On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:08:38 -0800 Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com>
writes:
> On 1/11/06, Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Really, I've been around (and around...) and I can't say that
> > I've ever met anyone who truly IS a 'Communist' (big 'C').
>
> I've met some CP people in the past (in Berkeley and New York, where
> else?). I remember back in the 1970s, they were much like very
> liberal
> and pro-labor Democrats, sometimes with utopian conceptions of what
> might replace capitalism.
The CPUSA has long been a backer of the DP. In fact they have been doing this pretty consistently since FDR's second term. CP people were very much involved in promoting ABB (Anybody but Bush) back in 2004, in case anybody here doesn't remember.
> They had good things to say about the USSR,
> natch. One referred to Joan Baez as singing a "racist" song ("The
> Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," originally by The Band). The true
> reason for this slam, I thought, was that Baez had criticized the
> USSR.
Well that song is "objectively" racist (to use traditional CP terminology), inasmuch as it mourns the defeat of the Confederacy. You're probably right though that they were slamming Baez for her criticisms of the USSR and of Vietnam etc,
>
> When I was active in the campus union (a branch of AFSCME), there was
> a somewhat covert fight going on between the CP people and the
> "Schactmanites" (Draperites?). I think the latter were better in
> terms
> of long-term politics, but the former were less sectarian in style.
>
> Neither group had any spies. Not even FBI ones.
> --
> Jim Devine
> "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an
> intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin
>
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