"R">...What the hell are you talking about, Carroll? The last thing the CPUSA was \known for was "purity;" they were tactical in the extreme, making alliances \as needed, switching issue positions to fit geopolitical changes, and \generally seen as subversive precisely because they "impurely" burrowed \into other institutions in order to dominate them.
OUR LINE'S BEEN CHANGED AGAIN
We're simply Communists devout; Our line's been changed again. We don't know what it's all about; Our line's been changed again.
CHORUS: I knows it, Browder, I knows it, Browder, I knows it, Browder, Our line's been changed again.
United fronts are what we love; Our line's been changed again.
From below and from above; Our line's been changed again.
CHORUS:
3. The party says the time has come; Don't call a Socialist a bum;
4. We must appear to be sedate; The revolution? It can wait;
5. Bourgeois tricks well have to
use; Our women must not wear flat shoes;
6. Concerning war we'll have to
hedge; We've disavowed the Oxford Pledge;
7. We're now a party with finesse; With bourgeois groups we'll coalesce;
8. Bourgeois rights we'll fight to
save; Lenin's turning in his grave;
9. First we loved the pacifists; Now they are fifth columnists;
10. Hitler he has been ungrateful; Though we helped him, now he's
hateful;
11. Roosevelt was a mean old dragon; Then we climbed on his bandwagon;
12. Once we fought for worker's
rights; Now we fight the Trotskyites;
13. First we're red and then we're
pink; As Moscow tells us what to think;
14. Kaleideosopic's what I mean; First we're Red and then we're green;
15. The line must change, says Jock
Duclos; But who told Jock - T'was Uncle Joe;
FINAL CHORUS: I knows it, Foster, I knows it, Foster, I knows it, Foster, Our line's been changed again.
IN OLD MOSCOW (Tune: Clementine)
In old Moscow, in the Kremlin, In the fall of '39, Sat a Russian and a Prussian Writing out the party line.
CHORUS: Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, Oh, my darling party line; Oh, I never will desert you, For I love this life of mine.
Leon Trotsky was a Nazi; Oh, we knew it for a fact. Pravda said it; we all read It, BEFORE the Stalin-Hitler Pact.
CHORUS:
Once a Nazi would be shot, see, That was then the Party Line; Now a Nazi's hotsy-totsy, Trotsky's laying British mines.
CHORUS:
Now the Nazis and the Fuerher Stand within the Party Line, All the Russians love the Prussians, Volga boatmen sail the Rhine.
Michael Pugliese