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Account of McCarthy period slanders
socialist opponents of Stalinism
Review of Ellen Schrecker's Many are the Crimes:
McCarthyism in America
By Shannon Jones
24 March 1999
Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America by Ellen
Schrecker, Little, Brown and Company, 1998, 573 pages
Much has been written about the terrible impact of the
McCarthyite witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s on
American cultural and political life--the blacklisting
of
actors and writers, the purging of militants from the
unions, the stifling of critical thought. It was a
period of
unrelenting reaction, hundreds were jailed, thousands
more deprived of their jobs and livelihoods because of
their political beliefs. No area of creative endeavor
escaped
its impact.
The scars of McCarthyism are still everywhere
evident--the notoriously docile and subservient American
trade union movement; the banal and commercialized
Hollywood television and movie industry; the stultified
and conformist state of academia. In no major industrial
country in the world is intellectual and cultural life
so
constricted.
Given the advanced decay of American liberalism, as
manifested in the crisis of the Clinton administration
and
the growing influence at the highest levels of extreme
right-wing and outright fascistic forces in the United
States, a historical review of the origins and impact of
McCarthyism is of the utmost timeliness.
Any serious assessment of McCarthyism must consider
fore and center the criminal role played by the
Stalinist
Communist Party, which, by associating socialism with
terrible crimes against the working class, helped create
the political climate in which red-baiting could
flourish.
Long before Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy arrived on
the scene, the American Communist Party had earned
well-deserved hostility throughout the working class for
its
treacherous and deceitful politics and its ready use of
physical violence against opponents.
Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, published
last year by historian Ellen Schrecker, attempts a new
examination of the McCarthy period. While there is
important material detailing the impact of McCarthyism
on the American left, Schrecker's book distinguishes
itself
principally by its apologetic attitude toward Stalinism.
Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University,
spent more than 20 years studying the McCarthy period.
Her previous works on the subject include No Ivory
Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities and The Age of
McCarthyism. Schrecker's latest book gives a detailed
account of the impact of McCarthyism on a wide range of
American life. It follows the lives of several
McCarthyite
victims to illustrate the utter viciousness of the
red-baiting
campaign.
Parts of the book are informative. Many are the Crimes
documents the sinister role of the FBI in subverting
civil
liberties. It follows the attempt by the government,
backed
by the AFL-CIO, to destroy left-wing unions such as the
International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
and the Maritime Cooks and Stewards Union.
Schrecker gives an account of the attempts to stop the
production and distribution of the film, Salt of the
Earth,
an account of a strike by members of the Mine Mill union
against Empire Zinc in New Mexico. The project, an
effort
by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters, actors and
technicians, encountered ferocious resistance, including
attacks by a vigilante mob and the refusal of
technicians
to process and edit the film.
Sympathy for Stalinism
However, the work's positive material is more than
outweighed by the distortion introduced by the author's
sympathy for Stalinism. Particularly foul is the thesis
advanced by Schrecker that the socialist opponents of
Stalinism, in the first place Leon Trotsky and his
supporters, were part and parcel of the McCarthyite
attack on democratic rights. In the introduction
Schrecker
asserts there were, "many McCarthyisms, each with its
own agenda and modus operandii." She continues, "there
was even a left wing version composed of left wing
radicals who attacked Communists as traitors to
socialist
ideals."
The assertion that there were "many McCarthyisms" is
worthless as a basis for analysis because it makes no
distinction between antagonistic political tendencies
whose hostility to Stalinism was based on opposed
principles. The American Trotskyists, at that time
represented by the Socialist Workers Party, opposed the
CP on an anti-capitalist basis, citing its crimes
against
the interests of the working class. In contrast, the
McCarthyite red-baiters and their liberal allies
denounced the CP for allegedly trying to foment a
revolution in the US, a fantastic and absurd charge
based partly on ignorance and partly on conscious
deception
In an article entitled American Stalinism and
Anti-Stalinism, published in 1947 as the witch-hunting
heated up, US Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon
explained his organization's independent position. "We
Trotskyists, as everybody knows, are also against
Stalinism and have fought it unceasingly and
consistently for a very long time. But we have no place
in
the present 'all-inclusive' united front against
American
Stalinism. The reason for this is that we are
anti-capitalist. Consequently, we can find no point of
agreement with the campaign conducted by the political
representatives of American capitalism in Washington,
with the support of its agents in the labor movement and
its lackeys in the literary and academic world. We fight
Stalinism from a different standpoint.
"We fight Stalinism, not because it is another name for
communism, but precisely because of its betrayal of
communism and of the interests of the workers in the
class struggle. Our exposition of the question is made
from a communist point of view, and our appeal is
directed not to the exploiters of labor and their
various
reactionary agencies of oppression and deception, but to
the workers, who have a vital interest in the struggle
against the capitalist exploiters as well as against
perfidious Stalinism" ( The Struggle for Socialism in
the
American Century, James P. Cannon Writings and
Speeches 1945-47, New York, Pathfinder, 1977, p. 353).
In line with her attack on the left-wing opponents of
Stalinism, Schrecker obscures the central role played by
the American CP in preparing the ground for
McCarthyism. The CP was not a well-intentioned, albeit
flawed, revolutionary party, as suggested by Schrecker,
but a counterrevolutionary movement, whose crimes
against the interests of the working class generated
widespread antipathy that was exploited successfully by
demagogues such as the Senator from Wisconsin.
Schrecker deals in a cursory manner with the support
given by the American CP to the mass arrests and
executions carried out by the Soviet bureaucracy. Of the
attitude of the US Stalinists to the purges she says,
"At
the time, the American CP seemed to condone it all."
The record speaks for itself. The American CP
vociferously defended the Moscow trials and the murder
of
the entire generation of socialists that led the Russian
Revolution. Not only that, American Stalinism provided
personnel for bloody crimes, including the assassination
of Leon Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1940 (not
mentioned by Schrecker) and other left-wing figures such
as anarchist leader Carlo Tresca, who was gunned down
in New York in 1943. Within those unions which it
dominated, the American CP was notorious for the use of
goon squad violence against opponents.
Just two paragraphs of Many are the Crimes are devoted
to the Smith Act trial of 1941, which set a crucial
precedent for the later development of McCarthyism. In
the trial, the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party
was charged with conspiring to overthrow the
government. The attack on the SWP took place against a
background of US preparations to enter WWII. The US
government singled out the Trotskyists because they were
the only movement that sought to mobilize the working
class against the war.
Among the "evidence" brought against the SWP were the
writings of Lenin and Trotsky as well as basic writings
of
Karl Marx, such as the Communist Manifesto. While the
jury acquitted all the defendants on charges of
conspiracy, 18 were convicted and sentenced to prison
for
advocating the overthrow of the government.
In regard to the attitude of the CP leadership at the
time
Schrecker merely says, "Their wartime loyalty to FDR
and hostility to Trotskyism kept them from speaking out
against the Minneapolis prosecution."
In reality the American Communist Party enthusiastically
supported the prosecution of the SWP leaders, supplied
evidence to the prosecution and intervened to block
unions from raising money to support the defendants.
With the invasion by Hitler of the Soviet Union on June
22, 1941 the American CP adopted a position of
uncritical
support for US entry into the war. Echoing Stalin's
charges in the Moscow Trials, they claimed the American
Trotskyists were in alliance with Hitler.
During the years of the US-Soviet alliance against Nazi
Germany the American CP was the most enthusiastic
defender of the no-strike pledge. It encouraged speedup
and opposed attempts by workers to fight for higher pay
to
meet the cost of wartime inflation. During the 1943 coal
strikes the CP called for the arrest and execution of
United
Mine Workers President John L. Lewis on charges of
treason.
Trotsky attacked
On page 81 of Many are the Crimes the author levels a
serious and utterly false charge against Trotsky. After
pointing out that revulsion with Stalinism led some
formerly radical intellectuals to move in the direction
of
anticommunism, she suggests that Trotsky was following
the same trajectory. Schrecker writes, "In October 1939,
Trotsky apparently accepted an invitation to testify
before
HUAC [House Un-American Activities Committee], but
had to postpone his appearance because of the State
Department's refusal to give him a visa. He was about to
give a deposition to a member of the HUAC staff when he
was assassinated. One wonders what the old
revolutionary would have said; it is even more
interesting
to speculate what would have been done with his
statement."
The above incident occurred in 1938. The decision by
HUAC, then popularly known as the Dies Committee after
its chairman, Representative Martin Dies of Texas, to
invite Trotsky's testimony had been prompted by the
American Communist Party. In previous testimony before
HUAC, CP leaders had claimed that Trotsky was an
agent of Hitler.
Trotsky accepted the invitation to testify, not out of a
desire to aid the red-baiters, as Schrecker suggests,
but
in order to educate the working class about the nature
of
genuine communism as opposed to Stalinism. Explaining
that the invitation represented an opportunity to
elucidate
his political ideas, Trotsky wrote that workers "would
joyfully welcome every bold revolutionary word thrown in
the very face of the class enemy. And the more
reactionary the institution that serves as the arena for
the
combat, all the more complete is the satisfaction of the
worker" ( In Defense of Trotskyism, Leon Trotsky, New
Park, 1971, p. 109).
A major consideration by Trotsky was his desire to
expose
the Moscow Trials, where he was the chief defendant and
had been sentenced to death in abstentia. Trotsky's
attempt to expose the frame-up trials had been all but
silenced by the world press.
A less tendentious historian would have noted that the
ranks of the American CP itself supplied the largest
portion of the stool pigeons of the McCarthy period. As
Cannon aptly noted, "Never in history has any radical
organization yielded up so many informers, eager to
testify against it" ( James P. Cannon, Speeches to the
Party, Pathfinder, 1973, p. 130). The list of CP
renegades
is long, including notorious finks such as Whittaker
Chambers and former Daily Worker editor Louis Budenz.
Within the unions not a few formerly pro-Stalinist
bureaucrats such as Joseph Curran of the seamen and
Michael Quinn of the transport workers changed colors
and joined the red-baiters. The Hollywood branch of the
CP yielded its share of informers, including film
director
Elia Kazan, the center of the recent controversy around
the Oscar awards.
It should be noted that Schrecker recently defended the
decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences to honor Kazan with a "lifetime achievement"
award. Denying the obvious fact that the award is widely
seen as a slap in the face to the victims of the
McCarthy
witch-hunts in Hollywood, she claimed Kazan was being
recognized solely for artistic accomplishment.
Of course the wretched role of Stalinism does not
justify or
excuse those liberals, ex-socialists and ex-radicals who
went over to anticommunism. The participation of wide
layers of American radicals and liberals, first in the
defense of the Moscow Trials and later in the McCarthy
era persecutions, was a sorry and shameful chapter.
While intellectual and moral cowardice certainly played
a
large role, in the last analysis its origins lay in the
identification of Stalinism with Marxism.
This radically false view underlies Schrecker's
analysis.
While apparently advancing diametrically opposed
positions, her pro-Stalinist outlook and the school of
anticommunism share a common premise--the claim that
the Soviet regime as it developed under Stalin was the
embodiment of Marxist principles.
This is not the failure of Schrecker alone, but that of
several generations of American "left" intellectuals,
who
have never come to grips with the nature of Stalinism.
In
hundreds of so-called scholarly critiques of the Soviet
Union and its demise almost nothing of any substance
has been said of the prescient analyses made by Trotsky
of the nature of Stalin's Russia.
Many are the Crimes concludes by listing a series of
manifestations of intellectual stultification, which, it
is
asserted, represent the lingering impact of McCarthyism.
However, insofar as Schrecker bases her arguments on
the long discredited lies and falsifications of
Stalinism,
her work not only does not contribute to clearing the
air, it
adds to the odor.
See Also:
Hollywood Honors Elia Kazan: Filmmaker and informer
[20 February 1999]
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