Jews in the American CP

...It ceased to be comic and became altogether tragic when Jewish Communists, at the behest of Moscow, acclaimed the Stalin-Hitler pact and opposed aid for England in the fateful battle against Nazism...

...His final repudiation of Communism has only served to strengthen and sharpen his realization that socialism and democracy are inseparable, that socialism without democracy is neither humanistic nor liberating, and that it does not open up new horizons, but eliminates the good that has already been achieved...

...What is especially significant is that Epstein writes with authority, as one who knows Communism in America from the inside, as one who was in its vanguard almost from the beginning, editing its Yiddish daily, Morgen Freiheit, from 1925 to 1929...

...And it would be odd if it were not so...

...The ends are in the future, but the deterioration of character is in the present...

...And what is particularly depressing is the smallness of the people in it...

...Out of the details skilfully and scrupulously coordinated by the author, a picture emerges...

...And though they discarded later much of what they had been taught and much of the ritual of religion, they never relinquished the prophetic vision and the hope for human redemption—as a social rather than a theological category—that accompanied it...

...Epstein has not, however, performed any somersaults...

...But the story of the Communist movement among Jews—whatever its scope and influence may have been—needs to be told for several reasons: on one hand, as a contribution toward the history of the American CP...

...He remained in the party until the great betrayal that was embodied in the Stalin-Hitler pact in 1939...

...Reviewed by Israel Knox Associate Professor of Philosophy, New York University HERE IS A segment of the story of the Communist party in the United States and well-nigh the whole story of its Jewish section...

...What else is to be expected of the adherents of a total ideology which scoffs at fundamental ethical values and, in the language of Lenin (not to mention Stalin), equates morality with the alleged interests of the working class...

...Melech Epstein has disclosed that story and his book helps to clarify much in the sordid and twisted "epic" of Communism as an ideology and a movement in America...

...on the other hand, as a description of some of the factors and failings that create a climate suitable for its growth...

...One must remember that the majority of them had come from Russia, where they had endured all sorts of privations under the Tsarist regime and where they had participated in the revolutionary struggle for a free Russia...

...This is not the only lesson—but surely among the important ones—that we can learn from Epstein's book...

...And later—after World War II—they denied and then explained away the wanton murder of hundreds of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union and the utter annihilation of Jewish culture...

...And although in this book he says little about himself—indeed he refers to himself in the third person—the reader senses more than a hint of the doubts and anxieties that must have befallen him as he witnessed the tragicomedy of an "American" political party resembling a group of puppets manipulated from Moscow...

...If Epstein's story in its entirety, and his portraits of individuals, is correct, as it appears to be, no such respect can be accorded the "heroes" of his book...

...One must also recall that Jewish workers had spent their boyhoods in cheder, the traditional school, and had absorbed in their most impressionable years the prophetic vision of righteousness and compassion for the orphan, the widow, the stranger at the gates, the lowly and downtrodden...

...Similarly, what else is to be expected when means are utterly divorced from ends and goals, when the means do not confirm and sanctify those ends, but degrade and pollute them...

...He had had misgivings before that and was out of grace with the wielders of power in the party, but held on primarily because he was convinced that—despite all its violations of the content and spirit of socialism—Communism represented the staunchest and most vigorous foe of fascism, the one insurmountable obstacle in its march to victory...

...One may disagree with a political or philosophical viewpoint and still respect the singleness of purpose and the high devotion of its proponents...

...What seems remarkable is not that the Communist party was able to draw into its ranks a number of Jewish workers, but that it affected such a negligible portion of them...

...Fortunately the confusion did not last long and only a scant minority continued to champion Communist doctrine and condone Communist practice...

...he has not gone over, as others have done, to the side of reaction...

...Little wonder then that the Russian Revolution aroused their enthusiasm and evoked their deepest sympathy, and that they failed for a while to note the difference between its two expressions—the democratic revolt of March and the Bolshevik usurpation of November...

...The pact dashed this illusion to pieces and Epstein broke with the party...