Michael, it's probably time to re-read the essay by Noam Chomsky in AMERICAN POWER > AND THE NEW MANDARINS entitled "The Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste" > ---which focuses on "the Pacific War" >
I remember reading that essay somewhere around 45 years ago. When you read something in your youth (I was still in high school) it sticks to your ribs and neurons. So perhaps some of what I say above comes from that and not just my little knowledge of the CPUSA. But I want to clarify something above, mainly because it is a point that I have changed my mind about over the years. I said, > *"Then you had to go about finding justification for your forked > principles."* My training is in the history of science and lat one time, I studied the uses of game theory by non-mathematicians, so sometimes I use terms that are strange in a moral context (i.e. *forked ranges *when game theory is applied to poker.) The principles of the CPers of the '30s were not deterministically guided by a love of Stalin, Soviet foreign policy, or even the party line. In my youth, as a kind of kneejerk Trotskyist, I would have argued the opposite. But knowing more and more about the history of CPUSA organizing in the South, in Harlem, and in urban Black neighborhoods across the U.S., I now know *my kneejerk and uninformed opinions were wrong* . There were crucial issues that attracted people like your father to the Party and one of those issues was opposition to the oppression of African-Americans. As for myself, I want to make clear that in the last 20 years I have gradually come to the conclusion that no group in the U.S during the 1930s., no matter how clumsy in their strategy or how disastrously wrong in their support of Stalin, no radical group dedicated so much of their meager time and resources to anti-racist politics, organizing in the South, justice for northern Blacks, and civil rights in general as did the CPUSA. I speak of *forked *principles is for the following reason: It seems to me that, during the 1930s and 40s many people in and around the CPUSA started thinking on two tracks at the same time. They defended things about the Party that could not be defended and, at the same time, this allowed them to keep their "faith" and "hope" in a future where they could fight for a decent life for oppressed people. I don't know how fully conscious this was with most people but for some, I think there was something Jesuitical about this reasoning. I mean this seriously. There was a kind casuistry that allowed people to comprise their principles at one end so that they could defend their principles at the other. Jerry On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 3:32 PM Michael Meeropol <[email protected]> wrote: > in reply to Jerry's post --- it's probably time to re-read the essay by > Noam Chomsky in AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS entitled "The > Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste" ---which focuses on "the Pacific War" > ---don't remember it will, except that Noam used it as a way of "testing" > whether principled pacifism could "work" in the context of WW II ... > > > >> >> > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1001): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1001 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76488407/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
