Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jan 7, 2010, at 2:31 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > how important the activities of CP members,s ex-members, and 'fellow
> > travellers" were
>
> That's a point of considerable interest. How many of the better things
> in modern U.S. history would not have happened without the CP? Civil
> rights, tenants rights, union organizing - they were crucial to all of
> it, no?
Yes. The Party's contributions in the 1930s have been documented, though I personally have only dipped into the material. But (regardless of one's theoretical differences with them) they kept on plugging away in the 1950s and just _what_ they were doing and how it fed into the '60s needs to be studied. And it was not just the Party and Party members. I think large numbers of those who quit the party did not turn rightist but continued in various political activities, many of which fed importantly into both the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. CP members and ex-members, for example, were important in the Berkeley Free S0peech Movement, and the visibility of that had a cascading effect as it attracted people elsewhere to explore wider political options. It's a tangled tale (not helped ex-SWP members who can't drop their endless and pointless crusade against the "Stalinists.)
Carrol