For the record (1965)

From the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The record of the twists and turns of the so-called communist parties throughout the world are well-known to those who bother to study working-class political history. In view of the prominence currently given to the colour problem both here and in America it will be useful to recall one incident in the history of the American party. It is taken from a review in the Weekly People (September 13th, 1958) of New York of The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919-1957) by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser.

In the 1930's the American party went all out to get Negro support using as a bait the fantastic demand for “self-determination in the Black Belt”

  “World War II changed also this. In September of 1941, Benjamin Davis, soon to become a prominent Negro Communist, wrote that The CP is disturbed by the increasing struggle of Negroes for jobs in defence plants.’ (Authors' italics). The CP dissolved its Southern branches (those that did not exist solely on paper) during the war in order to mollify the Southern wing of the Democratic Party by showing its zeal to help prosecute the war with no ‘dissension’ in the South.
   “Another bit of CP history from the mass of material presented by Coser and Howe deserves to be included here. The authors describe it as ‘one of those peculiarly symptomatic incidents that reveal more than any number of party documents.’ In 1945, four Negro WAC's at Fort Devens discovered a group of wounded Negro soldiers who had been left unattended. When they complained to the camp authorities, the Army’s answer was a court-martial!
  “The protests from all sides were so vigorous that the Army reversed its decision. This reversal, which brought some satisfaction to those with normal feelings of good will and a sense of fair play, brought only pain to Ben Davis. In the Daily Worker of April 8th, 1945, the official organ of the CP., he reprimanded the WAC’s for disturbing the Communist hoped-for serenity of the domestic scene.
  “The US general staff has on many occasions . . . proved that they deserve their full confidence of the Negro people . . . We cannot temporarily stop the war until all questions of discrimination are ironed out.’”

The Acid Test of History (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of The Socialist

The old adage, “The course of true love ne’er runs smooth," may be well applied to the course of the “History of the Communist Movement in America." We are prompted to this conclusion after attending a lecture on the above subject, given by the National Secretary of the Proletarian Party on. Nov. 30, 1929. We heard a lengthy discourse dealing with the formation of the Communist Party of America, and the various intrigues on the part of different groups in their efforts to gain control of that organination. Of small interest to us is the claim made by the Proletarian Party to being the "real communist movement" in America. Seeing that they receive no recognition from the Third International, we cannot see how they substantiate this. Of more importance to us is their claim to being a Marxian organization equipped with an almost complete monopoly of Marxism. It is on this point that we base our criticism.

We have endeavored to obtain a definite program or declaration of principles by them but have failed to find anything of the sort in their official organ, “The Proletarian.” We are therefore compelled to look mainly to the verbal utterances of their speakers. The nearest we can arrive at anything resembling a program is a series of statements made by their National Secretary at the afore' mentioned lecture. He pointed out that the Proletarian Party stands for “Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the setting up by armed insurrection of some sort of “Workers’ Government;" also that they “realize the limitations of Parliamentary action." Being anxious to know, we questioned their speaker as to what these limitations consisted of. In reply, he premised an imaginary condition that a substantial majority of the working class having become conscious of the need for taking over the means of wealth production, and establishing Socialism, express their desires by the vote, and are met with resistance by the capitalist class in the form of military force. Therefore the workers will be compelled to organize a counter military force to enforce their desires. For proof of this their speaker asserted that the Army and Navy are officered by bourgeois and therefore would be used by the capitalist class against the working class.

Had our ultra-Marxists of the Proletarian Party an understanding of the basic principle of Socialism, the Materialistic Conception of History, as they claim to have, they would realize that, the economic conditions of capitalism having evolved to a point at which a substantial majority of the working class have reached an understanding of Socialism, the Army and Navy forces would also be imbued with the same ideology as the civil population, since the immense majority of those forces including the officers are members of the working class. They would be poor material for the capitalists to rely upon to prevent the intelligent working class from asserting its will. However, the working class has not as yet voted for Socialism; until it does we cannot formulate any utopian detailed plans for dealing with an imaginary condition in the future.

We were further told that the Communist Party in Russia is carrying toward completion, and in the same spirit, the movement begun by the Paris Commune in 1871. Both the Communist Party of America and the Proletarian Party in making this claim are either ignorant of the conditions obtaining in Paris during the few short months of the Commune, or they are deliberately distorting the facts concerning conditions existing in Soviet Russia which is a resort to the old time method of all political forces of reaction.

As far back as 1920 we find this quotation in an article, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," by N. Bucharin, published in the “Workers Dreadnought" (April 12, 1920).

   “Nevertheless we do not for a moment deny that our apparatus is rigidly centralized; that our policy towards the bourgeoisie and towards the parties of the compromising Socialists is repressive in character; that the organization of our own party, as a ruling party which exercises a dictatorship through the Soviets, is of a 'Militarist type.’ “

This is a direct negation of the claim made by the official and unofficial communists of America, that the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Russia represents control by the masses. It is the position maintained by the Blanquists prior to the Paris Commune, and which they were compelled to abandon and act directly contrary to, during the tenure of the Commune. In the introduction to the “The Civil War in France,” (S. L. P. ed.) Engels points out that:

   “The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of Blanquists, who had also predominated in the central committee of the National Guard, and a minority, which consisted for the most part of members of the International Working Men‘s Association, who were adherents of the Proudhonian school of Socialism."

Engels then goes on to show how both the Blanquists and Proudhonists did the very reverse of which their schools advocated, thus:

  "The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, held together by the rigid discipline essential to it, they started from the conception that a comparatively small number of resolute, well organized men would be able not only to grasp the helm of State at a favorable moment, but also, through the display of great energy, and reckless daring, to hold it as long as required, that is, until they had succeeded in carrying the masses of the people into the revolutionary current and ranging them around the small leading band. To accomplish this, what was necessary, above all else, was the most stringent, dictatorial centralization of all powers in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune do, which in the majority consisted of these very Blanquists? In all its proclamations to the French people in the provinces, it called upon them for a free federation of all French communes with Paris for a national organization, which for the first time was to be the real creation of the nation. The army, the political police, the bureaucracy, all those agencies of oppression in a centralized government, which Napoleon had created in 1798, and which since then every new government had gladly used and kept up as ready weapons against its enemies, were to be abolished everywhere, as they had been abolished in Paris.”

To compare the above condition existing during the Paris Commune, to that existing in Russia, one would have to be a wish thinker like the members of the official Communist Party of America and the unofficial “real" communists of the Proletarian Party. The Red Army has not been abolished, neither has the bureaucracy nor the political police. Witness the rise of the Opposition groups and the wholesale expulsion and exile of many of those prominent early in the Russian Revolution. Is this analogous to the Paris Commune?

Again let us look at Paris during the Commune, to see the attitude of the Communards towards parliamentary action and the value of the vote. According to Engels the Commune "filled all positions of administration, justice, and instruction, through election by universal suffrage, the elected being at all times subject to recall by their constituents" (op. cit.), a system which our “communist" friends would mistake for bourgeois democracy. Engels' concept of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is also expressed in the conclusion to the same work, page 20, “ . . . look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The conditions existing in Russia bear little resemblance to those obtaining in Paris during the Commune. Neither, for that matter, do they resemble the conditions in America, England or any other developed capitalist countries. In Russia, where primitive peasant agriculture prevails, the institution of Socialism is at present an impossibility, because there is lacking the highly developed productive forces and the enlightened proletarian majority, both of which axe necessary for that purpose. Where matured capitalism exists and where the workers are therefore the majority of the population, they can achieve their emancipation as soon as they understand what Socialism is and desire it, and they will effect this by the simplest, and in fact, the only means available—the democratic conquest of the political forces of society—at present used for their subjection.

“He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.” (Lissagaray, preface to History of the Commune.) 

Alf.

Socialist Educational Society

Swan Song of the Communists (1944)

From the February 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amazing Speech by American Leader

Readers of the London Daily Worker (January 12 and 14) will have learned that the American Communist Party is about to die—at the hands of its own leaders; though whether the leaders do this because Moscow is no longer interested or because Moscow wants it that way has yet to be disclosed. After a quarter of a century of misspent effort and of innumerable twists and turns of policy dictated first by dependence on the early and erroneous theories of the Bolshevists, then by the shifts and changes of the foreign policy of Russia's rulers, the American Communists are returning to a point even further back than that from which they started, the once despised beliefs of the reformist labour movements. Having promised to show the discontented workers how, by following the Communist lead, they could speedily achieve their emancipation, the American Communist leaders after 25 years are now shepherding their flock back into the fold.

After the delegates at a Party Convention had obediently signified their approval of changes proposed by their leaders, the full significance of the new departure was disclosed by the Secretary, Mr. Earl Browder, at a mass meeting in New York called in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the death of Lenin. The Times (January 12) reports that the response to Browder’s speech was “ less than enthusiastic.” The audience, not being drilled and disciplined like the Party delegates, may have reflected that the real purpose of the meeting was not to praise Lenin’s theories, but to bury them. The decision to wind-up operates on May Day. The Communists are going to give up any pretence of being an independent political party. Under some such name as “American Communist Political Association,” they are going to accept and work loyally within the traditional two-party system.

This is all because, in the words of Mr. Browder, Allied victory in the war will mean "not only prolonged world peace without precedent in history, but also the flourishing of economic relationships, co-operation and development of economic well-being and social reforms . . .” (Daily Worker, January 12, 1944).

Here is an extract from the Times' report of Browder’s speech at the mass meeting

   Saying that the American people were ill-prepared for socialism, and that post-war plans with the aim of establishing socialism in the United States would not unite the nation but would further divide it, he announced that, for the sake of promoting unity here, so that the policies agreed on by the United Nations at Cairo, Moscow and Teheran could be put into effect, Marxists would not raise the issue of socialism “in such a form and manner as to endanger or weaken that national unity.”
   Mr. Browder added that the Communists had eliminated such measures as nationalisation of the banks, the railways and the coal and steel industries, would change the name of their organisation to "the American Communist Political Association,” and would support in future the candidates of one of the two major parties. Reactionaries, he said, were trying to spread confusion in the democratic and progressive camp by championing free enterprise, but Marxists would not help them by opposing the slogan of free enterprise with any counter-slogan. He went on:—
   “If anyone wishes to describe the existing system of capitalism in the United States as free enterprise, that is all right with us, and we frankly declare that we are ready to co-operate in making this capitalism work effectively in the post-war period with the least possible burdens on the people. We do not draw political lines of division for the 1944 elections on any form of the issue of free enterprise.”—(Times, January 12, 1944.)

Other points are brought out in the lengthier Daily Worker report (January 14). One is that the Communists are going to support “a great united effort in the 1944 elections to guarantee the continuation of Roosevelt’s policies. . . .”

 
They will “not be operating as a 'party'—that is, with their own separate candidates in elections except under special circumstances when they may be forced to act through 'independent candidates.’ ” They are, however, “not . . . entering any other party. The Communists are not joining the Democratic party; the Communists are not joining the Republican party; we are not endorsing either of the major parties, and we are not condemning either of the major parties. We are taking a line of issues and not parties, and choosing men as they stand for or against those issues, without regard to party labels.” (Italics ours.)

An important point to notice is that this new line is not a merely war-time measure: "We are now extending the perspective of national unity for many years into the future. It is no longer an ‘emergency situation' but is merging into a 'normal situation ' " (Browder, Daily Worker, January 14).

About the agreement by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at Teheran to "work together in war and in the peace that will follow," Browder makes the remark that "Capitalism and' Socialism have begun to find the way to peaceful co-existence and collaboration in the same world." Those whose memories carry them back four years to the period of the Stalin—Hitler pact of 1939 will recall that this is just the line Communist propaganda was then taking about the friendly co-existence of Bolshevist Russia and Nazi Germany! When that period ended in 1941 the American and British Communist parties dropped their peace slogans and the theories on which those slogans rested, and were ordered into line with the foreign policy of Roosevelt and Churchill. The new turn means that they are now falling into line in home affairs as well.

To see the matter in perspective, let us turn back the last Presidential election in 1940, to see what Browder had to say then about Roosevelt and Willkie and the two parties they represent.

At that time the Communists were opposed to the war. They denounced it as an Anglo-American plot "to make the world safe for Wall Street and the City " (Daily, Worker, November 30, 1940) The American Party was praised on the ground that "alone of all the political parties, the C.P. of the U.S.A. has exposed the imperialist character of the war and has warned against both Roosevelt and Willkie " (Daily Worker, October 28, 1940).

In a speech reported in the Daily Worker on October 11, 1940, Mr. Browder declared that Roosevelt and Willkie, though they were rival candidates, had the same foreign policy (based on that of Great Britain), the policy of encouraging Hitler, pushing Germany into war with Russia so that Russia would be destroyed, and at the same time Germany would be so weakened as to remove her as a threat to Britain. "Only the Communist Party," he said, " has proposed and consistently fought for a foreign policy for our country which could replace the disastrous policy now being followed."

So much for foreign policy—now for his earlier views about the home policies of the Republicans and Democrats. In 1940 Mr. Browder, himself a Presidential candidate opposing Roosevelt and Willkie, issued a statement explaining just what part the two parties play in making America safe for capitalism, and denouncing the traditional two-party system which the Communists have now decided to accept.

The 1940 conventions of the Republican and Democratic Parties restored once more the traditional "two-party system" by which Wall Street (finance, capital and the great monopolists, the "sixty families," the " economic royalists"), controlling both major parties, invites the masses to choose the label under which they shall be exploited and oppressed for the ensuing four years. For the masses of the American people there is no way to advance their interests through either Republican or Democratic Party." (Daily Worker, October 28, 1940.)

On November 4, 1940, the Daily Worker, alleging that at the previous election in 1936 "Roosevelt himself was hoping that the New Deal would bring him Communist votes," went on :—

   But to-day neither Roosevelt nor Willkie will get Communist votes; their policy "of crushing civil liberties, planning a huge arms programme, and drawing nearer to participation in the war is too obviously directed against the liberties of the people.

Just at that time the American Communist Party was compelled, through the restrictive Voorhis Act, to resign from the Communist International, but while doing so it "reaffirmed the adherence of the Party to the policy of working-class internationalism” (Daily Worker, November 20,1940). Now, with the Communist International destroyed on Moscow orders the American Communists are going to back the two parties of capitalism, controlled as they are by Wall Street and big business, and thus join in the game of inviting the workers "to choose the label under which they shall be exploited and oppressed for the ensuing four years."

Some of the possible reasons for the decision can readily be guessed. Their failure to make any headway in elections may have been one factor; in 1932 they polled 103,000 in the Presidential election, but in 1940 their candidate polled only 46,000 votes. More important, however, will be the desire to follow a line suitable to the present foreign policy of the Russian Government. It is obvious that the Russian Government during the past year has been concerned to make itself popular in U.S.A. and Britain, and to avoid doing anything that would strengthen the hands of political groups opposed to the Russian alliance—hence the efforts of Russia's supporters to secure wide publicity for the new recognition of religion and the disbandment of the Communist International. The Manchester Guardian (January 12, 1944) considers that the winding up of the American party is another step which "will make for better feeling towards Russia."

Fully to understand the complete change of policy since 1940, it has to be remembered that at that time, when the Communists were opposed to the war and opposed to Willkie and Roosevelt, they (and doubtless their inspirers in Moscow) had a very different opinion about the way world affairs were going from the one forced on them in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia. Mr. Browder, in October 1940, thought that the foreign policy he ascribed to Britain and America had failed, and that Russia would be able to keep out of the war because "the Soviet Union had grown too strong and too consolidated to offer a tempting field for military adventures for a Hitler, who likes to have his victories assured before he goes into action." (Daily Worker, October 11, 1940).

Events were soon to prove Browder wrong. Russia was not strong enough to stand alone, without American and British help. Mutual dependence of the three Powers called for a revised Communist Party policy. Subsequent changes, including the present attempt of the American Party to operate alongside Democrats and Republicans, have been in harmony with the position of the Russian Government internally and in its foreign relationships. That, and not the incredible belief in a new world of peace, progress and class harmony which Mr. Browder professes to cherish, is likely to be the real reason why his party has been called upon to make itself a laughing stock by repudiating the fundamental creed on which it was founded. Whether it will establish any sort of stability on the new basis, and whether further developments of Russian policy will lead to still further changes, are two questions time will answer.

We may speculate whether the British Party will follow the American example. The Manchester Guardian points out (January 12):—

  The arguments for it are much the same. Before the Communist International died the maxim of the Communist parties of the world was, of course, "When father says Turn, we all turn." Will our British Communists, like the Americans, prepare to lie down gracefully?

Maybe this time, however, the American and British Communists will turn in different directions, if we may judge by the editorial comment on the American changes published by the Daily Worker on January 13, 1944. The editorial argues that it is a mistake to interpret the American political system in terms of our own because in U.S.A "there is no Labour Party or organised political Labour movement." The main task in America to-day and in the immediate post-war period, says the Daily Worker, " is not the transformation of the social system but the rallying of all progressive forces in order to prevent reaction from turning that mighty country from the path of Teheran." The editorial goes on to give fulsome praise to Roosevelt's New Year speech, which, it says, calls America to a "noble fulfilment" of its destiny. The Daily Worker finds that both the Republican and Democratic parties "include reactionary and progressive elements," yet it plumps for supporting Roosevelt, leader of the Democrats. In view of Browder's 1940 statement that there is nothing to choose between the two parties, this distinction between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is not convincing. Nor is the Daily Worker's argument that things are different in this country because we have a Labour Party. In 1929 (see "Class Against Class"), and for several years afterwards, the Communist Party habitually referred to the Labour Party as the "third capitalist party."

It remains to be seen therefore what new line the British Communists may be required to take—and what peculiar justification they will, in that event, discover for taking it.

To enlighten them in their task of seeking to justify their own and the American Communists’ policy of supporting capitalist parties in the name of national unity, we bring to their notice the following passage from "Class Against Class," the General Election Programme of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1929:—

    "Three parties—Tory, Liberal and Labour—appeal to you in the name of the " nation." . . . .  No party can serve two masters. No party can serve the "nation" so long as the nation is divided into two warring classes—one which owns the wealth and one which produces the wealth and does not own it. No party can serve the robbers and the robbed at the same time."

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Violence and secret organisation (1980)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 6th the American Communists organised a demonstration in Union Square. New York City. The police were ordered to clear the streets on the ground that the Communists had not obtained a permit for a parade. Five Communist leaders were arrested and the crowd beaten up by the police with great brutality. That, of course, is a common story. There is. however, an additional feature of some interest. The Police Commissioner, Mr. Groves Whalem, declared on the following day that he had his agents inside the Communist Party keeping him informed as to all their plans and the movements of their leaders. We refer to this because it illustrates once more the danger to the workers of organisations which advocate violence, and attempt to carry on illegal activities in the absurd belief that they can do so in secret. The only sound line for the socialist movement in countries such as Great Britain and the USA is to organise on a basis which makes secrecy unnecessary. This rules out the Communist policy of street fighting, but that policy is one which is of no use to the workers. On the contrary, it has, in many countries, often been engineered by the authorities themselves through their inside agents.

From an editorial, Police Spies and the Communist Movement: Socialist Standard, August 1930.

Between the Lines: Uncle Sam's half-forgotten purge (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Uncle Sam's half-forgotten purge

In Russia it is now common for many people to feel guilty about their complicity with Stalinism. After all, oppressors are only as strong as they are allowed to be by those who stand by passively. In Germany the sense of self-blame for passive collaboration with the Nazi monstrosity has haunted a generation and appears to be playing its part in a grotesque recidivism in a new one. Guilt gets nobody anywhere; it is a pain felt rather than a lesson learned. But worse perhaps than guilt is that complacent incomprehension of past atrocities which accompanies historical ignorance.

In the main, Americans fall into this latter category. The wretched story of McCarthyism is rarely spoken about and even more rarely recognized as being deeply symptomatic of the pseudo-freedom of US capitalist order. The Un-Americans (BBC2, 8.10 pm. Wednesdays 2nd, 9th and 16th September) was a superb reminder of that period of American political madness. Of particular merit was the series' refusal to dwell solely upon the purge of famous actors, writers and so-called intellectuals. The McCarthy witch-hunt hit vast numbers of unknown workers. Their political views lost them their jobs. Four hundred and fifty workers were imprisoned for political crimes - often for as long as twenty years.

One such ease was Steve Nelson, who in 1950 was chairman of the Western Pennsylvania Communist Party. He was arrested on the order of one Judge Musmanno - a man who had been a supporter of Mussolini before the war, praising the Fascists for "their purification of Italian soil" by “driving Bolshevism from the country". Nelson was charged on the basis of his possession of books, including the works of Marx. At the time of his trial a film was released, based on Nelson, called I Was A Communist For The FBI, in which the Nelsonesque caricature was shown to be a murderer. Nelson argued in court that the film would prejudice the jury. He, after all, was accused of being a CPer and possessing books, not of killing anyone. The film was written by one Harry Sherman, local vice-president of the McCarthyite organization, Americans Battling Communism. Musmanno, the trial judge, was also a member.

At the trial Musmanno declared of Nelson's books that "I regard those books as more I dangerous than any firearms". Nelson was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment, a $10,000 fine and $13,291 court costs to pay the expenses of the prosecution - for which read "persecution". Like others shown on the programme, Nelson now realizes the folly of his old Leninist beliefs and sees how easy it was for the authorities to pursue their purge with impunity. But hostile as we are to the politics of Stalinism, who could watch Nelson's account of how he had a farewell picnic with his wife and kids before he went off to serve his sentence without feeling the utmost sympathy for him and the deepest loathing for the men who persecuted him in the name of freedom?

Lenin at the BBC?

The TV bosses are shouting at one another and in the exchange truths are coming out. It all began at the Edinburgh TV Festival when Michael Grade accused the BBC of becoming an institution which is scared by and sycophantic towards the Government. He accused the BBC bosses of being "Leninist" in their complicity with state demands, of "political appeasement to the Government; abandoning its heritage by axing resources; creating a culture of secrecy through editorial dictatorship; and stifling talent". Quite right. We have long pointed out that the government, in the name of freedom, imposes more and more control over state broadcasting, and, in the name of market forces, is dragging TV down to a lower and lower level. Is there a lower level than Eldorado? Watching it brings back fond memories of Crossroads as a relative example of dramatic sophistication. Marx called it the increasing misery of the working class - and watching Eldorado you get a funny feeling that he might just have been right.

Meanwhile ITV has announced that it is going to cut current affairs out of its peak-time hours altogether. Marcus Plantin, head of London Weekend Television, told the Edinburgh TV Festival that "We're not going to abandon current affairs, but we have to move it to a less competetive slot". By this he meant that advertisers want to put their money behind programmes that pull in the viewers and if game shows attract more soap powder buyers than news analysis, then World In Action will just have to go into the insomniac slot Paul Jackson, head of programmes for Carlton TV. the shoddy little outfit which will replace Thames next year, told the Festival that even though ITV output of news programmes currently constitutes only four percent, that is too much: "Four percent represents tens of millions of pounds and could make the difference between profit and loss". What all this is most clearly leading to is the Americanization of British TV: more tatty soaps like Eldorado, more horrible little game shows, more mindless chat, less news or serious analysis which costs money to research and film. Judge Musmanno and has fascistic friends would be proud: "freedom" (of the market) is flourishing and Lenin is purged from Moscow and well at home at the BBC.

Steve Coleman

Woody Guthrie. Resonant Voice for the Downtrodden: Woolly-Eyed Lefty (2006)

From the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Curious things were afoot in Greenwich Village, New York City around the year 1960. Droves of earnest denim-clad youths could be observed traversing the streets, all affecting the same hunched posture and shuffling gait. From every clenched jaw a king-size sprouted and (curiouser and curiouser) each throat emitted the same sporadic dry cough. One such poseur, a Minnesotan balladeer, Robert Zimmerman, would presently win universal acclaim as Bob Dylan.

Curiously too, the template for all those cardboard cut-outs also happened to be in the vicinity. Just across the Hudson River, those five years past, he had languished in New Jersey’s Greystone State Institute. His name was Woody Guthrie.

As writer, broadcaster, political activist and composer of some one thousand songs, Guthrie had been famous long before the birth of any of his young impersonators although this had since faded and, anyway, was always heavily laced with both controversy and notoriety. Why then was an ailing, ageing figure suddenly the focus of such adulation that the very hackings of his tobacco-addled bronchial tubings were deemed worthy of reproduction?

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in 1912 into a tragedy-prone family in Omaha, Oklahoma, being named in honour of the Democratic contender and President-to-be. Guthrie senior was an opportunistic businessman and Ku Klux Klan member whose racist views his son ingested and held well into adulthood. Mother, an unstable woman, was destined to die in the “insane asylum” from the hereditary condition then known as Huntington’s Chorea. In her more lucid moments however, she bequeathed Woody her rich musical heritage. She sang to him ballads of farmers, of sailors, of the humble triumphs and sorrows of ordinary people; an art-form that decades later, would find itself neatly sanitised, packaged, and marketed as “folk” music. At conception, unknowingly, she had also bequeathed him the Huntington’s genes.

Inevitably, this upbringing left its mark and young Guthrie developed into a decidedly maverick adult; as erratic in his business affairs as he was neglectful of his several wives, his numerous children, his personal presentation and hygiene. He developed also an enduring, and endearing, aversion to money, observing that “getting it turned people into animals and losing it drove them crazy”. Money to him was only ever a means of satisfying immediate requirements; any surplus being promptly squandered. At the height of his fame he would spurn lucrative contracts with the same panache that had seen his younger self regularly bestow entire evenings’ busking tips upon any convenient vagrant whose needs he perceived to exceed his own.

The final disintegration of the family unit saw a teenage Guthrie embark on an itinerant life, hitching rides and hopping freight trains across America, using his musical skills to access life’s basic necessities. He dossed in railway boxcars, under bridges, in hobo encampments, all the while adding to his repertoire. This would later constitute much of the romantic “Hard Travellin’” Guthrie legend but in reality it was a precarious existence, with regular harassment from the authorities; the next meal or bed a constant preoccupation.

There were an estimated 200,000 drifters and migratory workers during the 1920s, a figure which increased drastically in the 1930s as first the effects of the Great Depression then the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, bit deeper. This latter calamity, so graphically portrayed in Steinbeck’s magnificent novel, The Grapes of Wrath, saw entire communities forced off the barren land and on to the highways.  Guthrie was both moved by their plight and angered by the hostility shown towards them; the taunt “Okie” so widely used that it swiftly became the generic term for all “poor-white” destitutes.

Round the hobo campfires, Guthrie encountered grizzled, broken men; erstwhile members of the Industrial Workers of the World, muttering about there being a class struggle within society between the “rich” capitalists and the “poor” workers. In the finest of  leftist traditions, the IWW had been a chaotic outfit with little idea of what actually constituted socialism, nor indeed how it might be established; violent strike action and sabotage being foremost amongst its strategies. Its nickname, “Wobblies” was indeed apt.

The propaganda potential of both music and humour was however, recognised and its Little Red Songbook, largely parodies of Salvationist hymns, contained such gems as “The Pious Itinerant (Hallelujah I’m a Bum)” and “In the Sweet By-and-By” with its irreverent promise of “pie in the sky when you die”.

If nothing else, the IWW provided Guthrie with a simplistic political consciousness beyond which he never materially developed. More significantly, it lent a focus to his growing anger and taking his cue from the songbook, began creating his own material. In an anthology, “Dust Bowl Ballads”, he berated the “Vigilante Man” who would “shoot his brothers and sisters down”, lampooned the bungling incompetence of “these here politicians” in “Dust Bowl Blues” and mocked the preacher who, having first pocketed the collection, abandoned his flock with a “So Long it’s Been Good to Know Ya”.

Settling down briefly around 1937, Guthrie worked with the radical Los Angeles radio station KFVD. Here his racism underwent transformation; a Negro listener labelling him “unintelligent” for performing his “Nigger Blues” over the airwaves. Guthrie had used the term casually since childhood and was mortified. He apologised unreservedly, expunging the disgusting word forthwith from his vocabulary - although the “Japs” and “Wops” did continue to catch it in the neck for some time to come.

Back on his travels, it seemed to his open, if blinkered eyes that those striving hardest to assist the Okie refugees were “communists”. The American Communist Party had been founded in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution by an enclave of native radicals, Wobblies and immigrant Europeans, all mistakenly identifying it as somehow connected with the establishment of socialism - the reality being that it was simply one more chapter in the global triumph of capitalism over feudalism, taking in this instance, the form of state capitalism.

Routinely persecuted by a nervous government, it endured as a zealous, paranoid sect, but as the “Roaring Twenties” gave way to the “Hungry Thirties” following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, it effected some popular headway by depicting the apparent success of Stalin’s “planned” Soviet economy, with unemployment (officially at least) non-existent.

Then, following the Nazi triumph in Germany and the growth of Fascism elsewhere, the 1935 World Congress of the Communist International urged member parties to forgo their “ideological purity” and unite with other leftists in a Popular Front against this menace. Accordingly, the Party began to “Americanize”, becoming active, indeed dominant, in the labour union movement and supporting the 1936 election of “progressive” Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This then was the organisation that Guthrie embraced. Whilst never adopting actual membership, he sang at party rallies and contributed a rather folksy column, “Woody Sez”, to its journal, Peoples’ World. “I ain’t a communist necessarily,” he quipped, “but I’ve been in the red all my life.”

The Hitler/Stalin non-aggression treaty of August 1939 which caused such heartache for the Party faithful (and headache for its leadership), troubled Guthrie not the slightest. With the Popular Front now summarily dispatched, he blithely swallowed the spluttered explanation that Russia was simply pro-peace; not pro-Fascist. It was Roosevelt, instantly transmogrified from hero to villain, who was trying to drag America into conflict on behalf of British imperialism. “Pact sets peace example”, proclaimed the Peoples’ World. 

And when the “peace-loving” Red Army invaded Eastern Poland shortly afterwards, why, they were merely liberating the place. “Stalin,” sang Guthrie, “stepped in and gave the land back to the farmers.”

The German attack on Russia in June 1941 meant about-turn yet again and with America’s entry into the war six months later following Pearl Harbour, the Party became in a trice the most fervently patriotic of institutions; union organisation and strike action now subordinated to the overriding imperative for military success. “Sure,” reasoned our Woody, “the Communists change policy, but so do the Democrats and Republicans.”

Victory secured, the western alliance quickly foundered. Stalin denounced his former bedfellows as worse than Hitler, Churchill responded with his “Iron Curtain” speech and the Cold War was underway.

In an era of low unemployment and rising wages, the American left found itself in decline. Labour unions were now established in society, requiring pension fund managers rather than militants and among the newly-consumerist working class, a fear prevailed that its relative prosperity might be in jeopardy from leftism. Guthrie too was in decline, succumbing by degrees to the lingering horrors of Huntington’s Disease, dying eventually in 1967.

By the late 1950s, further societal change was underway. Following Eisenhower’s 1954 election, the “Great Red Scare” was evaporating and in the emerging teenage generation, an intellectual curiosity and idealism could be discerned, transcending the parochialism and acquisitiveness of its War-era parents. Political activism, particularly in the Civil Rights Movement reawakened and nonconformity of sorts, became acceptable.

Guthrie had somehow filtered into the “radical psyche” as a free-wandering spirit representing all things open, honest and unmaterialistic. His songs began to be listened to.

Tin Pan Alley too, had its role to play and profits to consolidate. Rock ’ n’ Roll had arrived some years earlier and had proved anathema to “White Middle America”, a subversive presence inciting youthful rebelliousness and promiscuity; the term itself Negro slang for sexual intercourse. For the first time, black musicians, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and others were accessing mass white audiences. Could the unthinkable happen and integration ensue?

Clean-cut Caucasians - the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary etc, - churning out “folk” songs seemed a much safer option and from record stores everywhere wafted bowdlerised versions of “Oklahoma Hills” and “This Land is Your Land” - to the joyful ringing accompaniment of the cash register.

Woody Guthrie was never a socialist in any scientific sense of the word. He was however, manifestly “socialistic” in his whole outlook on life. “This land,” he sang “was made for you and me” and the fruits of his “Pastures of Plenty”, rightfully everyone’s.

He once wrote, “The worst thing that can happen is to cut loose from people and the best thing is to vaccinate yourself right into their blood….We have to get together and work and fight for everybody.” Hardly apocalyptic, but nonetheless sentiments with which socialists will heartily agree.

Andrew Armitrage

Lessons from the American Elections (1929)

From the January 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The results of the elections for President make interesting reading. The Communists, masquerading as the Workers' Party, had a programme of immediate demands or reforms running into considerably over 100 and calculated to sweep the country. They polled 40,000 votes, or less than half the membership they claimed when they began in 1919 and before they adapted their name and programme to appeal to the masses.

The Socialist Labour Party polled 21,000 votes, against 30,000 four years ago. Their periodicals were full of "Electionitis," although the S.L.P. believes that "only the trade unions can set on foot the true political of labor," a claim which they have fathered on to Karl Marx, but can't find where and when he said such a thing.

With a party like the S.L.P. claiming that religion is a private matter, in a country chock full of belief in spooks they should have polled a heavy vote. The Socialist Party of America received about 250,000 votes, or about one-quarter of what they received when they ran Debs for President. With a long reform programme appealing to Labour as well as to "all classes," they can't stop their vote from falling.

To trim their sails a little more, the Socialist Party of America have recently decided to eliminate from the application for membership form, all references to "class struggle," "Capitalist Class," and "collective ownership," and replace this with a sentence affirming belief in independent political action.

These bodies with popular appeals and reform programmes are continually asserting that their method is one calculated to get the masses with them, but as these Election results show, the policy of dangling political carrots in front of the workers fails.

In America, Al Smith, the Democratic Candidate, was able to offer all kinds of captivating reform  promises, and with a fair chance of election. So Al Smith got all the reform votes.

If the Socialist Party of America had preached Socialism and got votes for Socialism, neither Republican nor Democrat could have enticed their votes away.

Adolph Kohn

McCarthyism (1954)

From the October 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Comrades of the World Socialist Party of the United States received an inquiry from a group of Liberals in London about McCarthyism. The following is an extract from the reply which will be of interest to readers of the S.S.

Dear Sir:

The National Administrative Committee at its latest meeting noted your communication of July 14th, and has designated me to furnish a reply.

First off, it must be difficult for European workers to understand the persecution and prosecution in the United States of not only the Communist Party, but also of those whose only crime was to participate in Communist Party "front" organizations.

Of course, as Marxists, we do not employ the term Left and Right to describe political parties, but use the terms Socialist, non-Socialist and Capitalist, even though in popular parlance the former may slip out.

We know that in European countries the Communist Party members have occupied, and continue to occupy, seats in the government, especially in Italy and France. Even in England two Communist Party members at one time were Members of Parliament. Communist Party members are employed in government services, although we understand that in England they are restricted in their work.

In answer to your first point, it is absolutely true that an American citizen us in jeopardy of his job if he has one time or another joined the Communist Party. This has been extended from governmental services, through union offices, through the universities and schools, down to the shops themselves, where a group of five or six alleged Communist Party members were thrown out of the Buick plant in Flint, and the union involved (United Auto Workers—CIO) made only a token and unsuccessful gesture in their defence.

During the 1930's many young men and women joined the Communist Party out of sheer desperation because of the tremendous unemployment, especially among the intellectuals who were pushed on to public works at low wages. After the "recovery" owing to the Second World War, these same people obtain positions in the government, in the unions, in the universities and lower grade schools. Many had dropped out of the Communist Party after a few months, and some had not even obtained membership cards, but now their past is being excavated, and they are being removed from their posts.

Guilt by association, as well as actual membership in the C.P., has been a device utilized to prosecute professors, government workers, among others. If one had associated in the past with well known members of the Communist Party, or if one were unfortunate enough to marry a member, even though he were not a member himself, he would be subject to losing his employment.

This prosecution has extended to membership in "front" organizations, which many innocent, and not-so-innocent citizens joined under the assumption they were aiding Spanish refugees, the foreign-born, etc., whereas in reality these organizations were used as "feeders"—ideological and financial—into the Communist Party.

Where union officials have co-operated or worked together with known Communist Party members, they too have lost their positions, either by the unfavourable propaganda resulting in their defeats in election, or their outright removal by top leaders of the union.

The Progressive Party has been characterized by the government as a Communist Party front because of its support of the Soviet Union, condemnation of American Imperialism, etc., and those in this organization have been declared suspect. However, to date we cannot recall offhand any being deprived of their positions by virtue of membership in this group.

Beyond this we will not go. To state that membership in such a group as the Americans for Democratic Action, a dissident group in the Democratic Party (we will not use the term "left") or to other such "Liberals" would result in loss of one's job would be incorrect. However, this has not stopped McCarthy and the rest of his ilk from throwing charges of "Socialist" and "Communist" at these people. As a matter of fact, such groups as the ADA are trying to out anti-communist McCarthy, and the debate goes on as to which group is fighting "Communism" the hardest.

No, this campaign against intellectual freedom has not been exaggerated in the European Press, but to present the evidence of this would take several books. Those who have lived in Europe all their lives are amazed at the crusade against freedom of speech in the United States. They even have a new term, "controversial figure." That is, even if one has a clear record in the past, if someone on the school board or even a parent is in doubt as to this person's loyalty and can cause dissension over it, then this teacher or superintendent is a "controversial figure," and is forthwith removed.

The most lamentable and ludicrous of all are the prosecutions against those who use the first (freedom of speech) and fifth (prohibition against testifying against one's self) amendment of the American Constitution. Although I cannot prove my statement, it is my belief that many professors are going down to defeat—losing their jobs—merely because they refuse to testify against others, or be what we call "stool-pigeons" and not because of membership in the Communist Party. Under the law, as soon as one begins to testify, then he must answer every question or suffer contempt of court proceedings, which land him in jail. Rather than take a chance on being forced to give damaging testimony against another associate, these professors have refused to testify at all, have been suspended and ultimately discharged from their posts, or have even gone to the penitentiary for contempt of court. To be sure, many who have been members of the Communist Party have invoked the two amendments as well.

The proceedings before Senate investigating committees are properly called "star chamber proceedings." The individuals can do nothing but answer questions, and be confronted by witnesses whom they cannot question in rebuttal. As soon as the accused individual attempts to read a statement the Senators do not like, he is evicted from the hearing, and if the individual is foolish enough to persist in his freedom of speech, then he is charged with contempt of court, which can result in six months in prison for each contempt. Phillip Wylie, an outstanding American writer and by no means a Socialist, recently stated the matter correctly when he said that intellectual freedom has been destroyed in the United States, and that the only freedom which remains to political, that is, the right to vote.

Even this is being taken away tout de suite, as a bill is now in Congress to deprive the Communist Party of legal status, so that anyone will not be able to vote for the Communist Party candidates, even if he foolishly wished to do so. It goes faster. To get on the ballot here in Michigan, for example, the party must receive a certain percentage of the vote. Failure to do so requires this party to take up petitions and to obtain a specific number of names of registered voters before it can be placed on the ballot. But here is the rub. The subversive squad of the State Police took these lists circulated by the Communists, Trotskyists, Socialist Labor Party, and have placed every signer of the petitions under suspect, subject to later investigation.

I would like to go into this deeper, because above we have presented only surface manifestations. Why, for example, can McCarthy get away with his Hitler-like tactics of the "big lie," the "constant repetition," the insinuations, etc.? Why does Eisenhower skirt around McCarthy on many occasions, and why is the committee now set up to investigate McCarthy  going to delay its report until sometime in January, after the November elections for Congress.

Whether we like it or not, McCarthy has a lot of support, not only among the Texas millionaires, and many other capitalists, but even from rank and file workers. Of course, the Catholic Church has its hand in this Red hunt, in spite of public pronouncements against persecution of free thought, etc., etc., ad nauseam. One would be surprised to go among the workers and see how many applaud McCarthy's efforts. In his home state of Wisconsin, McCarthy won with the votes of the heavily industrialized areas. Thus Republicans and Democrats alike seeking office are rather slow in doing anything against McCarthy, although they condemn him demagogically for public consumption. As an aside, it should be pointed out that McCarthy has a little black book (forbid that word "red"!) in which it is stated what Congressman had what woman in what hotel, etc., etc., ad hominen, plus all the scandals of their past life. McCarthy even now is digging up one on Senator Fullbright, his opponent.

Thus, McCarthy has support from one quarter or another. It may not be a majority support, but it is nevertheless a minority with which to reckon.

An even deeper question poses itself, and on this we would like to spend a bit of your reading time. The United States has not only supposedly, but actually, the strongest economy in the world, that is, in terms of industrial output, productivity, and so forth. European countries, on the other hand, are weaker in their economies, and depend on the American dollar in many ways to buttress their ships of state. Would it not be logical, then, to suppose that political and intellectual freedom would be greater in a stronger economy which has nothing to fear from its critics, and less in a weak economy? After all, when one has lots on money in his pockets, he can afford to be generous. Take the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and all the rest of the political parties "of the working class," and their total membership would not be over 400,000, so that their sympathetic following would not be half a million. None of these parties have a representative in Congress, and as far as we know not even a member in the state legislatures, although the Social Democrats may have a city councilman or Mayor here or there.

This seeming contradiction in American capitalism prosecuting minority groups is explained by the economics of the situation. The American economy may appear strong from the outside looking in, but internally it is very weak, in that much of the "prosperity" is based on probabilities, on the hot and cold war situation, etc. All one hears over here from the workers is fear of another depression. Thus, the persecution of minority "radical groups" is not against them as such, but at the possibility of an economic collapse which would permit these groups to agitate among the workers and make headway. The American worker is "war-prosperity" conscious, that is, he does not believe prosperity can exist without a war.

Another factor also, intervenes, and that is the fear of Communist Party sabotage in the event of a global war with Russia. This occupies an important part in the thinking of the American ruling class which tracks down Communist Party members through their police and political frontmen. Right now, of the two factors—the fear of an economic collapse and danger of a war with Russia—I should judge the latter to gave a slight predominance, and this would account for the prosecution of the Communist Party on the one hand, and the only mild backhand sweeps at other political organizations of the working class. But since the authorities do not make a neat distinction between Russian state Capitalism and Socialism, when one or both factors named above reach a more advanced state, one can expect the blow to fall on all quarters, political groupings opposed to the Russian system, as well as those in support.

Karl Frederick.

Police Spies and the Communist Movement (1930)

From the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 6th the American Communists organised a demonstration in Union Square, New York City. The police were ordered to clear the streets on the ground that the Communists had not obtained a permit for a parade. Five Communist leaders were arrested and the crowd were beaten up by the police with great brutality.

That, of course, is a common story. There is, however, an additional feature of some interest. The Police Commissioner, Mr. Grover Whalen, declared on the following day that he had his agents inside the Communist Party keeping him informed as to all their plans and the movements of their leaders. He was greatly amused because the uniformed police, in order not to give away the spies to the Communists, cracked their heads along with the others. Mr. Whalen has also supplied to employers the names of workers who are members of the Communist Party.

We refer to this because it illustrates once more the danger to the workers of organisations which advocate violence, and attempt to carry on illegal activities in the absurd belief that they can do so in secret. Illegal activities result invariably in some unfortunate workers falling into the hands of the authorities and paying with imprisonment for the dangerous policies of their leaders. In this country during recent months there have been several heavy sentences on workers caught distributing inflammatory leaflets to soldiers. The Communist Party leads its unfortunate victims into trouble and can do nothing whatever to help them. Even if they succeeded in getting in touch with soldiers or sailors, it is almost certain that the latter would be discovered. It is exceedingly doubtful whether any of the so-called activities of the Communists are secret from the police. The only people who appear to be kept in the dark about the activities of their leaders, are the rank and file members of the Communist Parties.

A few years ago the American police were actually able to get one of their agents sent as a Communist delegate, to represent the American Communists at a Congress in Moscow.

The only sound line for the socialist movement in countries such as Great Britain and the U.S.A. is to organise on a basis which makes secrecy unnecessary. This rules out the Communist policy of street fighting, but that policy is one which is of no use to the workers. On the contrary, it has, in many countries, often been engineered by the authorities themselves, through their inside agents.

"Trial" and "Desperate Hours" (1956)

Film Reviews from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

These two films are both thrillers, both are technically excellent, and in both the acting is first-class. They part company, however, in that Desperate Hours sets out merely to entertain, whereas Trial moralises about American law and justice, and about the corruptness of the Communist party. The moralising is rather tortuous, for apparently the film-makers have tried to demonstrate that although the American legal system is harmful and corrupt, the corruptness and ruthlessness of the Communist party is even worse, and that American democracy and freedom always triumph on the end, anyway.

The story is set in a small township in Idaho, where there is a Mexican minority. A young white girl dies of heart-failure while with a Mexican boy on a beach, and the boy is charged with murder on the legal principle that if someone causes a death while committing a felony, then he or she is guilty of murder (the alleged felony in this case being indecent assault).

The hero of the story is an idealistic law lecturer (Glenn Ford) who, threatened with expulsion from the University unless he obtains some first-hand legal experience, is taken under the wing of an unscrupulous Communist lawyer (Arthur Kennedy). The boy's trial becomes a matter of political capital for both the prosecutors and the Communist party, both of whom decide that the boy must die, the first because public opinion demands it, and the other because they need a martyr for their political ends. The tension of the film is admirably built up and the trial scenes are extremely effective, but unfortunately, the ideological inconsistencies of the film make it almost implausible. The film tries to lead one to the conclusion that there is always someone to protect American justice and democracy (although why it should be necessary to protect it is not made clear) and in this case it is left entirely to the young idealist to find a legal loophole after the boy has been found guilty. Apparently this vindicates the crooked politicians and lawyers and American justice generally and, to point the moral of the story, the Communist lawyer gets 30 days in jail for contempt. However, this isn't really good enough for it requires only a moment's thought to appreciate that this situation can rarely arise, of at all, so far as the Communist party is concerned, whereas the occasions when politicians and policemen need a conviction to safeguard their office, must be very common.

The picture that is given of American legal methods is both convincing and disturbing, and the account of how money is raised for "fighting funds" and the like is almost horrifying. In this kind of detail the film is extremely good, but when it ventures out into the realms of politics and morals, it becomes bogged down. The Communist party, of course, gets scathing treatment, and to a certain extent this is justified by their "tactics" but I do not think that this film does give an accurate picture of the way in which the American Communists behave. In particular, the speech of the girl (Dorothy McGuire) in which she recounts how she became caught up in the Communist party, and her subsequent disillusionment, is quite unconvincing and almost laughable.

It may well be that the makers of this film considered that their implied criticisms of American law and justice would be made more acceptable to the film-going public by the addition of the anti-Communist propaganda and the melodramatic ending, but if so, they have defeated their object, because the film gives the satisfying impression that justice has been done, and all is well with America, after all. What the film does not do, of course, is to show the cause of the corruption and the basis of the laws that are enforced, i.e. the protection of private property. But that is rather too much to expect from Hollywood.

Desperate Hours is also a thriller, but this time in the more conventional sense. It has no political axe to grind or moral in the way that Trial has, although it also gives a disturbing insight into American police methods. It is a straightforward story of three escaped convicts who find an ideal hideout by terrorising a household and holding the wife and young son hostage while the other members of the family are forced to carry on their normal lives. Here again the tension is well built up, and the principals (Humphrey Bogart as the leader of the three convicts and Fredric March as the father of the family) give splendid performances.

Surprisingly enough, it is the very fact that there is no social moral to the story that gives this film its biggest advantage over Trial. There is no sermonising and the film sets out merely to entertain, and it certainly fulfils this object as well as any thriller can. The finale of the story is both inevitable and expected, but nevertheless one's interest is held until the end. This film is an adequate demonstration of the way in which thrillers can be made without either the story being trite or the characters unconvincing, and is certainly well worth your shilling or two.

Albert Ivimey 

Marxism in the USA (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxian Socialism in the United States, by Daniel Bell, Princeton University Press. 17s. 6d.

This book, written over fifteen years ago, has been re-issued with a new introduction by the author. It is a history of the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party, with a few asides on De Leon's Socialist Labour Party and on the trotskyists.

Marxist and social-democratic ideas in America grew out of the previous populist and labour union movements in the 1870's. In 1876 was formed the Workingmen's Party which next year became the Socialist Labour Party. Its ideas, partly from Marx and partly from Lassalle, were provided by refugees from Germany. Twenty years later under the influence of De Leon the SLP took a more intransigent standpoint, though even today (apart from its syndicalism) there are traces of pre-Marxist ideas like labour-time vouchers and the phrase "the full product of his labour". De Leon introduced a new—and important—suggestion into socialist discussion. He argued that a socialist party should not have a programme of "immediate demands". He also held that the ballot was the way to political power. These ideas had considerable support among that section of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain that in 1904 was to set up the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

At the founding of the Socialist Party of America in 1900 there was a group dubbed "impossiblist" because they were against a reform programme. Although there was always before the first world war a minority in the SPA who took this view the party itself never did. There was a considerable exchange of views between uncompromising socialists in America, Britain and Canada. Bell finds one of their arguments strange. He says that a new member of the SPA would, among other things, "be assaulted by 'impossiblists' who told him that a fight on taxes as a political issue was meaningless because the workers did not pay taxes". We cannot go into this here except to say that the view that taxes are not a burden on the workers was held by Ricardo as well as by Marx and Engels.

The SLP, under De Leon, had always been wrong on the union question. In 1896 they had set up "socialist" unions in opposition to the pure and simple unions of Samuel Gompers but they did give the working class movement such expressive phrases as "labour fakir (or faker)" and "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class".

The peak year for the SPA was 1912 when Debs polled six per cent of the presidential vote and one member was elected to Congress. Thereafter it was decline all the way. Many of the writers and others who had supported the party deserted to Woodrow Wilson especially when America entered the war. The SPA and the IWW, to their credit, opposed the war and were ruthlessly hounded by the government. Many of their members, including Debs, were thrown into jail. The party was by now composed largely of migrants from east Europe who in 1917 were swept off their feet by the Russian revolution. But it was 1919 before all the pro-Bolsheviks had left the SPA.

After Debs' death in 1926 the leadership of the party fell to Morris Hillquit and Norman Thomas. Thomas, a Christian pacifist and moralist, came to symbolise the SPA though there remained many like Hillquit who still claimed to be Marxists. From now on the SPA reminds you of the ILP in Britain: completely confused on every issue, suffering attacks of infiltration from communists and trotskyists, taking an equivocal position on the war, growing smaller and smaller and seeing its top-ranking trade unionists leave for other larger parties.

The Communist Party was a pathetic but at the same time a vicious mob whose anti-working class antics are well summed up by two phrases coined by the SLP (who saw through them if not through Russia): Burlesque Bolsheviki and William Zig-Zag Foster. In the thirties it attracted many famous names, though most of them could not swallow the Moscow Trials. During a patriotic phase before the war the CP tried to show it was a good old American party by praising such bourgeois heroes as Jefferson and Lincoln. After 1941 it enthusiastically supported the war, so much so that in 1944 on Stalin's orders it dissolved itself! This was later reversed and poor Earl Browder was forced to walk the plank. Towards the end of the forties the CP was persecuted and eventually driven underground. Only recently has it re-emerged to be found firmly backing the Democratic Party.

Bell's book is interesting but it should be read in conjunction with the issue of the Western Socialist (No. 4, 1966) marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our companion party, the World Socialist Party of the United States, for a socialist analysis.

Adam Buick

Tilting at windmills with a banjo (2010)

From the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pete Seeger is now in his 90th year. His songs have always been better than his politics.

It was strangely moving: a frail lanky figure complete with banjo, lurching up on stage proceeded to gasp his valiant way through several of the best-known songs in the American folk pantheon. Pete Seeger at ninety, demonstrating that he can still enthral an audience. The casual onlooker would have difficulty believing that this unthreatening personage came however, ready-stamped with his own unique Government Health Warning.

“The most boycotted, picketed, blacklisted performer in American history”, he had endured a lifetime of threats, assaults, been labelled “traitor”, “Khrushchev’s Songbird” and suffered trial and conviction at the insidious hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Others viewed him differently, observing his enormous contribution to the collection and preservation of traditional music and how almost single-handedly he had rescued the five-string banjo from oblivion. A devout Humanitarian, abstemious, monogamous, unimpeachably principled, he is the trust of his patriots.

Born of well-heeled, musical New England stock in 1919, Seeger’s life compass was pretty much set for him at an early age. His father, in company with folklorists John and Alan Lomax belonged to that 1930s Popular Front “intellectual” coterie who, combining Radicalism and Patriotism, embraced the Folk genre as America’s “true” music and a vehicle for awareness-raising and social change. “Communism in Twentieth Century Americanism” ran its slogan, boldly – if bafflingly.

Seizing the baton, Seeger commenced his own musical and political odyssey presently, in 1940, forming the Almanac Singers, an amorphous, motley, Leftist crew whose proclaimed aim was, nevertheless to “change the World”. Performing such numbers as “Talking Union”, they supported labour rallies and, the Hitler/Stalin Peace Pact being current, opposed the War with their “Songs for John Doe”.

When, however, Germany attacked Russia the following year, the horrified group found the bulk of its repertoire rendered instantly obsolete. A massive rethink – and rewrite – ensued. Where once it had been confrontation, strike and “Franklin D. listen to me, You ain’t gonna send me across the sea”, employee and employer alike were now urged to unite behind the Military to “Deliver the Goods” and then skip merrily “Round and round Hitler’s Grave”. Remaining a “card-carrying Communist”, Seeger was nonetheless sufficiently chastened by this experience to never again identify quite so closely with the Party’s front-line tactics, instead lending his voice to more general issues.

The post-war years were difficult ones for an American Left struggling to radicalise an increasingly affluent, and hostile, Working Class. The Almanacs disbanded and in the prevailing “anti-Red” climate, Seeger encountered not only the FBI’s close scrutiny but also frequent exclusion from union events and marginalisation within the Communist Party itself. Fleeting commercial success with a new group, the Weavers, failed to salvage his finances and he found himself obliged to scour the continent playing small venues and universities, unwittingly in the process, founding what would eventually become known as the ‘College Circuit’.

Inevitably subpoenaed by McCarthy’s HUAC, he eschewed the usual “Fifth Amendment” route; that no citizen under the Constitution need incriminate themselves, opting instead for a head-on First Amendment plea; that the Committee itself was unconstitutional. For his pains he received a 10-year sentence which although never implemented and eventually overturned, nevertheless seriously blighted his life for several years.

The 1960s saw Seeger affiliating with the current “good causes”, plucking his banjo at Civil Rights rallies (an unfortunate instrument given Negro memories of stereotypic minstrel shows) and supporting the anti-Vietnam War movement. He was however becoming perceived as “Middle Aged”, “Old Left” rather than “Hippie”, “Student Power” and his “acoustic” music upstaged by the strident, electrified offerings of the rising Dylanite generation.

Remarkably too, he continued to adhere to the broad “Soviet World View”. Having remained silent over the momentous events of 1956 – the denouncement of Stalin and Russia’s brutal intervention in Hungary – he now displayed similar reticence over its intrusions into Czechoslovakia and the obvious tribulations of working-class life in Castro’s Cuba. But knavish, duplicitous, surely not? Myopic, naïve, more probably. increasingly disillusioned, he embraced Environmentalism, focusing particularly, and continuingly, on the campaign to clean up his “Dirty Stream”, the Hudson River.

Seeger has persistently overstated the power and value of song in political struggle, citing no less an authority that Plato: “Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.” Pursuing the rather Hegelian notion that the idea precedes and informs the action, he maintains that the “right song at the right time can change history” and whilst, for sure, songs have a certain rallying function, no way can his assertion that they triggered the Civil Rights Movement and shortened the Vietnam War be upheld. Fellow-Almanacers Bess and Butch Hawes were much closer to the truth in pointing out that “songs; ideas can only appear when events provide the material”. Perhaps they’d been taking a peek at Marx.

Unable to fully comprehend the nature of the capitalist system he professes to despise, its impersonal, all pervading imperative for profit and the root cause of the multitudinous socio-economic and environmental problems afflicting humanity; lumbered also with a Leftist/Bolshevist mindset he has never managed to transcend, Seeger has sought solution through a whole range of single-issue campaigns and support for assorted pseudo-socialist, state capitalist regimes. A successful lawsuit, for instance, by residents against General Electrics for polluting the Hudson, laudable in itself, was hailed as a great victory for “localism” and “community” rather than an opportunity to ponder the competitive, cost-cutting forces that had brought about the pollution in the first place. And all the while, the authentic socialist model of a democratic, classless world society of common ownership and free access has awaited his perusal. Painful as it is to criticise a clearly well-intentioned if Quixotic figure, Seeger’s political life does serve as vindication of our founding principle of campaigning solely for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.

So what is left? Well, laying aside more than a few political stomach-turners, there is a rather wonderful body of song. We can, for example, teach subversive little numbers, “Cindy”, “Froggie Went A-Courtin’”, to our offspring and (in our cups) declaim “the warnings, dangers, love we’d ring out incessantly all over the bloody place – if only we possessed the requisite hammers”. Perhaps also, in more sombre (and sober) mood, we’ll quietly croon the hauntingly-beautiful “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, even if, of necessity we think of Pete himself and his ilk at the mournful refrain:

“When will they ever learn,
When will they ever learn?”

Andrew Armitage

Death of a Film-maker (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elia Kazan, born Kazanjoglous in Constantinople of Greek parents, who was taken to America when he was four years old, died in September aged 94. He became an actor, theatre and film director and, later, an author. He was not always considered to be a particularly nice person, and was something of a loner and individualist "anarchist". Writing his obituary in the Guardian (September 30), David Thomson observes that "he was a demon, a man who left his mark everywhere". He was, says Thomson, a genius. And according to the Times obituarist (30 September), "he was responsible for some of the most creative filmwork to come out of America".

Elia Kazan in 'Waiting For Lefty'.

Kazan went first to school in New York and, then, from 1930 to 1932 he studied drama and acting at Yale School of Drama. From there, he joined the Group Theater, first as an actor and later as a stage manager and director. Prominent in the New York Group Theater was Clifford Odets. In 1933, Odets began writing plays; and in 1935, he wrote in three days a one-act play, Waiting for Lefty, which won him the New York Theater League contest. Elia Kazan played Lefty at the Group Theater. And Lefty, the hero of the play? He was Sam Orner, a New York taxi-cab driver who, as a teenager in 1913, joined the Young People's Socialist League, the unofficial, leftist youth section of the reformist Socialist Party of America. After travelling all over the United States as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, the "Wobblies", Orner joined the Socialist Educational Society of New York, largely formed in 1921 by expatriate members of the SPGB, in 1923. The SESNY later became the New York Local of the Workers Socialist Party of the United States.

In the early 1930s, Sam Orner became the organizer for the New York cab drivers. In 1934, they went on strike, and it was this strike and Orner's part in it that formed the subject of Clifford Odets's play. Kazan and Odets of course knew Orner who, following the strike, fell foul of the Mafia mobsters who were attempting to get control of the union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They badly beat him up, and he was hospitalized. But a comrade managed to get him out of the hospital before the mob could kill him. Sam Orner remained an active member of the WSP(US) until his death in 1973.

In December, 1930, the Workers' Film and Photo League was formed, which was a Communist Party "front" organization. The focus of its film production was newsreels and documentaries. Conflicts soon arose, however, between those who wanted to continue with documentaries and those who wanted to produce fiction movies of a social realist type. The schism led to the formation of Nykimo Films.The most celebrated, but now largely unknown, work by Nykimo was Pie in the Sky, a fifteen-minute satire starring Elia Kazan. What there was of a story, or plot, involved two tramps in a junkyard mocking so-called middle-class, bourgeois, values. In the words of Dan Georgakas (Encyclopedia of the American Left): "The film has considerable verve, with the tramps taking on organised religion in a manner not seen since the Industrial Workers of the World assaults on the Salvation Army". In 1938, Kazan directed his first film, a 20-minute documentary, People of the Cumberland, about the plight of Tennessee miners.

With his wife, Molly Thatcher, Elia Kazan joined the Communist Party in 1934. But he was not cut out to be a loyal and obedient party member. He commented twenty years later:

"The streets were full of unemployed and shaken men. I was taken in by the Hard Times version of what the Communists' advertising and recruiting technique claimed to have as a cure for depressions, and a cure for Nazism and Fascism."

He said that he was disgusted with the Communist Party's "system of discipline that suppressed personal opinions, and tried to dictate personal conduct". He hated the secrecy and paranoia of the Stalinists. He claimed that he resigned from the Communist Party, but another version has it that he was expelled either in 1935 or 1936.

In 1942, Kazan directed his first important play, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, on Broadway. He also developed a close association with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. During this time, his career took off as a movie director. In 1947, he won an Oscar for his direction of Gentleman's Agreement, an indictment of anti-Semitism. And in the same year Elia Kazan co-founded with Robert Lewis the influential Actors' Studio, which was responsible for developing the natural, psychological and realist "method" style of acting first evolved by Roman Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre during the 1920s, and which launched the career of Marlon Brando. First, there was A Streetcar Named Desire and, by 1949, Death of a Salesman.

Elia Kazan's first Hollywood film using the "method" style of acting was Viva Zapata!, from a script by John Steinbeck. In it, Brando played Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary. Inevitably, the ten-year conflict had to be telescoped into a few short episodes. The storyline was, however, reasonably accurate; Brando was plausible, and "there was a feeling of heat and dust", in the words of Thomson. Nevertheless, the script does distort certain events, and is in part complete invention. In 1954, Elia Kazan directed another powerful film, On the Waterfront, also with Marlon Brando, which exposed the mob's control of the union Local in the New York docks. In the film, Brando is beaten up just like, in real life, Sam Orner was in the 1930s. Kazan probably remembered that.

The so-called Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States emerged just before the end of the Second World War. Almost overnight, allies became enemies. And the chief threat allegedly facing the United States was said to be "the worldwide international communist conspiracy", represented primarily by Soviet Russia. The "enemy within" was the Communist Party in particular and its "fellow travelers" and, in general, "reds", "lefties" and anyone who did not consider American capitalism to be the best of all possible systems.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which had existed under various titles since 1930, became a permanent inquisitorial committee in 1946. It was armed with the power to compel testimony anywhere in the United States under subpoena. Witnesses summoned before the HUAC were judged to be either "friendly" or "unfriendly". All known Communists, sympathisers and many others who had been little more than vague anti-Fascists in the 1930s and 1940s, were hauled before the Committee. A few were jailed (the Hollywood Ten), and many were either fired from their jobs or found it impossible to obtain a job. The Committee was particularly concerned with so-called "reds" in the film industry.

Elia Kazan was summoned to the Committee on April 11, 1952. He was considered to be a friendly witness; and, like his old comrade, Clifford Odets, he "named names". He said that it was "a difficult moral dilemma", after "much soul-searching". And, anyway, he claimed that all the individuals that he named were already known to the HUAC as Communists or fellow-travelers. But Kazan was never forgiven by the Communists, many former Communists as well as many others who said that he should have never co-operated with the state.

Elia Kazan was no socialist but, within the limitations imposed by a profit-making film industry, he was able to highlight, sometimes quite dramatically, some of the problems as well as the struggles of ordinary workers, in a number of the movies that he directed. And that, at least, was something.

Peter E. Newell