Hail the Hitler-Stalin pact!

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
>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.

(((((((((((((

CB: This is one of the typical blame the victim conclusions that comes out
of the betrayal of the working class "logic" of U.S. Reutherites,
-social dems, and those who arrogate to themselves the status of judging the
Soviets , rather than realizing it is they themselves who history
-shows to have betrayed the world working class, including the U.S. working
class , by a shallow analysis of the 1937 and post war
-period.

I am criticizing a strategy that led to the results described.  I am not
praising the Reutherites, but condemning the CPUSA for giving them an
opening to take power.

Criticizing a bad strategy with foreseeable consequences is not "blaming the
victim."  I am arguing that the strategy you defend was not only bad in the
short-term for US workers and unions, but ended up being bad for the Soviet
Union, the supposed beneficiary of the early propaganda and no-strike
positions.

The result of the CPUSA policy from the Hitler-Soviet pact through WWII was
a weakened, divided and more conservative working class movement in the
United States.  I don't think that was good for workers in the US or for
workers in the rest of the world.

-- Nathan Newman