Hail the Hitler-Stalin pact!

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>One must look at the situation with a bit more street smarts than the
average intellectual uses usually.  Put on your wily cap when you >really
want to be pragmatic.To be pragmatic, the Soviets could not announce to the
CPUSA and parties around the world that they were >just being pragmatic. The
Nazis were listening. The CPUSA had to be wily and figure that out without
it being announced from Moscow. >There may have been lagtime in figuring it
out in the CPUSA ( understandable because it is like the ultimate spy novel)
and certainly >imperfection in the campaign, thus the whiplash effect you
note in CPUSA response. But to the CPUSA's credit, it essentially got it
>correct. They certainly got it more correct than all those on the left  who
like to feel morally-politicallly superior to the Soviets ( or the >CPUSA)
because the Soviets made a pact with the Devil.

I don't buy it.  What is ultimately showed was that the CP in the USA would
subordinate the needs of workers and other folks in the US to the strategic
needs of the Soviet Union.  You may see that as the right choice - even that
preserving a strong Soviet Union was more important than strong leftwing
unions in the US - but for those who did not, it discredited the CPUSA and
the left in general.

There are many leftists then (and like myself today) who saw nothing
superior in Munich over the Hitler-Stalin pact, but saw the willingness of
the CPUSA to sell out US workers for the needs of the Soviets as
reprehensible.  It extended not just to their initial twists in foreign
policy but to their rigid support for no-strike pledges during World War II,
to the point where conservatives in the union movement ended up looking more
militant than the so-called "left-wing."  Because of the CPUSA's rigid
position on the no-strike clause, even as the capitalists drove down the
standard of living of workers during the war, by the time we entered the
post-war period, the CP-led left in the union's no longer was seen as the
militant wing of the movement.   More conservative but more militant union
leaders like Walter Reuther were able to take over control of unions like
the UAW, leading to the 1948-49 expulsion of the left-led unions.

Which in the end was hardly in the strategic interests of the Soviets.  So
it was bad on both fronts.

-- Nathan Newman