>In a message dated 11/20/04 7:05:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org writes:
>
>>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.
Well yeah. Didn't I introduce the comment with the longish list of faults?
Doug