DON'T CALL ME A COMMUNIST ANYMORE
Crowe, Martin
Don't Call Me A Communist Anymore By MARTIN CROWE I USED to enjoy being called a Communist. I don't anymore, I remember way back around 1920 when my dad ran for Representative in Minnesota. He...
...I remember that I disliked Cal Coolidge very much...
...But finally I was convinced that they had changed...
...Usually they slammed it shut—and some snarled...
...It was fun...
...I liked them...
...Then Germany attacked Russia...
...Communist," and some said...
...I went...
...Thomas Lamont, they say, issues statements in behalf of J. P. Morgan and Company on how nice Stalin is once you get to deal with him...
...I was confused...
...One old lady gave me cookies, and a younger one gave me an apple...
...My dad was a simple man...
...Don't call me a Communist now...
...There is none of the old under-dog idea, of the one who is down but is grinning and getting ready to get back up again...
...I remember, though, that others were very nice to me...
...They were too stupid to know it...
...I joined a theater group which included many Jews...
...I'm sure he didn't know who Lenin was...
...But it was because there wa3 something to laugh at—the laughter was in the dream...
...Stalin is the one who runs true to form as a conqueror-—true as Bonaparte—or Bismarck—or Alexander the Great...
...At least most of them were...
...He believed in the brotherhood of men, in mercy, in the dignity of the human being and the human soul...
...Yes, it's fashionable now to flirt with the Communists...
...I remember he quoted from Markham's "Lincoln, Man of the People...
...It was I who abandoned it...
...It was a badge of honor, in a way...
...The Communists began to demand we go into the war...
...The Junior Chamber of Commerce likes it, I guess...
...Their social aims were higher still...
...Liberalism dares to preach a new, shining hope in a doctrine of starting over in a world brotherhood with everyone—friend and enemy—in it...
...But my heart was leaping with a song...
...He may have been afraid, of course—I guess, now, he probably was...
...I never became a Communist...
...The Great Floyd Olson Then 1932...
...I remember that Phil La Follette, who was governor of Wisconsin, gave the eulogy as a close friend of Floyd Olson—and as a believer in the same bright dream for the common man...
...My dad used to laugh when they threatened him back in the Model-T days...
...But he believed in something—a vague idea like justice— and they never could make him change, or turn back, or give in...
...My political activities were set aside, more or less, in favor of baseball, until my senior year in high school...
...That the light of liberalism had died out in their souls...
...Very steady, too...
...But 1 changed...
...I liked it...
...Their dramatic aims were high...
...And fight for the people—the little people...
...It reached its completion when I looked at Joe Stalin...
...as when a lordly cedar green with boughs Goes down with a great shout upon the hills...
...But I didn't mind being called one...
...It was always fun that way...
...I considered Floyd Olson the greatest man in America, and the best friend the common people had ever had...
...I haven't minded the Communistic label...
...It began when I found that charity and decency and tolerance and liberalism and justice were still in the minds and hearts of these men I thought had abandoned the fight...
...The Communists wanted us to stay out of it...
...I was proud of them for their courage...
...Unless you mean the kind Christ was...
...And that apparently was bad...
...But not anymore...
...My friends assured me I was a pawn in the hands of Communists...
...Liberalism is young and new and alive—and different...
...Or a non-conformist...
...I heard the quiet sobbing all around me...
...Maybe he isn't any kind...
...The political leaders I'd most admired had always been labeled as Communists...
...The rally was a failure—but I enjoyed it, and the bright ideas it held before me...
...I didn't mind...
...I hated war...
...And 1 didn't mind when they called me a "Red...
...I spoke at rallies for Elmer Benson who ran for governor as Floyd Olson's successor...
...I never really found a way to coordinate my Catholicism with formal Communism...
...In some ways that was the greatest, day of my life...
...But the laughter is gone...
...I'm sure the term "Bolshevik" confused him...
...When I remember...
...Again I didn't mind the charge...
...I used to go from door to door in the town where I lived and pass out buttons and literature...
...In 1936 Floyd Olson died...
...Stalinism preaches a doctrine as old as that which Cato led the Romans to apply to Carthage—a doctrine of domination, of division of spoils, of might over right...
...Or else just call me a young man slightly disappointed in love...
...But I got to like him a lot...
...Don't call me a Communist now...
...He was a book-binder by trade and a crusader by inclination...
...So was I. Our Minneapolis group went on strike and the papers condemned them...
...The thrill is gone...
...Stalin's men have been preaching revenge and cruelty and contempt for the conquered which are as old as Attila or Genghis Khan...
...It got so everyone who wanted us to stay out was suspected of being a Communist—or accused of it by those who wanted us to get in...
...Anytime...
...Because I remember that they called him a "Bolshevik" and I remember the eggs they hurled at my dad one afternoon in a farmer's yard...
...I'm a Catholic and I believe in Catholicism...
...The union was called Communistic...
...I didn't care...
...Not completely, maybe—but most of the way at least...
...My friends who were liberals, and had been called Communists, convinced me...
...I was confused again...
...I wasn't a Communist, but if supporting a great man like Floyd Olson meant that you seemed like a Communist, I began to feel that Communists couldn't be so bad...
...I didn't understand just how it was—but I kind of caught the feeling my dad had, I think...
...Call me a man who vaguely wooed a girl with the wind in her hair—and now finds her with a permanent wave and an expensive new hat on her head...
...And so I began to see it as a crusade—and I changed over...
...J saw men like Bob and Phil La Follette and Burt Wheeler, who'd carried the torch for the common man from the beginning —from way back when it was dangerous to carry it—-I saw them charged with being reactionaries and fascists all of a sudden just because they opposed our entrance into the war...
...I remember going to his funeral in the Minneapolis auditorium and looking at all the humble, little people who were there...
...He would not laugh today...
...It is a term of contempt now...
...They were Communists, I was told...
...I didn't know, for sure, if they were or not...
...I didn't believe a war could be a good thing...
...It is a term in which I no longer find a thrill...
...Stalinism is on its feet...
...I remember that I prayed he wouldn't die when I heard he was critically ill...
...The change began when I read some of the words of the "lost liberals" like La Follette and found them still good and still liberal...
...He became my hero along with Jumpin' Joe Dugan who played third base for the Yankees, and Jack Dempsey...
...Anyhow, I didn't mind being called one...
...The National Association of Manufacturers will too, perhaps...
...I was very proud of my dad then...
...Paul...
...to Chicago in 1940 as a delegate to a Peace Mobilization rally...
...The boys on the radio praise Stalin every night...
...I was elected president of the teachers union of our group in St...
...There is no laughter in Stalinism...
...I heard the man in whom I believed so much, Franklin D. Roosevelt, preach the war as a crusade...
...It began when I found these men—these men who they said were Tories and Fascists—fighting for the rights of free speech and a fair shake for all the little, forsaken people of the earth...
...Stalin isn't that kind of Communist...
...I remember that I cried when he was dead...
...Red...
...I didn't mind being called a "little Bolshevik...
...It was my dad who got me to take the stump for Bob La Follette, of course...
...That they'd sold out the people...
...Or whatever may strike you...
...The war was on...
...Fighting Bob La Follette...
...I've supported the CIO...
...Stalinism is old and dead and heavy with a grey sameness...
...And a J. P. Morgan partner ought to know...
...Floyd Olson was running for governor in Minnesota, and every paper in the state, it seemed, was out to "get" him...
...The New Deal in which I put my new hopes of fair play for humanity, was called Communistic...
...Almost everyone who disagreed with me called me a Communist...
...So please don't call me a Communist again...
...And nothing more...
...Recently, I've had the old charge of Communism leveled again...
...I argued with my teachers...
...We were called Communists—and many there were Communists...
...The dream is dead...
...I remember Phil La Follette spoke very briefly...
...Then I saw a strange thing happen...
...Always...
...I liked it...
...I enjoyed it...
...But I'll just as soon be unpopular then...
...Maybe he isn't a Communist at all...
...And leaves a lonesome place against the sky...
...I've supported my new vision of the great American, Henry Wallace, in speech and in print...
...I didn't mind...
...I didn't mind being grouped with such people and such ideas...
...They put on plays like Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets...
...I argued with, other boys in school—and with their parents...
...It began when I found these men still fighting for the laboring man—the common people...
...Call me a radical maybe...
...Not Anymore, Please I saw many men who had supported Floyd Olson and Bob La Follette and all the rest going over to the war idea—prescribing the war as a crusade...
...In 1024 I was 10 years old and old Bob La Follette ran for president...
...For me...
...Russia is the country which today practices imperialism as old as the British Navy...
...My Catholic friends, particularly, despaired of me...
...My dad was never scared out...
...Please don't call me a Communist now...
...But he used to get in his old Model T and go out in the country and try to talk to the farmers...
...The people I knew who were Communists were good people —sincere and idealistic...
...I've liked it...
...My awakening began when I found these men again—¦ and read their words and reviewed their acts...
...For Stalin is the one who sold out the liberals...
...Anywhere...
...Then the war got going...
...I began to teach night school for the WPA education program...
...I guess it won't be unpopular now to be called a Communist...
...Germany was fighting with Russia as an ally...
...I spoke for Ernest Lundeen, who was Floyd Olson's friend, when he ran for United States Senator...
...Vote for Bob La Follette," I'd say when they opened the door...
...But it was...
...Not really good...
...Because I knew then that all I ever wanted to do was to be like Floyd Olson—and believe in the things he believed in, and fight for them...
...I'm still proud of my dad now—when I think back...
...Then Japan attacked and almost every American was united...
...He was a Farmer-Laborite...
...No matter what they called me...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 29
