under-35s

[Carrol Cox]

Someone who is 30 now is of the age to have been in my classes at ISU in
the mid-80s. By that time any lingering tolerance for communism that
might have been generated in the 60s was all gone, and my students were
more fearful and contemptuous of communism than my age cohort had been
in the late '40s. (And of course any warm or tolerant feelings for reds
in my age cohort had pretty much dissipated by the mid 50s. I remember
me and 3 other grad students (all male) defending cold war policy
vigorously for three hours or so (in a bar) against a fellow grad
student (a woman) who quite sensibly observed, "What would the Russians
do with the U.S. if they got it?" When I first got involved in politics
in the mid 60s (when I was in my mid 30s) it took me at least three
years of growing dislike of U.S. policy before I even began to consider
marxism of any kind as a reasonable alternative. I met very few people
of my own age at demonstrations and rallies: they were mostly 10 or 15
years older or 10 or 15 years or more younger. One other fragment of
memory. Sometime between 1948 and 1955 I remember telling my father that
one would have to be a thug to belong to the CP; he wasn't so sure, and
when I did become red, he thoroughly approved. I also remember him
remarking that East Germany (more industrialized) would be a better test
of communism than Russia. (And from horror stories coming out of
"liberated" East Germany, apparently they didn't do so badly after all
there.)

Carrol