If by "Stalinist" you mean the political orientation of the CPUSA, I think your speculation is a bit off (to put it mildly), in that ever since the Popular Front (at least), the CPUSA hasn't been quite what you call "revolutionary," and it is difficult to find more ardent defenders of social programs of the welfare state that mitigate the worst effects of capitalism than the CPers. If anything, it has been _left critics_ of the _social democratization_ of the CPs everywhere who have been the harshest critics of the welfare state.
And according to the article Michael Hoover forwarded, Marvin Olasky was "a card carrying member of the Communist Party USA" during the 1970s.
Yoshie
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Stalinist was a loose (and perhaps poor) characterization and I had in mind David Horowitz not CPUSA. Carl Remick fwd several articles a couple of weeks ago on at least two other guys who turned inside out. Norman Podhoretz under `joining he right-wing conspiracy thread, and somebody else. These could easily have been liberal or social democratic types.
I also had in mind my own generation and some of the political threads that had very early beginnings in peace movements and religious organizations. Segregation and war are moral atrocities, and it was this aspect that attracted us (or me at any rate). These seemed to illuminate the hypocrisy of the US image of itself. How could this be the land of the free and home of the brave, if you couldn't eat in bus station lunch counter and your government was busy killing third world farmers in rice paddies?
If you have a theory on how to undergo the kind of transformation I was satirizing, let's hear it.
Anyway, it is possible to start off as goldilocks and end up as the minotaur. As I see it, the key ingredients in the process are a kind of absolute conviction of moral rectitude coupled with a strong authoritarian streak, and a tenacious adherence to some form of dogma--that's what I mean by stalinist.
At least one friend of mine started off in the mid-60s demos here, worked in community based social service programs through the 70s and ended up discovering his roots in the 80s and turning to some form of Jewish fundamentalism. I don't know the particular version since I don't see him much anymore. That transformation was not as harsh as what I was going after and there were a lot of personal reasons that I can think of to explain Mike F. to myself. For example, his fatherhood. Yet, this process of reversals is not an un-common thing to have happened.
I also suspect it is important to understand in some kind of broad way because it represents a potiential possibility for current and younger activists. It is something to be aware of and watch out for.
Chuck Grimes