes contingency into
account, and that is sensitive to the less than perfect congruence
EDITORS’ PREFACE 11
between names and the realities these names designate, we place
ourselves in a position to do what our late colleague Herbert
Gutman did in his studies of U.S. labor history: “to see the present
as a moment in time, as a part of a process and as something that
has not been with us forever and is not frozen in some kind of
historical ice age.” Gutman worked on the assumption that “the
function of the institutional arrangements that dominate everyday
life ... has been to transform the conditional into the given, which
means that people accept what exists as natural, as unchanging.
Once we see that ... we can begin to ask critical questions about the
world in which we live....” (Mimi Rosenberg, “An Unpublished
Interview with Herbert Gutman on U. S. Labor History,” Socialism
and Democracy 10, Spring/Summer 1990: 54.)
We would like to highlight two points concerning the essays in
this volume. The first is that while they are appreciative studies of
the CPUSA they are also critical and in some instances, from
various points of view, even condemnatory. Let no one think that
the authors represented here have glossed over or in any way
concealed what they think have been mistaken and counter-pro-
ductive policies on the part of the CPUSA. Theirs is not an exercise
in moral and political evasiveness. On the contrary, it seems to us
that the real value of these essays lies in their ability to confront
some of the hard questions posed by the history of world commu-
nism and to do so in such a way as to allow for discussion of what
was actually done by the party that was creative, life-affirming, and
helpful to the cause of democracy.
Secondly, it should be noted that the authors come from a range
of political backgrounds, and that they bring different perspectives
to their historical interpretations. Several have been long-standing
members of the CPUSA. One has fought in the ranks of Trotskyist
formations. Most are independent, politically unaffiliated scholars
who have made important contributions to various aspects and
phases of the history of communist and socialist movements. Their
political presuppositions will, we think, be duly noted by readers.
Yet it does not seem pretentious to assert that, whatever the
particular beliefs and affiliations of the authors might be, their
work springs from deep concern about their topics and is in all cases
based on years of research, which in some instances is supported
still further by exceptionally rich personal experiences.
As indicated earlier, the essays are in general characterized by