Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR EGGHEAD In your issue of August 6, R. H. S. Cross-man, Labor Member of the British Parliament, begins his article on "The Future of Communism" with the following words: "Since my...
...Fast's recital of his own battle "for equality, for freedom of speech, for the Bill of Rights," in which he never counted the cost...
...But if the alternatives are a Chiang Kai-shek regime or a Mao Tse-tung regime, I would certainly not be prepared to defend the use of military force to sustain the former, far less to restore it to power...
...Fast's eloquent paragraphs based on the assumption that he has been asked to imitate, let us say, J. B. Matthews seem to me to argue something of a guilt complex for his long refusal to face the truth...
...One gathers from his statement that he expects the Soviet Union to become less of a dictatorship while the United States becomes less of a democracy, and that, through this leveling-off process, there will in time be a "convergence...
...They introduced to the best of their ability (which was considerable) their own form of blacklisting, beginning, before their days of influence in Hollywood, with the artists' and writers' project of Depression years...
...And they mocked my denunciation of its use over not only Hiroshima but Nagasaki without even giving the world prior demonslration of its awful power...
...More serious is Mr...
...He is in error...
...These things are history, I refer to them simply because I do not believe that a viable future cooperation for democratic socialism, or for the great objectives of freedom, fellowship, peace and plenty, can be worked out with men or a movement which shares in any considerable degree the assumptions underlying Mr...
...Fast's reply to Eugene Lyons...
...The Communists worked hard to organize labor but played a conspiratorial and disruptive role in unions...
...Coexistence with the Communists is one thing...
...I have, indeed, known many fine people who became Communists...
...They supported the American Government in utilizing the Smith Act against American Trotskyists and later against a curious assortment of alleged pro-Nazis...
...Fast's contentions may be characteristic of other Communists and their fellow-travelers who have been greatly perturbed by Khrushchev's speech on Stalin...
...Such a simple formula—but so tragically disturbing now and for the future...
...That Stalin should have lost all the idealism which unquestionably originally inspired Lenin was largely a consequence of the theories of political organization and action which Lenin instituted...
...wrath against individuals...
...Our own objective is a free and democratic world...
...I would like to believe that, during the tragedy of these years, there has been some change for the better in the lives and hopes of the Russian people...
...That may be expected of a member of the CP or of a fellow-traveler—not of Halle...
...Paul A. Baran I would not claim space to intrude on the discussion between Howard Fast and Eugene Lyons [NL, July 30] except that I feel that some of Mr...
...convergence is a surrender of basic democratic ideology...
...Isn't it so that, to the extent the free world was endangered, it has been compelled to impose certain restrictions on democratic practices...
...For all this evil of Communism in power it is absurd to hold Stalin alone responsible...
...I would be willing to compare the record of Socialists with Mr...
...We have never disguised this, felt ashamed of it, or regarded it as sinister...
...I do not cite this list of American Communist crimes against liberty, truth and fail play out of personal grievance or personal The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...DEAR EDITOR EGGHEAD In your issue of August 6, R. H. S. Cross-man, Labor Member of the British Parliament, begins his article on "The Future of Communism" with the following words: "Since my knowledge of Russian Communism is limited to book-reading and I have never even visited the Soviet Union, it would be silly for me to pontificate about events since the death of Stalin...
...Stamford, Calif...
...I do say that within the framework of democracy there are the seeds only of the progressive betterment of man's lot...
...Lyons has invited him to become an informer...
...As long as the Soviet Union remains governed by a conspiratorial tyranny that aims at world domination, there is grave danger for us of aggression and subversion...
...They turned with violent fury against Trotsky and later against their own leader, Earl Browder, whom they had loyally followed until the Kremlin disowned him...
...Is there truly no room for hope of a strengthened and more dynamic democracy, capable of attracting the neutral nations to our philosophy...
...This is a gratuitous assumption...
...He speaks in rebuke of "the atom kings of America" and "the madmen" who know "only one future and one goal—war.'' This whole paragraph is more eloquent than accurate or relevant...
...Conversely, is it not a justifiable hope that, to the degree the Communist conspiracy becomes less of a menace, we will eliminate such restrictions...
...that Communism in Russia was the bearer of a profound and beneficial socialist change, whatever its errors...
...Moreover, men like Koestler, Lyons himself, Victor Serge and many others have given immensely valuable information which might have saved Howard Fast the shock of Khrushchev's revelations—except that he, like so many others, closed his ears to irrefutable facts until they were admitted by the Kremlin...
...And what makes Halle so certain that, as the Communist system loosens its grip over its subject peoples, we of the West will concomitantly weaken our democratic institutions by establishing oppressive controls over our peoples...
...New York City Pearl G. Levy...
...Of this blacklist Socialists were often the victims...
...One gets the inevitable impression—when the word "sinister" is used in this context—that Halle believes there are sinister aspects inherent in democracy's aims...
...Unquestionably, they were dedicated to their cause...
...Fast implies that, on the contrary, it was probably dictated, like his own, by a lifetime of thinking on the teaching of those diverse masters Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas Jefferson, George Bernard Shaw, Marx and Engels...
...Fast seems to assume that during his adult lifetime there was no practical way in America of serving socialism except as at least a fellow-traveler with Communism...
...But never does he admit that during that time there was an active democratic Socialist movement which might have been stronger and more successful if men like him had worked with it...
...Communists refused to join me in seeking a declaration of terms, even severe terms, to Japan to end the war before the use of the bomb...
...My recent journey to the Soviet Union was not undertaken on behalf of or in connection with our (or any other) government, but exclusively for private reasons in the course of my normal sabbatical leave...
...I cite it because it was the Communist system which dictated these acts—acts which emphatically did "lessen the best tradition of America," Mr...
...Finally, Mr...
...New York City Norman Thomas COEXISTENCE I cannot refrain from commenting on Louis J. Halle's article, "Coexistence and Convergence" [NL, July 91...
...New York City Alfred Kohlbebg HOWARD FAST My attention has been drawn to Howard Fast's reply to Eugene Lyons in your July 30 issue...
...He went beyond Stalin, his partner in the rape of Poland, in respect to genocide by the gas chamber...
...Its economics may have been ruthlessly efficient in industrializing Russia...
...He does, indeed, admit other companionship in specific fights, for instance for our Bill of Rights—which has no equivalent in any country where Communists have power...
...Fast to the contrary notwithstanding...
...He says, "Thousands of men and women of the most diverse opinions were with me"—a great many of them not Communists...
...First, he assumes that, in inviting him to "rejoin the world of free men," Mr...
...In spite of being a Labor man, Mr...
...Most of us know Communists or fellow-travelers who have rejoined the world of free men, in which they are giving service to the highest ideals of citizenship without becoming "informers" for gain or fame...
...It was the economics of state capitalism...
...Fast's apparent assumption that Stalin's guilt was almost wholly personal...
...And often the cause committed them to the service of ends in themselves good...
...Cross-man qualifies as an authentic egghead when he declares his inability to "pontificate" on the 39-year record of the Soviet dictatorship because he wasn't there in person, while "pontificating" on the situation with respect to that one-quarter of the human race who live in China, although he wasn't there, either...
...I do not contend that the democracies are at present perfect...
...Of course, the corruption of Communism when it came to power was greater...
...Why did he omit Tom Paine...
...He was not an excrescence on, but a natural product of, the dictatorial system introduced by Lenin and inspired by Lenin's ethic...
...Later in the same article, Mr...
...They have been accompanied by the most monstrous evils in human history—allegedly justified by the Communist goal—with the possible exception of Hitler's imitation...
...I would expect it to be...
...That cannot be "sinister...
...In quoting an article of mine in the July-August Monthly Review, Fast states that my observations in the USSR were gathered while I "was on a mission for our government...
...Halle says that "our evolution and the evolution of our Communist antagonists may be tending, over a long period, to reduce the differences between us...
...Since Halle rightly states that the Communist system is "false and nefarious," does it not follow that there can be no unity or identity between it and our opposite concept and way of life...
...I would remind him that Communists in neither America nor Russia disapproved of American use of the atomic bomb in World War II...
...These things and more they did not as bad individuals, but as true disciples of Lenin and Stalin, spiritual citizens of the Soviet Union, which, according to their Manual, was "the only fatherland of the workers...
...Yet, he seems to equate good with evil, justice with injustice, freedom with slavery, democracy with Communism...
...Halle also says: "I cannot quarrel with the statement that the ultimate objective of the Communist leaders is a Communist world...
...and that "the role of American Communism was never coupled with dishonor...
...Crossman remarks: "I would, of course, vastly prefer the industrialization of a backward nation to take place under democratic forms of government...
...It made them for years submit implicitly to orders from Moscow...
...Yet, in varying degree theif Communism twisted them all...
...There is here, I think, a very unfortunate juxtaposition of democracy's desire for a free world with the Communist objective of world domination...
...Fast makes several assumptions which may not be peculiar to him...
...Over and over, in writing and speech, they deliberately distorted what I, for instance, had said, and their papers urged that the Government or the mob should silence me when I ran for President in 1944...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 34
