File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9707, message 86


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. 


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