Again Charles, read some sources like, The Communist Movement, " 2 volumes, translated in the late 70's by Monthly Review Press, author is Spanish Communist Fernando Claudin and/or, "Stalin and the European Communists, " by Italian Communist historian, Paulo Spriono, published by Verso Books in the mid-90's. It has a chapter on one of your canonical works, "The Short Course, " of the CPSU, which as Eric Hobsbawm remarks was manditory reading for Communist cadre. Michael Pugliese
< < < Date Index > > > RE: RE: Bureaucracy by michael pugliese 05 April 2002 01:04 UTC < < < Thread Index > > > Earl Browder, was ejected from the CPUSA after the publication in a French Communist journal of the, "Duclos Letter, " which accused Browder after the Teheran conference of '44 of being a liquidationist lackey of US imperialism. See the biographies/studies of Browder by James Ryan and Maurice Isserman. The latter has blurbs from Victor Navasky, hardly a Cold war Liberal, so I'd assume, it doesn't carry the virus of anti-Sovietism. Michael Pugliese P.S. George Charney's, Dorothy Healey's, Al Richmond's and Junius Scale's autobiographies as well as '56 reformist John Gate'es memoir are valuable in placing Browderism in the CPUSA in context.--- Original Message --- >From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: 4/4/02 3:39:30 PM > >I wrote: >>> Applied to the CPUSA, the phrase "democratic centralist" involves an >abuse of the word "democratic."<< cb: >Are you saying that the majority's votes were ignored in some election >of Gus Hall ? Earl Browder ? John Reed ? Henry Winston ? Sam Webb ? on a >provision of the Constitution ? > >> Give me specific examples of where the vote of the majority was not >followed in the CPUSA ? Actually, that was a typo. I meant to write the "CPSU" -- specifically referring to the period of the 1920s and after, since I have limited knowledge of the inner workings of the CPUSA. (That it was a typo makes sense in the context of the larger message: it was followed by the sentence "The elections in the old USSR were a sham, while the members of the CP didn't have real democratic control over the leaders or over the Party Line.") But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow? gotta go... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > < < < Date Index > > > Progressive Economists Network List Archives at CSF Subscribe to Progressive Economists Network < < < Thread Index > > > >--- Original Message --- >From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: 4/8/02 8:45:17 AM > >If I reply to one message per day in this thread (as I'm constrained to do), >it will continue until 2010. I haven't even read Miychi's missives yet... JD > >I wrote:>>But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite >popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the >leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by >Moscow? << charles brown writes:>On Browder, I was going to use him as an example of >the ability to remove the very top leader in the CPUSA . He was General >Secretary. < in most historical interpretations, the top leader of the cpusa wasn't the real top leader, since the cpusa was subordinate to the comintern or cominform... (note: i do not believe that the cpusa was simply a "puppet" of the ussr. it had to also keep its own rank and file happy and so reflected their wishes to some extent. when they didn't as with the hitler/stalin pact or the "secret speech" of 1956, they lost members in droves. though the organization involved bureaucracy, it was not purely so, because of the role of the member's "exit" option, and to a lesser extent their votes and statements of opinion.) cb:>There was a letter from a French, not Moscow, Communist , named DeClou >(sp.) criticizing Browder's proposal that the CP become an educational >organization rather than a political party. In general, that was termed >liquidationism, liquidating the party... Most interpret that letter as a statement of the opinion of the leadership of the COMINTERN/FORM. That opinion had a very strong impact, indicating the power of that international, Moscow-centered, organization. JD >
