The CP-Once Over Lightly

...But what would have been a different book...

...THE LATE McAlister Coleman, a talented Socialist writer and wit, once defined research as "copying out in long-hand what other people have written down in books...

...And, The American Communist Party is heavily lopsided, with much detailed (and hackneyed) internal material on the Twenties, and sketchy and interpretative material on the later decades...

...but, a different, organizational reason was that Party fractions were becoming "dual" power centers in unions and front organizations where the Party had seized leadership...

...In transcribing, however, there is the risk of misreading what one has copied...

...I called it, actually, the "Caligari period...

...But we know enough-from such sources as the Canadian Royal Commission inquiry into Gouzenko's material, from the Senate Committee hearings, from Whittaker Chambers, self-dramatizing as his testimony may be-that these underground adventures played an important role in the life of many Party functionaries, and compromised their public position accordingly...

...It is a stiff, heavy-going narrative, with no guiding questions, and no attempt even to link up the history with what the authors call, in a 50-page coda, a "Theory of Stalinism...

...In this connection, Howe and Coser miss completely the organizational significance of Earl Browder's Open Letter of 1933, which was deliberately designed to sweep aside the party war horses to make room for the new men...

...In fact, there is little, systematically, on Party organization-a striking omission, given the sophistication of the two authors...

...It is simply that, given the experience and sophistication of the authors, plus the fascinating amount of material which is available by patient digging and checking, the book is inadequate...

...to rebut some of the psychological explanations-e.g., Leites, Almond, Ernst and Loth-on the nature of the Communist appeal...

...Howe and Coser have compiled their history from "public sources and have not relied upon the personal testimony of Communists, ex-Communists or anti-Communists...

...As history, the book comes too late...

...It is true, as they point out, that Browder "Stalinized" the Party and created a "cult of the leader...

...The abolition of fractions was a key turning point in the decision not to create a mass party but to permit more easy manipulation, from the top, of Party-dominated organizations...

...Thus, in The American Communist Party, Messrs...

...The statements in this book can be checked, just as the opinions can be debated...

...for the informed reader, there is little new...

...that the egalitarian and mobile society failed to give the intellectuals the status and opportunity which it promised in its creeds-while not novel, is excellently done...

...But lamentably, this the authors fail to do...

...Howe and Coser refrain from a discussion of espionage, or conspiracy, because there are no "public sources...

...At the other end was the underground aspect-the espionage nets-which colored the CP's inner life enormously...

...In the United States-and in other countries, perhaps, as well-there was always inherent in the Communist party a "Right deviation" tendency which arose out of many sources: a developing, realistic estimate (often disguised) of the impossibility of a Leninist-type revolution in the U. S. (which first made its appearance in the Lovestone-Wolfe doctrine of "American exceptionalism...

...And Howe and Coser have partially misread the abolition later of Party fractions...

...The result is an unsatisfying book: For the general reader, the story is quite confusing...

...No matter...

...a drive for status and even bourgeois respectability as a political party, in order to make political deals (as was done in New York, particularly in the La Guardia days...

...Reviewed by Daniel Bell Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, Calif...

...This in itself would not he a failing if the book sought to unfold some general theory or specific hypothesis about Communist party development (as, say, Philip Selznick's The Organizational Weapon...

...One has only to compare this book with the fascinating episodes uncovered by Theodore Draper, in his Roots of American Communism, to see the paucity of the Howe-Coser study...

...Which is not, actually, a theory, but an attempt, and convincingly so...

...There is a rich amount of material in the volume...

...This is a curious twist: Seeking to take the most obvious limitation of the book and citing it as an advantage...

...The last 50 pages on the appeals of Stalinism to the intelligentsia-a variant on the sociological theme of "relative deprivation," i.e...

...And while Howe and Coser, in a sharp polemic against Sidney Hook, are right in saying that the overwhelming majority of the Party never played roles as conspirators, inevitably the leading cadres did...

...There is a broader question...

...These right-wing tendencies were recognized best by William Z. Foster who always had a crank hatred of American life and realized what Browderism, in these implications, meant...

...there was also a deep-rooted drive to "legitimate" the Party in American life as the "authentic Left...

...I think, in this connection, that Howe and Coser fail to give a rounded and meaningful interpretation of Browderism, which was the key experience of the American Communist party...

...To say this is not to sum up all of Browderism...

...This review may seem unduly harsh...

...They see it as an effort to "Americanize" the Party and make it like every other American party...

...the sibling desire to replace the Socialist party as the historic "Left" in American life...

...But Browder's drive to "Americanize" the Party had a deeper momentum than even Browder at the time realized...

...And all this is missing from the book...

...To take one of a number of guiding questions: How does one explain how a party as sectarian-ridden as the Communist party was in the Twenties could, in the Thirties, so quickly expand and absorb large numbers of new members and functionaries without strain, while the Socialist party, relatively in the same position, found itself split by a violent generational conflict created by the influx of younger elements...

...Slips of the pen, and what they signify, are not the issue here...

...Given the material at hand, the authors would have been wiser to write a book on the relation of the Communist appeal to the intellectuals...

...The "public sources" are principally the Party press, and while one can learn much from it-in the Twenties there were comparatively few Party "secrets" and much valuable material, including detailed membership statistics, was published in Party journals-it also affects the "weight" of the book...

...Howe and Coser quote me as describing the nightmarish, underground adventure of American Communism as the "Caligula period" of the Party's history...

...For, while the initial impulse reflected the tactical and strategic needs of the Soviet Union (in creating popular fronts and, later, big power alliances...

...and this would be a different review...

...Thus there is nothing on the "Bolshevization" of the Party after 1925, which involved a complete reorganization of structure, such as the creation of nuclei as a basic organizational form...

...The section on the Popular Front is first-rate, and many of the comments on the intellectuals are quite just...

...It is this extraordinary tension between Browder's public and genuine role-in striving for an individual national approach, long before Titoism and "revisionism" were ever recognized as heresies, and in making the Communist party an important force in shaping and swaying the liberal community in the Forties-with the private, secret role of fashioning a Soviet underground apparatus, that gives his years of reign such drama...