On anti-Communism

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Thu Nov 29 10:12:31 PST 2001


My anti-Communism (though I prefer to write anti-Stalinism. Have had no problem working with over the years with cadre from Committees of Correspondence or the non-dogmatic maoist, Freedom Road Socialist Org. [the one that doesn't publish Fight Back!, there are two FRSO's] has a variety of ideological and emotional wellsprings. Some Trotskyist, alot from former Communsts like Fernando Claudin who wrote the two volume work on the history of the Comintern that Monthly Review Press published in the late 70's, obsessive reading of works by dissident marxists from the fSU like Roy Medvedev on Stalinism, the Yale Univ. Press series, "Annals of Communism, " autobiographies of ex-Communists (Al Richmond, Junius Scales, Dorothy Healey, Bertram Wolfe, just off the top of my head). "Stalin and the European Communists, " by the official historian of the PCI, Paulo Spriono, published by Verso. "Dictatorship Over Needs, " by the students of Lukacs, F. Feher, Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher. Numerous articles in Telos in the 70's and 80's esp. the pieces on the Soviet question by Antonio Carlo. "Dialectic of Defeat, " by Russell Jacoby, Cambridge U. Press. Isaac Deutscher, Victor Serge (see the new bio from Verso by Susan Weissman. The journal on Soviet Studies edited by H. Ticktin, the neo-Trot.

That's the left side of the Pugliese anti-Stalinism. Yup, there is a center-right side, (See esp. the history of Communism, "The Passing of an Illusion, " by the French historian, whose name escapes me right now. Dismissive review in Socialist Register on the French edition but, very much worth reading, nonetheless) been reading TNR and other neo-con rags for decades too. Have a set of Partisan Reviews from the 60's. Michael Pugliese



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