>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 12/31/99 09:31PM >>>
The historical question here is not where communism in the abstract comes from but where the anti-racism of the CPUSA at a particular time came from -- and it might as well have come from another planet, being pretty much imposed on the CPUSA by the Comintern.
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CB: This is not quite accurate. See Mark Solomon's _The Cry was Unity_ which came out in the last few months. The Communists in the U.S. , such as William Z. Foster had their own understanding of racism which was more radical than that of Debs and the Socialists.
I don't know precisely what (if anything) this means for us now, but it is part of u.s. working-class history that ought to be recognized by those studying that history. J. Edgar Hoover is not a very good source of u.s. cultural history, but perhaps it is worth something to note that he once said that you could tell a communist because they were the only people comfortable around Negroes. It could lead in both directions. The process of becoming comfortable around blacks could for some whites be also a process of first becomining comfortable around communists and then becoming communists.
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CB: Scratch a redbaiter and find a racehater.
CB