[lbo-talk] "progressive"

Michael Pugliese michael098762001 at earthlink.net
Sun May 9 13:50:58 PDT 2004


Always hated that weasel word. Mostly used by socialists and Communists, afraid to be direct and upfront. One of the other loves that dare not speak it's name. Cf. the comments of James Weinstein, founding editor of In These Times ( http://www.inthesetimes.com/ "Bedtime for Bobos By Craig Aaron 'The most infuriating thing about David Brooks isn’t his smug tone or the way he dismisses critics as anti-Semites from “Planet Chomsky' ") , who had been in the Young Communist League in the late 40's, in, "The Long Detour: the History and Future of the American Left. Chapter 7, "(Communist) Fronts, Decay, Amnesia and a New Left, pg. 176, "The Party (CPUSA) operatered through single issue movements because it could not proclaim its underlying loyalties or principles. While the Party had come out from underground(actually it was pushed into the open by orders from the Int'l.), it never tested its principles by exposing them to public scrutiny, by running in elections...But, the Party developed a theory that made a virtue of this necessity. It deluded itself and its fellow-travelers into believing that a pre-ordained historical trajectory made popular exposure of its principles uneccessary....Because Communist leaders could neither be open or honest about Soviet reality (see Weinstein's chapter reviewing Stephen Kotkin's, "Magnetic Mtn: Stalinism As A Culture.") they also could not explore corporate capitalisms path of development and the ways in which it provided possibilities of a more humane and socially responsible future. Indeed to have the true religion required a private rejection of the more humane aspects of capitalist development-open, multi- party elections, politically independent trade unions, free speech and all the other liberties...Indeed insofar as the Communists had a vision of socialism at all, it was closer to corporate capitalism's more undemocratic features: massive corporate and state bureaucracies, a militarized state apparatus run by economic giants and in their interest, a one party state..."

Hugh de Lacy, http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/dehart-deland.html who was a Congressman from the state of Washington, 1st District, for one term after WWII, was active in Progressive Party of Henry Wallace, that had a heavy influence from the CPUSA. Bill Domhoff invited him to speak, the week after Herbert Aptheker, to his class on Labor and the Left in America. Mr. de Lacy, laid out a strategy that he said would, "gather up socialist minded Americans in a broad front, " at which one of my NAM comrades blurted out, "You mean like the Progressive Party? Hugh admitted that the CPUSA and PP was more or less equivalent, even w/ delegates to the PP convention in '48, like George McGovern and John Dingell, and other genuine Pop Front left-liberals there that pushed unsuccessfully there a resolution to support Tito in his conflict w/ Stalin. In Santa Cruz, as in Santa Monica and many other leftist towns, the NAM comrades, like Mike Rotkin, who taught Intro to Marxism @ UCSC, that we canvassed for and elected and re-elected over and over ((Mike has been Mayor now 5 times or so. Regarded as the most conservative of the "progressives" on the council due to the homeless issue mostly) ran as, 'Progressives, " which led the right-wing candidates (who called themselves, "Moderates.")to say, NO, y'all are socialists! And, they were right. Sometimes our NAM meetings were held in the house of the first openly gay Mayor of Santa Cruz, who is now in the State Legislature. Another city council member, from NAM, we elected, at a meeting once, had to one up us by saying, "I'm not a democratic socialist, I'm a democratic communist!" At another meeting, this comrade passed around stills of a porn movie he had been in.



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