Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 20:52:04 -0400
Subject: Re: Biography of Marx


>Fischer and Wolfe are both good within their limits, as older
>anticommunist works. Neither are rabidly anticommunist or crudely biased.
>Both knew the main participants and had been involved in the communist
>movement. But both accept the Lenin-Stalin equation.

I don't know the details about Fischer, but Betram Wolfe was a leading
Lovestoneite, followers of the Jay Lovestone, a leader of the American
Communist Party who came afoul of Stalin. The Lovestoneites were part of the
international right opposition (ie, connected to Bukharin) and existed as a
separate organization for many years. They eventually became social democrats
of a sort, and Lovestone was first an official of the ILGWU, and then the
head of the AFL-CIO's international section for a number of years.
There is a very interesting book, Robert J. Alexander, _The Right
Opposition:The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of
the 1930s. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.), on the topic. Wolfe's
evolution was more along the lines of the ex-Trots Rorty and Burnham; he was
a chief ideologist of the State Department's International Broadcasting
Service during the 1950s (a real State Department socialist) 
 


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