New Styles In Fellow-Traveling

...Where can such amorphous sentiments be found...

...They are not very interested in distinguishing between kinds of anti-Communism, whether of the right or left...

...What is new is the appearance of a younger group composed of students, intellectuals and semi-intellectuals who endow these sentiments with a color distinctly their own...

...The figure who has most won their imagination is Fidel Castro, who dared tweak Uncle Sam's nose, fought heroically, spoke rhetorically and dressed spectacularly...

...Now THESE ATTITUDES are obviously of unequal merit and some of them conflict sharply with others, yet all contribute to the political mood we are trying to isolate...

...For some pacifists the threat of atomic war overshadows everything else, and they subordinate their sincere dislike of Communist authoritarianism to their wish to end the Cold War, even if this means advocating policies that open them to the charge of "appeasement...

...Old leftists still nostalgic about the hopes they once had for the Soviet Union now wish the past could be forgotten and Stalinism, perhaps vindicated as a cruel historic necessity, be followed by an era of "liberalization...

...Its inner core remains static and immobilized, caught up in its political dilemmas...

...The following article forms part of an Epilogue to appear in the paperback edition, published by Praeger this coming winter, of The American Communist Party: A Critical History by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser...

...Yet the periphery of American Communism seems to have expanded somewhat, and more important, a political mood of a vaguely "progressive" kind is reappearing which may help the party survive, if not flourish...

...When they turn to politics, they have little concern for clear or precise thought...

...It is a mood that mixes cynicism about democracy with sharp critical insights into its failings in the United States, a mood that brings together a worship of power with a celebration of anarchic rebelliousness...

...At first glance this mood bears some semblance to the Popular Frontism of two decades ago...

...They indulge themselves in the provincialism of their generation, which is more a provincialism of time than space: as if nothing that happened before 1940 could possibly affect their lives...

...Certain "progressives" feel that the clash between the two major power blocs is a catastrophe in which they have no particular stake, that strong anti-Communism is unavoidably a veil for reaction, and that one must learn to live with the Communist states and parties...

...Also among "progressives" who do not consider themselves Marxists, a minority of pacifists, and vaguely radical students...

...Frequently, though least important, among certain old leftists...

...And the young radicals are too indifferent to traditional leftist politics even to consider the CP a serious option—for if they oppose efforts to persecute the Communists, they usually have no hesitation in brushing them aside...

...actually it is quite different...

...Castro suggested to these young radicals the possibility of a politics that was not yet functionally rationalized, and meanwhile they neglected to notice that it had become totalitarian...

...Here are some of its sources and components: —a general weariness and disillusion regarding the Cold War, together with the feeling that both sides, if not equally bad, are open to such severe criticism they do not merit the support of independent liberals and radicals...

...They believe that the "old political quarrels" are largely meaningless and can dismiss as equally passe those who had the acumen to oppose the Moscow trials and those deluded or cynical enough to support them...

...All the CP can do, then, is to wait...

...Such moods among the young were both encouraging and frustrating for the Communists...

...And in such organizations as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the "peace" groups formed in a few cities as splitoffs from SANE...

...They have no particular attachment to Russia or Communism, but dislike intensely the idea of an anti-Communist "crusade...

...But the Mao regime proved too grim, too repressive, too dogmatic...

...The old leftists are tired, the "progressives" too distant or cautious, the pacifists too sophisticated or suspicious...

...SUCH RESPONSES are familiar...

...Encouraging, because for the first time in some years there is accessible to them a small milieu in which to function with at least some freedom...

...It is a mood that has little to do with any interest in Communist ideas or Communist organization, yet is impatient with the claims, no matter who may make them, that the Communist movement is a major enemy of freedom...

...The party finds itself in a vexing position...

...If the future of the Communist Party seems dim, there have been some developments in the United States these past few years that should encourage those who believe the Soviet Union represents a force for historic progress...

...What attracts them is the surface of vitality, the appearance of freshness, the gesture of drama...

...Several years ago such young people were likely to be attracted to Communist China, which then seemed bolder and less "Victorian" than Khrushchev's Rjussia...

...Frustrating, because they cannot really take organizational advantage of this fact...

...An intelligent labor leader like Tom Mboya of Kenya does not interest them nearly as much as a demogogic orator like Patrice Lumumba of the Congo...

...a conviction that the big powers have become rigidly bureaucratic (or "square") while the true sources of political vitality can be found only in certain underdeveloped countries where the national leaders still have style, initiative and flavor...

...Among the disorganized but still numerous adherents of "the left," as also among a small number of college students, new political moods are discernible...

...They care more for style than conviction, and incline more to outbursts of energy than sustained work...

...Yet despite all these traits, which in their sum are bound to stir the impatience of older people, they are right in feeling the need to avoid errors of the past...

...For involved here is not the formal coherence of a party line or ideology, but an emotional-intellectual groping, a search for a new style of political response...

...They cannot, of course, share the memories of people over 40, but they are singularly, even willfully, uninterested in what happened before the Second World War, and like all too many members of their generation, they suffer from an astonishing lack of the historical sense...

...They were drawn to figures like Lumumba and Castro out of a distaste for the mania for industrial production which the Soviet Union shares with the United States, but they failed to see that these leaders of underdeveloped countries, who seemed attractive because they represented spontaneity and anarchic freedom, were themselves fascinated by precisely the same mania for industrial production...

...a discontent with American life which often takes the form of a nonpolitical estrangement, a denunciation of American foreign policy as inept and reactionary, and a critical attitude less dependent on Marxist categories than a distaste for American "materialism...

...a belief that the Soviet bloc has reached a point of stability, or as the matter is occasionally put, is "here to stay," so that all the talk about opposing (sometimes, even about resisting) Communism is felt to be irresponsible or an invitation to atomic war...

...an indifference to abstract ideologies in general and the ideological claims of the two powers in particular...

...These are not yet of special importance, but with time may become so...

...Since then they have been searching for new models and heroes, usually in the underdeveloped countries...

...their mistake is in assuming that to do so they should also avoid a knowledge of the past...