[lbo-talk] lbo-talk Digest, Vol 1077, Issue 4

[Carrol Cox]

Certainly many CP members fought in Spain, but I believe that a large
number of the International Brigades were 'merely' radicals or
anti-fascists, not CP organizers. You have, I presume, been in
demonstrations organized by the party you once belonged to. Was not the
proportion, even counting "rank & file party members as well as brnch
organizers etc -- was not that proportion to demonctrators considerable?
Same with those who went to Spain. Same with most of the PLA. Same with
most who turned out for SDS rallies. There were, if I remember
accurately, about 28 "Party Members" in LOngbow (the village in Hinton's
_Fanshen_, and Longbow was a small village. BUT not more than 2 or 3 of
those 28 really took any responsiblity for keeping the cell going,
planning, etc. I think the rough total membership of the CPC at the time
of liberation is known (though I don't know it or where to find out).
Probably that number should be divided by some number between 20 and 150
to get at the core cadre in each County. It took a lot of work by County
Central Committe Members to support, guide, sometimes manage, those 3 or
4 that were the core of the Communist Movement in Longbow.

I think Hobsbawm  is not far off. He is a good historical scholar om
addotopm tp javing been in the Communist Movement a long time.

In China Shakes the World, Belden tells of accompanyign a good size
group of guerillas who were not even controlled by the Party but acting
on their own. (Kidnapping and executing a landlorrd from a walled
village guarded by a contingent of Nationalist troops.) So the PLA (1)
was not made up mostly by CP members, and in addition to it there were
"Regular Guerillas" (controlled by the Party but not members) and fairly
substantial numbers of "Irregulars" (neither party members nor
controlled by the Party).

Carrol

Marv Gandall wrote:
> 
> Doug writes:
> 
> > On Dec 16, 2009, at 3:39 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> >
> >> Armed CP fighters alone - you can't get more "active" than that -
> >> numbered in the tens of thousands in Spain and occupied Europe, and
> >> the hundreds of thousands when China and other liberation movements
> >> are included, at the peak of the Comintern's global influence
> >> between 1935-45.
> >
> > Let me say this again, since people seem to be missing it: I think
> > Hobsbawm was talking about hardcore members, professional
> > revolutionaries, cadre, whatever you want to call them - and not the
> > rank and file or the infantry or whatever.
> ===========================
> Yes, but even excluding the PLA infantry, there were almost certainly more than 20,000 CP militants who fought in Spain and in the resistance movements throughout Nazi-occupied Europe in the course of a decade. On the other hand, if Hobsbawn was alluding only to full-timers employed by the party at all levels, 20,000 is a very impressive number, and probably an exaggeration. But we'd need to see the quote...
> 
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