> Speak of the devil. I open up my mailbox , and here's a creepy little
> redbaiting offlist post from yo boy.
>
> CB
>
> CB:
>
> He sends quite a bit of anti-c stuff to me offlist , too. He's a real
> redbaiter.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Pugliese [mailto:michael098762001 at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 11:29 PM
> To: Justin Schwartz
> Cc: Charles Brown; Dennis Perrin
> Subject: Fwd: CPUSA members (Schwartz)
-------------------------------------
OK. Suppose you present us with the evidence, and let's have done with this interminable whining. What sentances specifically in the post by Stephen Schwartz below do you consider to be "anti-communist", and why? The problem, it seems to me, is that you largely equate the CPUSA and the former Soviet Union with "communism" while the past and present critics - social democrats, Trotskyists, independent Marxists, and anarchists - do not. That's a legitimate matter for debate on the left, even if today it no longer has the same urgency it once did. My own view is that the critics have often tended towards a Manichean rather a dialectical view of these (contradictory) institutions, which perhaps makes them guilty of exaggeration - but not of what used to commonly be called "class treason", the charge you're effectively levelling at MP and his ideological kin. This kind of anathema was frequently pronounced in the old CP's to stifle both outside critics and potential doubters in their own ranks - much as wild and baseless charges of "anti-semitism" serve the same purpose for Zionists today.
MG
----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Brown" <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 7:33 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] The STFU left
>
>
> From: Stephen Schwartz <karastjepan at yahoo.com>
>
> The thing that seems to be missed here is that we all have known for many
> decades what the CP members "believed in," and to hang an argument for
> nuance and even indulgence of them on that, as opposed to allegedly
> indicting them for what they did, does not hold up. Of course, if one
> intends by "what they believed in" reference to such abstractions as
> "progress," "equality," and "end to racism," etc., then CP members look
> very
> good. But these are vague and finally meaningless abstractions.
>
> Much more important is the unchallengeable fact that CP members "believed
> in" the habitual strikebreaking by the AFL, the invention of the Ukrainian
> famine by Western journalists, the guilt of the Moscow Trial defendants,
> the
> activity of the POUM on behalf of Franco, the cowardice of the anarchists
> in
> the Spanish war, the decisive role of the International Brigades in the
> same
> war, the alliance of Trotsky with the Nazis and Japanese (and considering
> that Stalin didn't declare war on the Japanese until late 1945 one wonders
> why the Japanese or Trotsky would, suppositiously, have wasted their
> time),
> the treason of Tito, the espionage of the post-1945 Communist leaders in
> East Europe on behalf of the U.S. and Britain, South Korean responsibility
> for starting the Korean War (as we are reminded by Mr. Schonbrun), the
> Doctors' Plot, and the anti-Jewish character of the Hungarian Revolution.
> CPers with whom I was associated in 1968 claimed that the Soviet invasion
> of
> then-Czechoslovakia was necessary to prevent a West German invasion of the
> country. So what they "believed in" is as bad and sometimes worse than
> what
> they did; and nobody who doubted or criticized these fantastical beliefs
> was
> allowed to remain in the CP for long.
>
> By and large the sources that remain unweighed are anti-Stalinist, not
> Stalinist or "cold war liberal" materials. For example: the Social
> Democratic corpus of literature associated with THE NEW LEADER; Italian
> anarchist material about the New York unions, material reflecting the
> legacy
> of Dubinsky and other Bundists; the whole body of Trotskyist material
> aside
> from the biographies of Cannon and Shachtman, etc.
> Examination of these "unexamined" sources adds to the historical verdict
> against the CP; it does not dilute it.
>
> I was always told of the Rosenbergs, while in the CP milieu, that it was
> considered an honor for U.S. party members or supporters to be asked to
> commit acts of treason, espionage, and terrorism on behalf of the USSR and
> that nobody would have said no. By the way, where do we have a case of
> someone leaving the CP in protest after being approached in such a
> manner? I don't know of a single one. I do know of a lot who
> committed treason, a lot who served as spies, and a lot who assisted in
> the
> terrorist assassination of Trotsky, without a single one except Louis
> Budenz
> ever, thereafter, admitting their guilt.
>
> Stephen Schwartz
>