>P.S. A friend of mine has a joke he relates about the YCL. A member in the
>40's said in a recruitment pitch that they were just like all kids just
>wanting to have fun, listen to swing music. They just believed in
>dialectical materialism, too.
>From a Young Communist League pamphlet, 1938:
"Some people have the idea that the YCL is politically minded, that nothing outside of politics means anything. Gosh no. They have a few simple problems: there is the problem of getting good men on the baseball team this year, of opposition from ping-pong teams, of dating girls, etc. We go to shows, parties, dances and all that. In short, the YCL and its members are no different from other people except that we believe in dialectical materialism as the solution to all problems."
This was 1938, at the height of the Popular Front, and even then they were occasionally having a little trouble getting the "just folks" style quite right. Though they certainly tried, as the informal "Gosh no" attests.
John Lacny