BOOK REVIEW Let Them Tremble: Biographical Interventions Marking 100 Years of the Communist Party, USA, by Tony Pecinovsky, New York: International Publishers, 2019, 422 pp., US$19.95 (paperback), ISBN 9780717807697
Pecinovsky adopts a thought-provoking approach to the history of the Communist Party USA. Through profiles of six U.S. party members, he pledges to produce “an easily accessible collection of narratives.” He uses each as a gateway to a theme or several areas of party activism, such as anti-imperialism, the peace movement, the struggle for racial equality, the fight for civil liberties, and the student upsurge in the 1960s: there is too little on the labor movement, however. “This project,” he explains, is thus “not a complete history of the CPUSA.” But he aims at “a sincere attempt to modestly add some nuance and complexity” in clear fashion for the edification of people new to the subject. The author has done good research in the Party archives at the Tamiment Library of New York University. Moreover, his use of secondary sources is thorough and up-to-date. In conveying why people joined the Party, he devotes himself to salient moments in the life and work of Arnold Johnson Judith LeBlanc, Henry Winston, W. Alphaeus Hunton, Gus Hall, and Charlene Mitchell. Ohioan Arnold Johnson, whom Pecinovksy employs as a window to Party work for civil liberties and free speech, was an inspired choice. By background, Johnson was originally a Christian socialist. Educated at New York’s Union Theological Seminary in the mores of the social gospel, he earned degrees in Christian Education and divinity. He joined leftwing pas- tor A.J. Muste’s Conference for Progressive Labor Action, which backed labor organizing, and then went into the CPUSA in the 1930s. Says Pecinovsky, “Johnson was deeply religious, but he was also practical...” One may ask why the “but” is necessary, but further development of Johnson’s origins in radical Christianity would have greatly enriched the profile. In this connection, Pecinovsky might have made better use of Johnson’s Papers. Pecinovsky moves quickly from the 1940s to the 1960s in tracing Johnson’s participation in the campus movements for free speech after the McCarthy period. This chapter covers the fight for the free speech rights of Communists effectively, Pecinovsky documenting the hard-earned campus appearances of Johnson, Benjamin Davis, Dorothy Healey, Gus Hall, and others. He stresses that early 60s student protests included the right of collegians to hear Communists speak on campus. On this score, the Johnson chapter is somewhat repetitive. Finally, Pecinovsky traces Johnson’s role in the anti-Vietnam war movement, wherein he represented the CPUSA in the foremost peace action coalition and helped develop the Party’s activity in the broadest sense. Several fragments go by unexplained, for example that another coalition was dominated by the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, assuming the readers – particularly the new ones he hopes to enlighten – know what this means. W. Alphaeus Hunton, the African-American scholar and veteran civil rights worker whose pioneering work on independence movements included living and working in newly independent African countries, is also an excellent choice. Pecinovsky outlines Hunton’s close friendship with Paul Robeson, and their work together in the Council on African Affairs. Moreover, he was the main compiler of the Encyclopedia Africana initiated by W.E.B. DuBois. Pecinovsky demonstrates Hunton’s early recognition of the relationship between US racism and South African apartheid, and in fact the impact of US experience on apartheid’s architects. Likwise he shows Hunton’s more than casual study of the relationship of African independence and socialist movements with the civil rights upsurge in the United States. Pecinovsky finds Hunton’s observation of the importance of “middle class intellectuals” in African independence a rejection of “a rigid Marxism rooted in the primacy of the working class.” Though perhaps an over-simplification, several of the other profiled figures exemplified the very rigidity from which Hunton diverged. To credit Hunton on this score inspires curiosity about whether Pecinovsky deals with the stated views of Gus Hall or Judith LeBlanc on working class “primacy.” Essentially, he doesn’t. The author cites Hunton’s Papers held by the Schomburg Center in New York; however the reference notes do not adequately make his usage of these materials clear. Pecinovsky links Henry Winston, longtime national chair and before that organizational secretary of the Party, to CPUSA work against colonialism, racism, and South African apart- heid. Winston was one of the first leaders convicted under the Smith Act, and like other leaders went “underground” after the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of guilty. Pecinovsky might have mentioned that the decision was for this fugitive leadership to remain in the USA and help provide guidance, which Winston did. Due to deliberate prison neglect of his health, Winston lost his sight. Pecinovsky makes particularly good use of the Winston correspondence in the Party archives. Though somewhat repetitively detailing the early 60s student demands to hear Reds speak on campus, Pecinovsky devotes an interesting portion to Winston’s and the Party’s view of armed self-defense by African-Americans against police repression. The chapter’s strength lies in outlining the Party’s role in the US anti-apartheid movement, a manifestation of the “Red-Black alliance.” Pecinovsky also details Winston’s contribution to the three-pronged Party’s electoral work: supporting and working with progressive Democrats, backing third-party candidates when appropriate, and running Party members for office at certain moments. The author describes Winston’s warmth, humor, and smile; however, all the chapters could have gained from more of the human touch. He might have assessed how Winston and Gus Hall worked together. The profile of Winston necessarily includes contextual situations that Pecinovsky’s thematic and biographical concision has no room to explain. He attributes the CPUSA’s loss of membership in the 50s chiefly to internal problems, not McCarthyite repression: “infighting, factionalism, sectarianism, the Khrushchev revelations, and the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.” In light of his desire to make Party history accessible to readers, none of this explained. Another interesting figure of more recent times is Judith LeBlanc: a leader in the peace and Native American justice movements. Pecinovsky offers a useful tracing of development of the Party position on Native American rights. However, details on her work in Boston prior to emerging as a national figure in the Party’s youth work are far too scanty. In fact, the author deals too casually with the backgrounds of all six subjects. He neglects to mention the interesting series of Party-led campaigns before LeBlanc’s prominence within it, notably the running of Pat Bonner-Lyons for Boston school board. LeBlanc herself would run for office in 1976. In any case, LeBlanc went on to become in turn the Party’s cadre sec- retary, then organizational secretary, and a vice-chair. Pecinovsky gives her later prominence in United for Peace & Justice proper focus. He explains that peace activism brought LeBlanc into contact with peace movements worldwide, for example in Japan, where Communists played an important role. In fact, while there, LeBlanc met with a prominent leader of the Japanese Communist Party, which the author recalls the CPUSA had attacked as “revisionist” in the 70s (for which Pecinosvky offers no other information). Relevant to the sharpening internal Party debates in the 80s and 90s in which LeBlanc was prominent, Pecinosky writes: “Largely absent from the party’s analysis was an understanding of the ongoing and precipitous decline of those traditionally seen by Communists as constituting the key link in the chain of the working class, industrial workers.” Referring to the early 90s, he continues “The party’s ‘industrial concentration’ pol- icy marred Communist organizing and tied its recruitment to an ever-smaller section of workers ... ” This “isolated some party leaders from the emerging movements then springing into action as the economy continued to change.” One might have expected to see these critical insights better connected to the profiles of LeBlanc and Gus Hall, who represented such leaders. The chapter on Gus Hall focuses on the latter’s relationship to the youth and student move- ments. This holds interest. While paying too little attention to Hall’s own youth and labor organizing (but for several hagiographic quotes), Pecinovsky makes an interesting case that Hall’s numerous appearances on college campuses contributed to a decline of anti-communism among young people amidst the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s. Pecinovsky describes (somewhat repetitiously) Hall’s college speeches, not only their content but also the atmosphere surrounding them, as for example Hall’s 1962 visit to the University of Oregon. Once Pecinovsky’s mini-biography reaches the point when Hall became Party General Secretary (1959), he elaborates on the latter’s support for Marxist and left youth organizations, culminating in the founding of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs in 1964. He employs a variety of sources, including abundant citations from contemporary youth leaders who later quit the Party in large numbers. The author correctly notes that Hall was among the first to go underground after conviction under the Smith Act. He does not mention that contrary to Party guidelines for under- grounders, Hall left the country. Of curiosity is the information that Hall ran a gas station for a while, following his release from prison. Analyzing the intersection of Hall’s politics and persona, Pecinovsky writes of Hall’s consistent optimism and eschewing of dogmatism. Under Hall, he maintains, the Party began to speak to millions, a claim the author might have investigated more deeply. But his assertion that “Hall, however, was always self- critical,” inspires questions if not doubt. Numerous sources, including hundreds cited in his book, say otherwise. It is difficult to assess Hall without dealing, even in passing, with Hall’s role in the 1991 split in the CPUSA, but Pecinovsky manages to do so. The author profiles Charlene Mitchell in the context of her work against political and racist repression. As with others, little scrutiny is given to Mitchell’s early life, including her early years in the Party: she became a member of the National Committee in 1957, at the age of 27. Again, Pecinovsky reiterates the early 60s emergence of Party spokespersons on campuses and the point that Communists had much to do with rejection of McCarthyism. But Mitchell presented anti-capitalist arguments in a Stanford speech in such terms that the author questions her sense of tact. And he does this with no one else, more than once. But he credits her Marxist critique of higher education. Mitchell ran for president on the Communist Party ticket in 1968, the first such candidate in nearly 50 years. The author wonders about the limits of Party support for her, though rejecting the suggestion that Gus Hall himself was unenthused. In a critical vein, Pecinovsky believes Mitchell exaggerated “the impact her candidacy would have on the presidential elections.” Though he imputes to her a certain narrowness, Pecinovsky grants that contextual issues complicated Mitchell’s presidential run: “Divisions were also growing within the party in the wake of the Paris and Prague Springs, which complicated the overall political calculus.” Nevertheless, he supplies no revelation of his meaning, or even of the terminology. But he aptly highlights her leadership of the 70s campaign to free Angela Davis, spear- heading the national and 200 committees arising in the process, out of which resulted the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR). As a result of this work, a good number of people joined the Party. He indicates that her activity continued the work of William L. Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress twenty years earlier. The NAARPR had broad appeal and messages over and beyond the defense of political prisoners: labor rights, anti-apartheid, the right to organize, against imperialism and war. Some might have felt that the NAARPR paralleled or stole the thunder of the party in some respects, perhaps leading to suspicions of her motives. Still, Mitchell in 1990 affirmed as before the socialist goal and the necessity of the Party. “Nevertheless,” writes Pecinovsky, “only one year later Mitchell, along with other party leaders, including Angela Davis and Herbert Aptheker, left the CPUSA and helped form the Committees of Correspondence. Mitchell said this departure was due to a lack of internal democracy within the CPUSA.” Not an ounce of elaboration accompanies this passage. Pecinovsky’s goal of conveying the Party’s role through six brief biographies is admirable. But there are weaknesses to his method. While something instructive may be observed from each, they were exclusively national leaders or national figures. The majority lived in New York City most of their lives, regardless of where they came from. Inclusion of rank-and-file and non-New York based members among his subjects would have strengthened the book. The majority of Pecinovsky’s subjects lived and worked at roughly the same time (with the general exception of LeBlanc) resulting in inevitable duplication of material and arguments, and in some cases, identical language. Profiling someone from the Party’s earliest years could have rectified this. Within Pecinosky’s profiled exhibition of Party work and leaders, certain points require elucidation, or else the reader will be mystified. He need not have wrestled with historical dilemmas: his book had a different purpose. But Pecinovsky’s chancing references to contro- versy leaves the reader who is newly arriving at an interest in history of the Party in limbo. He mentions the ties of the CPUSA to the Soviet Union, footnoting financial ties, without explanation; the military intervention by the Soviet Union and several other countries in Czechoslovakia in 1968 appears as if in a slideshow: just a picture. Is there anything at all that might be added, without subtracting from making Party history thematically accessible? Arnold Johnson and others backed the dissolution of the Party under Earl Browder in 1944: might a word or two of Pecinovsky’s insight illuminate this a bit? Pecinovsky speaks briefly of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, in the chapter on W. Alphaeus Hunton, to the extent that the pact induced an “ideological whiplash” in the CPUSA. For sure, he means the changeover from seeing fascism as the main enemy to viewing all the capitalist nations in the first years of World War II as equally wrong. But he does not say what he means, at this and other junctures. The book nevertheless contributes to understanding the work of the CPUSA, with the exception of the labor movement: a serious omission. It is useful to have a generally well- researched volume documenting Party actions in vital areas, particularly in light of the allegation that the CPUSA ceased to exist in 1956. Sooner or later though, Party adherents must come to grips with deeper problems in its history. Daniel Rosenberg Adelphi University [email protected] https://doi.org/10.1080/14743892.2020.1729003 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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