Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 13:32:24 -0400 Subject: M-I: Ethan Young: POSTING ABOUT GIL GREEN (fwd) From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman) Ethan Young: ANOTHER POSTING ABOUT GIL GREEN The death of Gil Green raises a ton of political and historical questions which his memorials could only touch on. Will he be doomed to historical oblivion, a victim of the new era of "cold McCarthyism" in which academics are already rewriting the past century in the image of imperial triumphalism? I don't think so, because I believe that the actual role--positive and negative--played by the CPUSA in the course of this century will continue to be uncovered. And in this history, particularly on the positive side, Gil was center stage. Yet his actual life history as a party leader has yet to be seriously compiled. Within this history are the big themes, like the development of the Comintern's popular front, his leadership in the YCL during the depression, his leadership of the underground, his years in prison, his opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Lots of people spoke of these feats. There was little time for reflection on other themes, though. In particular I think a serious reappraisal of CP leadership since 1919 in light of Gil's career would be enlightening. It would not take much to show that Gil always stood head and shoulders above Gus Hall. But in terms of combining political brilliance, independence of mind, and sensitivity to both groups and individuals, he also outshone the other top leaders: Ruthenberg, Lovestone, Foster, Browder, and arguably Eugene Dennis and Henry Winston (both of whom walked through hell with Gil ever at their side). Undoubtedly Gil could and should have led the party nationally after Browder (see Jos. Starobin, *American Communism in Crisis*), and if he had been given the nod, I'm sure the history of the left from the 50s on would have been very different. Of course, it would have required support from the CPSU leadership--that is, Stalin--and acquiescence from warring factions. Dennis, a co-thinker of Gil's in advocating "mainstreaming" of the party, got the crown. Dennis was more of a behind-the-scenes type who was not as seasoned in inner-party combat. He promoted reform, but in the end Dennis proved no match for the backstabbing, ambition-driven Hall and the threat of excommunication from the CPSU (See Peggy Dennis's *Autobiography*). Gil, on the other hand, was able to challenge Hall publicly and stay in the party until he chose to leave. He made many compromises, and got his wings clipped, but who else ever pulled off such a feat? Gil conceivably could have been a leader on a par with Togliatti, who led the Italian CP when it was the largest postwar party in Italy, the largest postwar CP not in power, with deep roots in the urban and rural working classes. Look at Gil's leadership role in the 40s, years which are often painted as a mundane, win-the-war, follow-FDR period for the CP, but a decade in which the party reached its peak of membership and influence, followed by its rapid isolation under Truman, Hoover, HUAC, Walter Winchell and Taft-Hartley. In the late 30s and early 40s the CP undertook important electoral work, especially in New York where Gil was state secretary. Not only was the CP a mainstay of the American Labor Party and its (non-CP) standard bearer Vito Marcantonio, but it also conducted successful campaigns of its own for NYC city council: Ben Davis from Harlem and Pete Cacchione from Brooklyn. No way could the CP have won a campaign on the basis of its own political strength, even in neighborhoods where it was popular, like Brownsville or the lower east side. They needed the support of entire segments of the electorate that had no dreams of socialism or love for the world proletariat. Gil organized those successful campaign coalitions, which are hard to imagine even in retrospect. The subject of Stalinism was too sensitive for the NYC memorial, but it can't be ignored. As David noted in his on-line comments, there are people on the left who will never be able to see Gil as anything but a commissar, a political hit-man for a movement that had become an irremediable monstrosity. And there is no exaggeration, but a simple statement of historical record in saying that Gil had been a Stalinist. Not one who cherished the monarch's memory, but for decades a proud and outspoken leader of a Stalinist party, who undoubtedly did some dirty work over the years (not that we'll ever know how much). In the Duclos-Browder affair, he changed sides quickly (as did most every CPer); from a lieutenant of Browder he became a leader of the campaign, begun by the CPSU-led Comintern, to oust and demonize the once-lionized leader. And no one would argue that Gil was denied the top leadership spot out of fear in the CPSU of Gil's independence or doubt of his devotion. It cannot be denied that Gil's political persona was shaped in the highest ranks of the CP and Comintern, which in turn were formed if not controlled on the basis of Soviet-centered thinking, designs and purposes, in a period when the Soviet state was engaged in mass terror and carnage. But if this tarnishes Gil's historical profile, it also demonstrates that analyses of the CPUSA experience that try to boil it down to slavish Stalinophilia and/or class betrayal at home are far too simplistic. The arguments of left anticommunists like Phyllis and Julius Jacobson of *New Politics* demand an accounting for the crimes of Stalinism, a reckoning on the left in the name of redeeming socialism. But there is no altering of their rock-like conviction that to be a Stalinist was equivalent to being a gangster or a fascist. Ex-CPers and sympathizers carefully avoid the debate, leaving major political questions of their lives untouched. Retrospection is acutely painful for those who have given their lives to the communist movement, even as they are determined to put the disillusions of the last decade behind them. For many anti-Stalinists on the left (but not all--see Alan Wald in *Against the Current*), this reluctance only confirms that their assessment of these ones is as valid now as it was in 1939. But even at their most sectarian (the 20s to the early 30s), and at their most accomodationist (the mid 40s), the CP membership was arrayed--sometimes violently--against the most antidemocratic elements in the country: employers, Jim Crow, the mob, right-wing clergy, etc., even as they supported Stalin and opposed the anti-Stalinist left--sometimes violently. This paradox, which runs through CP history, is crystallized in Gil's life and work. It should be the subject of serious debate and reflection for a long time, throughout the left. Gil's own politics in later years combined what he experienced and summarized as the success of the popular front, and a deep loyalty to his party comrades. If Hall held to a lockstep with CPSU leadership until Gorbachev, Gil's thinking developed in parallel to that of the Eurocommunists--Berlinguer of Italy, Carillo of Spain, Marchand of France--while retaining a burning interest in more explosive political moments, like the revolutions in Cuba and Portugal. He helped formulate the CP's antimonopoly coalition program, an elaboration of the popular front targeting corporate power. In the 60s Gil "kept it real," working in the antiwar movement, where his coalition skills helped temporarily hold things together after the SWP split the national leadership and ultraleft dementia became fashionable. But this antisectarian approach was gradually eroded by the Hall regime. In the 70s, West 23rd Street insisted more on party-centered escapades like costly presidential campaigns, a daily paper that few read, and "united front" projects that rarely went beyond the CP periphery (with some important exceptions). On the whole these served little purpose but to shore up esprit de corps and impress the Soviets and other rich relatives. So why did Gil stay in the party so long? Clearly he was neither a splitter (on principle) nor a quitter (by disposition). But if he were to leave to make a political point, he had few chances. He was in jail when the party opposition around John Gates and Fred Fine was defeated, opening the way to Hall's rise to the top. The next time party leaders close to his thinking challenged the leadership, after Czechoslovakia, he stayed as Dorothy Healey, Al Richmond, Saul Wellman, Milt Cohen and others quietly filed out (See Richmond's great *A Long View from the Left* and Healey's *California Red*). He has indicated (in his interview with Anders Stephanson in *New Studies in the Politics and History of U.S. Communism*) that his decision was based on a concern that he would have no place to go--that he needed to work in a political organization, and not a factional one. He may well have concluded that no other group would have him. Most of the aforementioned comrades made their way into New American Movement, the post-new left group that eventually merged with Harrington's ex-SP group DSOC to form DSA. When that merger was being worked out, the presence of ex-CP leaders in NAM was a major sticking point for DSOC's longtime anticommunists like Irving Howe. It's true that, with the Soviet question aside, Gil's orientation--working in the Democratic Party, emphasis on economic reform demands, broad coalitions, etc.--was basically the same as DSA. But if Gil had ended up in DSA he probably would have been disappointed by its lack of dynamism and its nearly all-white, white-collar professional membership. When the final split came, of course, everything from the CP worth saving had found a new home in the COC, and unlike some of his contemporaries, there could be no turning back for Gil. Gil was not a "bottom-up" socialist as Hal Draper would define the tendency--neither in the tradition of Lenin's sympathetic critics (Luxemburg, Kollontai) nor Stalin's sworn enemies (CLR James, Daniel Guerin, the Jacobsons) nor even the great ex-CP dissidents of the UK, E.P. Thompson and Raymond WIlliams. It seemed to me he saw politics as contention between organized social sectors--each with a specific class interest, but all in struggle on the terrain of capitalist relations, in which democratic forms might or might not play a role. He did not foresee anything new on the scene that could transcend bourgeois democracy anytime soon, and so he counseled patience, cross-class alliances, long-term organizing, and a willingness to work in dirty old bourgeois institutions like the Democrats and right-wing unions. Anything that could hold back the tide of reaction was good; anything that made a big noise but left no palpable results was at best interesting. In this he was of one mind with most of his comrades in and out of the CP. The difference was that he always had his eyes and ears open for the new and unexpected, which he would assess on the basis of its ability to generate mass motion. He was quite willing to identify with gay activism (he was a big supporter of his very out city council member Tom Duane), despite decades of CP homophobia; he had no problem supporting the reform movement in the Teamsters, even though it was organized by the wicked old Trots. Finally, Gil was no saint, but something of a hero. Neither his feats nor his sins can be casually written off. Historically, he could be placed in a shadowy but honorable subcategory with figures like Sergei Kirov (party chief of Leningrad in the early 30s), Peng Dehuai (China's defense minister in the 50s), and Hu Yaobang (Deng Xiaoping's hand-picked successor to Mao as party leader), along with the world leader on whom Gil pinned many hopes, Gorbachev. These were men who rose within bureaucracies to positions of great power and esteem, both because and in spite of their talents and initiative. They used their power not to strengthen democracy per se, but to introduce elements of reason and practical planning from the top down, in situations where authority had gone haywire. In each case they were viewed as a mortal threat by their respective bureaucracies, who brought them down--with tragic aftermaths for the workers of their countries. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005