> You could make a longish list of the things that have been wrong with
> the CPUSA, but is there any other radical organization that
> contributed so much to practical politics here? Civil rights, union
> organizing? It's really hard to engage with the real world and not
> look like a sellout to those who don't.
>
> Doug
>
The CP stood for racial equality when few others did. Communist organizers (my father, for one) played a central role in the fight for industrial unionism.
The CP also denounced John L. Lewis as a fascist when he took the miners out on strike at the beginning of WWII. In addition, they staunchly opposed the plans of A. Philip Randolph for a civil rights march on Washington on the grounds that it would undermine the war effort. They refused to oppose segregation in the military on the same grouds. They were the most zealous enforcers of the wartime no-strike pledge, and tried their best to keep it in place after the war.
These are more than the inevitable accommodations to reality that one must make in the course of political engagement. They indicate the transformation of the CP from the revolutionary organization of its early years into one with a reform agenda (and, during the war, scarcely even that). This wasn't mainly the result of the American Party's own evolution, but rather that of the Soviet Union under Stalin, by which they were dominated.
The Party's history can't be summed up simply by saying that they did more than anyone else for unions and civil rights, nor can critics be dismissed by accusing them of sniping from the sidelines. I'm sure you understand that political and historical questions are more complex than that. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041121/126e08bd/attachment.htm>