The Choice Of "Comrades "
Howe, Irving
Since the following statement was written, we have learned that a Congressional Committee headed by Senator Eastland is proposing to "investigate" the "American Forum-for Socialist Education"...
...and for some, perhaps, it has become difficult to feel the traditional pieties it once aroused...
...Our readers should know why we refused...
...But we are also dubious about certain other assumptions that seem to be involved in the formation of the "American Forum...
...It would be, we humbly suggest, an immoral act...
...A number of DISSENT editors who were invited to join this new organization refused...
...Let it therefore be unambiguously understood that our criticisms of the "American Forum" are political and intellectual in nature, and that we will defend the right of its participants to make what we regard as political mistakes...
...We also reject on moral grounds the idea of participating with Communists in groups like the "American Forum...
...But this task, already difficult enough, will be hindered and perhaps made impossible if socialism is presented to the American people as an idea with which the Communists or the Communist countries have any legitimate connection...
...In recent years, it is true, American socialists have not always had an opportunity to mark this holiday...
...That men who for years were associated with Leon Trotsky should now celebrate May Day together with representatives of the movement responsible for his assassination, strikes us as appalling...
...We regard the CP not as a radical group among othet radical groups, but as an association of political enemies that has no place in the socialist community...
...Between democratic socialists and adherents of the Communist Party there can be nothing in common, politically or organizationally...
...Had "American Forum" been merely an effort to bring together the various anti-Stalinist left-wing groups and individuals, a variety of opinions would have been possible...
...May Day has traditionally symbolized the aspirations of the oppressed and their yearnings for a more humane order of society...
...We regard this as an alarming development which clearly contains within it a threat to civil liberties...
...Recognizing as we do that democratic socialists everywhere-particularly since Stalin's death and the struggles in the satellite world-face the complex and difficult problem of what proper attitude to take toward those breaking away from Salinist communism, we must express serious reserves regarding both the formation of this new group and its purposes...
...The people who are participating in the "American Forum" have a perfect right to hold and express whatever political views they wish...
...Whatever may be one's approach to the issue of Communists who claim now that they reject "Stalinism," what is a socialist and democrat to think of a new organization which, so we are reliably informed, specifically rejected the idea of incorporating into its principles the application of the American Bill of Rights to the satellite and Russian world...
...for socialists it has been a holiday occasioning a rededication to the values of freedom...
...Between those who believe that the Communist powers represent a "socialist camp" and those who see them as a totalitarian bloc, there exists a political and moral gulf...
...We believe that they have committed a consequential error likely to lead to a further shrinkage of the already depleted political capital of American radicalism...
...but that is another and uninteresting matter...
...Communists are not free agents...
...The Communist Party represents a totalitarian political system and outlook...
...IV So it is that we feel that the question of CP representatives participating in a group like "American Forum" involves a matter of principle...
...One could have felt that it was a matter of very slight consequence...
...But surely every socialist-and indeed many non-socialists-would agree that even when one allows traditional pieties to lapse there is no reason to dishonor them...
...The founders of "American Forum" have invited leaders of the Communist Party to participate...
...Certain recent events, however, call for a preliminary comment...
...The answer seems to us quite simple...
...It comes at a time when the Communist Party, staggering from the Khrushchev revelations and the shame of Hungary, is desperately casting about for respectable cover in order to recoup its fortunes and find a new basis for promoting the interests of Communist totalitarianism...
...At a recent debate in Boston Mr...
...Individuals long associated with Communist front organizations spoke, as slid persons who for many years have upheld the ideas of democratic socialism...
...We reject the notion that Communists, semi-Communists or even ex-Communists form the best material out of which to build the American socialist movvement of tomorrow...
...Our interests have usually been elsewhere...
...In traditional Stalinist style, he compared the POUM with a "Fifth Column...
...There are such men...
...1 This spring there was held a May Day meeting in New York City at which speakers participated from the Communist Party and the Trotskyist group called the Socialist Workers Party...
...The most important way in which a contrite or "liberal" Communist can show his regret for having been associated with a movement that committed not "mistakes" but crimes, is to break completely from the Communist movement and to repudiate its basic assumptions...
...We do not believe that the Communist Party forms part of the Left-no matter how generously or loosely the Left may be defined...
...If this assumption were true, socialism would neither have nor deserve to have any future...
...Here, as elsewhere in Drssi:NT, each editor or contributor speaks for himself and takes direct responsibility only for the articles he signs...
...but they do not constitute a "position" to which other editors or contributors are asked to conform...
...His name is Milovan Djilas, and with him we would be honored to associate...
...But there is a central fact about "American Forum" which, in our opin ion, dictates the response of democratic socialists...
...but this is not our kind of organization...
...Nothing about the "American...
...Not having a "political line" to impose, the magazine cannot demand "organizational discipline...
...We regret that men who for so many difficult years helped keep alive the idea of libertarian socialism should now lend a helping hand to the Communist Party by providing it with a kind of privileged sanctuary and protective coloration...
...One could have been critical or sympathetic or indifferent...
...but we are completely opposed to any efforts to apply any sort of "investigatory" pressure or repressive measures against it...
...Thus, we believe that the opinions which follow represent the sentiments of the bulk of our editors...
...III Apart from Communists and fellow-travellers seeking shelter, there are also in the "American Forum" a sprinkling of democratic socialists such as Muste, Lens and others who sincerely regard it as a means toward a regroupment of American socialism...
...Now some of us have had friends who were killed and jailed during the GPU terror against the POUM and other Spanish so cialist groups...
...Forum" requires counter-measures other than public criticism and debate...
...they do not form part of the socialist community...
...V Though we recognize that the motives of persons like A. •1...
...One of them sits produly in Tito's jail because he groped his way from Communist totalitarianism to democratic socialism...
...That democratic socialists-only a few months after the armies of Communist totalitarianism so brutally suppressed the workers and students of Budapest!-should find it possible to share a May Day platform with Communists, seems to us not merely a political mistake but a grave error of moral judgment...
...Together with its friends, allies and secret sharers, the Communist Party is committed to the defense-no matter with what recently-discovered qualifications-of the vast prison house of peoples it calls "the socialist world...
...That its leaders have recently engaged in rites of publicly admitting past "mistakes" in no way absolves the CP of responsibility for having been and still being involved in systematic and enormous outrages against humanity...
...Discuss with Communists we will and must...
...Is redemption never possible...
...But it may be asked: do you propose always to hold a man's past against him...
...We refer to the founding of the "American Forum-for Socialist Education...
...To sit down in a fraternal spirit with Gates and his allies would constitute a betrayal of their memory, to say nothing of the memory of countless other victims...
...Though not formally connected with the sponsorship of the May Day meeting, the `American Forum" draws upon substantially the same ideas and personnel...
...11 Since then a number of people who participated in the New York May Day meeting have announced the formation of the "American Forumfor Socialist Education...
...Desirable as such a regroupment might be and whatever one may think of its present prospects, the "American Forum" is not a step in the right direction...
...If there is still vitality in the idea of socialism, it will succeed in winning new and young people untainted by the Stalinist past...
...By admitting representatives of the CP into its ranks, the "American Forum" helps "legitimate" it as part of the left-it helps create the great illusion which should long ago have been shattered, that agents and defenders of the Moscow dictatorship have any common ground with democratic socialists...
...Since the following statement was written, we have learned that a Congressional Committee headed by Senator Eastland is proposing to "investigate" the "American Forum-for Socialist Education" which is discussed below...
...The founders of "American Forum," who include A. J. Muste and Sid Lens, also a Contributing Editor of DISSENT, announce that it is to be a discussion center in which members of the various radical groups and unaffiliated leftists can exchange ideas and hold discussions...
...It has therefore been disheartening to see some democratic socialists choose this holiday in order to hold a common meeting with representatives and sympathizers of the Communist Party...
...The editors of DISSENT have, for the most part, had little concern with the parochial quarrels, maneuvers and synthetic "activity" which characterize the life of the few remaining radical groups in America...
...Among the last of these, A. J. Muste, a Contributing Editor of this magazine, was most noteworthy...
...It blurs political lines that socialists can forget only at their peril...
...our ideas have moved away from the orbit of ritualistic and hence devitalized versions of Marxism that still prevail in these sects...
...they are not a segment of the Left...
...And we believe that it is our duty to say this frankly and openly, without rancor but also without equivocation...
...they are alien to democratic values...
...They may be good material for various sects engaged in small-scale political raids...
...One could have felt that it was a promising occasion for radical regroupment...
...If a man shows through his behavior that he has genuinely repudiated the totalitarian system and ethos to which he had once been attached, there then arises the possibility for political association...
...Muste and Sidney Lens in forming the "American Forum" are honorable and though we continue to regard them, if not their new associates, as friends, we deeply regret that they have taken this step...
...John Gates, leader of the so-called "liberal" wing of the CP, stated that he felt it had been correct to suppress the Spanish left Socialist party, POUM, during the Civil War...
...The disagreements expressed below with the "American Forum" are serious indeed...
...Despite its present powerlessness in America, the CP-and above all the international movement to which it remains bound-constitutes a threat to democratic ideas and institutions...
...That "comrades" of the executioners and comrades of the victims should together extol "socialism" and call for "socialist unity," can only serve to discredit the very idea of socialism...
Vol. 4 • July 1957 • No. 3
