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On Sep 4, 2012, at 6:13 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Max Sawicky
>
>
> There is no other movie where U.S. communists get to tell their
> stories. Glossing over the black struggle is a deficiency, though in
> the story proper you'd have to ask if John Reed or his Greenwich
> Village milieu had much contact with that struggle. If not, the story
> is a little more defensible.
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB: One of main principles that Communist Party was founded on in
> distinguishing itself from the Socialist Party from which it split (
> an act portrayed in the movie "Reds") was designation of Black workers
> as specially oppressed, and that the struggle against white supremacy
> required a special struggle along side of the class struggle.
> Socialist Party, Debs , took opposite position on this issue. I don't
> think Reed was in fact involved in any special struggles against white
> supremacy , so , it's not in the movie. See _The Cry was Unity_ by
> Mark Solomon on this national question in the early
> CPUSA. https://www.google.com/webhp?source=search_app#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=mark+solomon+the+cry+was+unity&oq=mark+solomon+the+cry&gs_l=hp.1.0.0i30.77085.81663.0.83853.20.15.0.4.4.0.177.1965.0j15.15.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Z_znvqOZv1I&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=2a9229fc3c37bd96&biw=1440&bih=783
>
>
> By the way, "Reds" has a sort of political microcosm of the betrayal-
> of- revolution (speaking of Trotsky) -by -the- Democratic- Party trope
> we live so much around here. Reed goes as a delegate ( I thought ;
> below says "to cover") to the Democratic
> Convention in 1916 Wilson ran promising he would not
> take us into WWI . Then Wilson broke his promise (shocking)
>
> "...Through her writing, Louise becomes a feminist and radical in her
> own right. Reed becomes involved in labor strikes with the "Reds" of
> the American Communist Labor Party. Obsessed with changing the world,
> he grows restless, and heads for St. Louis to cover the 1916
> Democratic Convention. During Reed's absence, Louise falls into a
> complicated affair with the alcoholic playwright Eugene O'Neill. Upon
> his return, Reed discovers the truth about the affair and realizes he
> still loves Louise. The two marry secretly and make a home together in
> Croton-on-Hudson, north of New York City, but still have conflicting
> desires. "
>
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