A Life in Two Centuries
Beichman, Arnold
A LIFE IN TWO CENTURIES Bertram Wolfe / Stein & Day / $24.95 Arnold Beichman ay Lovestone, the one-time Communist Party leader who in later life became a most effective anti-Communist...
...And just imagine how it will bc in }'ears to come...
...Finally, I believe, the matter was discussed with Senator Karl Mundt, who then discussed it with Senator Joe McCarthy, and all was quiet...
...From 1820 to 1960, of the legal immigrants to the United States, 82 percent came from Europe...
...This may not sound like much, but a quarter of a century ago during the post-Stalin era, many Left liberals, permanently melioristic about the course of Soviet policy, polluted the vocabulary of politics with illusionist phrases like "liberalization," "the thaw," "the new look," "collective leadership," and others...
...Let both t o t a l i t a r i a n powers destroy each other and then let America use " h e r magnificent resources to help a ruined Europe to liberate and rebuild herself' is the way he describes his feelings at the time...
...Which reminds me of another story: This one is bout Earl Browder who was expelled from the CP-USA in 1945 when Stalin no longer bad any need for the wartime "united front" policy with the United States...
...plus $2.00 delivery charge first bottle, 50 cents each additional one...
...That would not happen without immigration...
...SAVE UP TO 90% ON PERFUNES We've created our versions of Opium, Bal A Versailles, Joy, Oscar de la Renta, 1000, L'Air du Temps, Chloe, Shalimar, Norell, Halston Night, etc...
...We were, a r e , and will be a nation of immigrants and their descendants (with the possible exception of the 0.6 p e r c e n t of our population who are American Indians...
...we are unique in the world because we come from all over the world...
...Don't worry...
...It is alleged that "immigrants take jobs awayfrbm native Americans...
...Stalin permitted Browder to come to Moscow to a p p e a l his expulsion...
...And the Chinese...
...His book, Three Who Made a Revolution, is regarded as a seminal work and ought to be must reading for statesmen who deal with the Soviet Union...
...And in the 1970s, only 18 percent...
...American birth rates have shrunk so low that we are "below replacement," as are most of the other advanced industrialized nations...
...Is this good...
...Because so many Americans came from England and because so much of our culture was English...
...The moral of Wolfe's story is that of a man who, born with a deep sense of humanism and ethics, ignored the meaning of his own c h a r a c t e r to promote what he was sure would be a paradise on earth, one without war and poverty...
...The right wing, Walecki told Stalin, was persuaded easily enough by Walecki's arguments to support Stalin, but the left-wing had to be threatened by Walecki with expulsion and other reprisals before finally capitulating...
...From China and Hong Kong, 26,000 to 205,000...
...Look at some immigration numbers from selected countries comparing the whole decade of the fifties with the first nine years of the seventies...
...This article is adapted from Mr...
...So, we will be growing when Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan will be diminishing in population...
...Since Day One of the USA, we have had a " s p e c i a l rela_tionship" with the English...
...But in the late 1960s, only 34 p e r c e n t of our immigrants came from Europe...
...From Mexico, 300,000 to 583,000...
...A rising black consciousness in America has changed our policies in Africa...
...No, we will support the left-wing and destroy the right-wing," Stalin is reported to have replied...
...Had Stalin's power been greater in t929, the year that Lovestone, Wolfe, and Wolfe's majority in the CP-USA leadership were given a kangaroo trial in Moscow, both men would have probably suffered one of those fatal accidents or mysterious assassinations which were the common f~ate of Stalin's opponents...
...Then there is the potential problem that so many Mexicans in t h e American Southwest could in the f u t u r e a g i t a t e for an "American Quebec" with all the a t t e n d a n t problems of bilingualism and biculturalism...
...Of course, all this gets the State Department fi)lks upset...
...Ben ff...
...The Lovestone story came to mind while reading Wolfe's chapter, "The Factional War in the American Party and the Comintern...
...Men's colognes too...
...They are from the other places--Latin America and Asia...
...9 When Lovestone, Wolfe, and their allies were expelled, they formed their own Communist opposition group, opposition more or less to Stalin but not to Communism, because they had not yet overcome their loyalty to a fictitious proletariat and a so-called vanguard party...
...Our new immigrants, in short, are not from where our earlier immigrants were from--Europe and Africa...
...It may be t h a t I have been somewhat unjust by devoting so much space to Wolfe's political life and ignoring his often amusing and scholarly chapters on Diego Rivera, on Wolfe's adventures in revolutiontorn Spain in 1937, his devotion to Hispanic literature and his Cervantes studies, or his early life as a Jewish boy growing up in Brooklyn...
...It was this same Kennan who discovered that following Stalin's death, the new Soviet regime was moving "away from the horror of unadulterated police intrigue, and in the direction of a rudimentary parliamentarianism...
...Now this wishing.not-to-see what one does see, this wishing to see as one sees, is almost the first condition for all those whoare party in any sense: of necessity, the party man becomes the liar . . . . Tile mad of faith is not free to have any conscience at all for questions of "true" and "untrue": to have integrity on thL~: point would at once destroy him...
...The number of immigrants from India went from 2,000 to 143,000...
...That has changed...
...A LIFE IN TWO CENTURIES Bertram Wolfe / Stein & Day / $24.95 Arnold Beichman ay Lovestone, the one-time Communist Party leader who in later life became a most effective anti-Communist foreign policy adviser to George Meany, once told me a story about Stalin, whom he and Bertram Wolfe knew personally in the 1920s, the early years of the Communist revolution, before Stalin had consolidated his dictatorial power...
...But wc don't really know that...
...For openers, though, you could take the Cubans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Chinese and have a p r e t t y good chorus of anti-Communists...
...Arnold Beiahman's essay, "The Myth o f American Fascism," will appear in Four Myths, a collection of essays forthcoming from the Heritage Foundation...
...We took in 2.5 million legal immigrants in the fifties and 3.3 million in the sixties...
...Until recently only half of that statement was true...
...What will the Vietnamese want...
...That's why he died in bed in 1953 while his opponents were executed in the Lubianka or starved to death in the Gulag...
...And because we have so many Jews, we support Israel with more vigor than any other nation does...
...In 1950, he accepted appointment to the Voice of America as chief of the Ideological Advisory Staff of the State Department...
...The left-wing, however, acted out of fear and, therefore, will remain loyal...
...It can cause problems and solve problems...
...t.$15.00 per oz...
...For to Stalin, as to Lenin, it was far more important to control the party machinery than to allow an independent revolutionary radicalism to flourish-independent, that is, of the Party Secretary's will and decision...
...Lenin's 1902 pamphlet llP'hat Is To Be Done...
...There is also the problem 0f jobs...
...A New York, NY 10005 212-344-4288 Serving Wall Street area since 1895 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FFBRUARY 1982 39...
...Reading Wolfe's posthumously published autobiography I recalled Lovestone's story, which goes something like this: It seems that one H. Walecki, Stalin's Comintern representative, reported to Stalin after a Polish Communist Party meeting which had been sharply divided over whether or not to support Stalin's takeover of the Comintern from Nikolai Bukharin...
...He writes in his autobiography: When I contemplate the massive growth of our national budget and our national bureaucracy, the enormous quantity of paper shufflers, elected by no one, and not responsible to the people, when I see how legislators, executives, and judges act, and, of their own regulations of local and state entities, of schools, colleges, universities and private enterprise of every description, I sometimes think that we, too, are marching unconsciously into a kind of state socialism, marching back38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 wards into socialism even as we shout free markets and free enterprise...
...Cons i d e r a few numbers to gain a flavor of w h a t ' s happening...
...As if h e e d l e s s of Clemenceau's famous dictum, Wolfe remained curiously faithful to his early socialist and later Communist beliefs until his early forties...
...All this means a g r e a t deal to America...
...What he ignored for a time and, perhaps, even for too long, was that it is not possible to be a Communist or other kind--if there is any other kind--of totalitarian and not lie to oneself...
...His was an eventful life as radical publicist, Communist organizer, litte'rateur, a student of Spanish l i t e r a t u r e and philosophy, and, above all, an influential Sovietologist...
...Well, there are some populous countries that are not powerful and influential...
...But we were not--not re_allyifrom "everywhere...
...Since it was Stalin, however, who had ordered the expulsion in the first place (via an article by the then French Communist leader, Jacques Duclos, in Cabiers du Communisme) the appeal was doomed...
...It was an appointment which occasioned some difficulty because of Wolfe's Communist past and~the story might be apocryphal-because in filling out the State Department job application form he gave as name and address of his only employer up until that time, "Josef Stalin, The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR...
...From Haiti, 4,000 to 50,000...
...California is receiving too many Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos-and they don't speak Spanish...
...Wattenberg's bi-monthly United Feature Syndicate column...
...Wolfe worked for VOA until 1954...
...Browder returned to the U.S...
...Disgraced though he was by the party which he had Commanded for Stalin for some fifteen years, Browder insisted that the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership was still mankind's best hope...
...His proneutralism became even s t r o n g e r after Hitler's attack on his erstwhile ally, Stalin, in June 1941...
...Not only have the proportions changed, the amounts have changed...
...Pre-Columbian Art GODDESS OF ;dEW M00N--only one of many collectible rubbings Of Maya lemple rulnsf Color ~ [ ~ catalog $2 (deductible with order) BERNARDO . ~ ~ - 2400 Weslhermer #108W(t) Houston TX 77098...
...We are well on the way to becoming the first truly universalist nation...
...Send for tree sample and fragrance list...
...And the Mexicans, Cubans, Ecuadorians, and Indians...
...italits in original] [ I S P E C T A T O R'S J O U R N A L THIS NEW NATION OF IMMIGRANTS by Ben J. Wattenberg P a r t of the American folk mythology has been: "We are a nation of immigrants...
...So, I recommend," said Walecki to Stalin, "that you favor the Polish party's right-wing because you can reason with them, not the left-wing which is supporting you out of fear...
...They sometimes think there can be an American foreign policy that deals with fore i g n e r s but not with Americans...
...It's never been tried before...
...The State Department was aghast but there was no denying the truth...
...Smart bastard, that Stalin...
...The figure for the seventies is calculated to be 4.3 million...
...Every day more so, we Americans are from everywhere...
...Communist Party and replaced them with obedient, servile types like Earl Browder...
...Every election year.they are educated afresh...
...Wattenberg is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...But there are no powerful and influential nations that are not populous...
...had set the course for the revolutionto-come, and Stalin, when he began his struggle for power after Lenin's death in 1924, followed Lenin's lead...
...Who knows...
...lying to others is relatively an exception...
...Estimating the illegals, also mostly from Latin America and Asia, the totals could easily be doubled...
...But then, Wolfe at the outset of World War II was also a die-hard isolationist who, despite Hitler, thought the United States ought to remain neutral...
...The number of Filipino immigrants went from 19,000 to 312,000...
...Essential Products Co., Inc...
...It will be a different country in the decades to come...
...he arrival of immigrants to this nation in these last two centuries has been one of the wondrous stories of humankind_ It will probably work out fine as yee change from a folk that comes from many places to a folk that comes from most places...
...Where we were from was Europe (voluntarily) and Africa (involuntarily...
...90 Water St., Dept...
...George Kennan was predicting an "erosion of despotism" in the Soviet Union and writing in J u n e 1957 that "when [Khrushchev] says that the time has come when it would be well if we would cease to regard each o t h e r as robbers, I think he might just have something here...
...And consider foreign policy...
...None of this was obvious to Lovestone, the American party's executive secretary, or Wolfe, then working in Moscow for the Comintern...
...And so today, because we have so many GreekAmericans, we have a problem when we want to send arms to Turkey...
...Challenged in some Brooklyn hall to debate by Max Shachtman, a one-time Trotskyite leader who had r e t u r n e d to democratic socialism, Browder opened with a slavish speech about Stalin and the Great October Revolution, ignoring the fact that he, too, had been purged from leadership by Stalin...
...Beyond that the numbers were Very smallB demographic drops in the ethnic ocean...
...Every immigrant group u l t i m a t e l y has a claim on American diplomacy...
...In addition, there were some sizable numbers of Americans of Mexican descent and smaller pockets of Japanese and Chinese...
...From Vietnam, 3,000 to 132,000...
...This can be a short-term pl~enomenon, if sometimes a painful and tragic one...
...Shachtman rose to the rebuttal, came forward, and, pointing his finger at the now-seated Browder, said in a quiet, dramatic voice: "There, but for the accident of geography, sits a corpse...
...Wolfe's most significant contribution to Soviet studies was his insistence, as Leonard Schapiro points out in the introduction, that the defects of the Soviet system are not "temporary aberrations, in a "potentially perfect system, but vices inherent in the very mechanism of power that Lenin and his followers had created...
...But, on balance, hardworking people c r e a t e wealth and jobs, for themselves and for the nation in which they live...
...But l a t e r immigrants weren't from England...
...Since the right-wing's support is based on conviction, the right-wing may someday withdraw that support out of conviction...
...All this may turn out to yield a change in the n a t u r e of our nation that can profoundly affect our attitudes, our foreign policy, our economy, our domestic tranquility, and, indeed, our manifest destiny...
...from what might have been the d r a g o n ' s mouth, singing Stalin's praises...
...B e r t Wolfe was 81 when he died in 1977, a respected senior scholar at the Hoover Institution...
...From Cuba, 79,000 to 251,000 From Ecuador, 10,000 to 44,000...
...And in August 1955, shortly a f t e r the Geneva summit meeting, the New Statesman came out with the blinding editorial revelation that " t h e Cold War was suddenly called off at Geneva because both sides recognized that [their mutual] suspicions were entirely unfounded...
...Wolfe's 700page autobiography is itself part of the absorbing history of American radicalism going back to the days before World War I and through the Russian Revolution, one of whose effects in the United States was to inhibit the development of an American revolutionary movement...
...Toward the end of his life, Wolfe even gave up his early socialism...
...It was also why, in June 1929, he kicked Lovestone and Wolfe out of the U.S...
...Even among anti-Communist liberals t h e r e was the d e s - perately held belief that the growth of "the new class" of Soviet engineers, intellectuals, scientists, and white collar workers would effectively restrain Khrushchev from the adventurism and tyrannies of the Stalin regime...
...Wolfe wrote widely about Soviet affairs and what should be done to thwart Russia's global ambitions...
...Yet 26 of his 40 chapters are wholly political in content, and understandably more compelling...
...It means that if we keep it up we will continue to grow as a country for a long time...
...What Wolfe was fighting was the dominant culture of the time which forgave Khrushchev even after the invasion of Hungary, and which regarded Mao's China as the Land of Beulah...
...From Korea, 6,000 to 236,000...
...Nietzsche once wrote: The most common lie is that which one lies to oneself...
Vol. 15 • February 1982 • No. 2
