PAGE 12
74 YEARS THAT SHOOK
THE
WORLD
FROM THE PREVIOUS PAGE
Marx thought he had correctly analyzed the inequality
between capital and production, and believed he had remodeled
human destiny through a prism of dialectical materialism impos
sible to dispute. The central flaw in Marx was the same as in
every ideology — the unpredictable human beings who rule in
the name of ideology.
Such overreaching is not exclusive to communists or
dictatorships but also by the managers of propertied democracy
who claim capitalism as its foundation. The United States
Constitution, after all, was promulgated in secret meetings
by wealthy merchants, large landowners (many of them slave
holders) and lawyers, and was not ratified by popular vote but by
state legislatures composed of men of privilege and power. The
Bill of Rights, vtfiich is considered the USA's fundamental dialec
tic of democratic ideals, was an afterthought conceived by men
worried that the Constitution did little to protect or enforce the
rights of the populace, and every subsequent amendment allow
ing for political and social equality, equal justice and minority
rights was hardwon through disputation, struggle and often
bloodshed, which included our own costly Civil War. It has been
said that every liberty won through long and arduous strife in the
United States and Europe, such as the suffrage of labor and
women, civil rights and legal justice for racial and economic
minorities, has been raw Marxism. (Gunnar Myrdal wote in
1942 that America is "conservative in fundamental principles...
but the principles conserved are liberal, and some, indeed, are
radical")
Eighty years ago John Reed, Oregon's most prominent
offering to history, invented 20th century documentary journal
ism wth his chronicle of the dramatic grasp for power by the
Bolsheviks in October/November 1917, Ten Days That Shook
The World. Then he went home and became a founder of the
American Communist Party ("fueding twin" to the Communist
Labor Party of America, established at the same time) filled
wth the passionate conviction that the exploited American lower
classes finally possessed the instrument to successfully rise up
against the reigning industrial plutocracy. (Ironically, while Reed
was 'present at the creation' of the USSR, another former Ore
gon journalist was present at its disintegration Bill Keller, the
new managing editor of The New York Times.)
Ideas of communism in the USA were especially power
ful in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and during the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Southern and eastern European immi
grants in particular turned to socialist and anarchist notions in
reaction to harsh exploitation in mills and factories in vtfiich they
were the majority of unskilled laborers — they had, in fact, been
allowed to immigrate because of the desperate need for their
labor as a result of the rapid expansion of American industry.
The Italian-American anarchist/communist Luigi Galleani, who
listed among his admirers Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Van
zetti, rejected entirely the idea of the State and ownership of
property. "When we talk about property, State, masters, govern
ment, laws, courts and police," he declared, "we say only that we
don't want any of them."
At the same time the Socialist Soviet government under
Stalin was mercilessly purging merchants, landowners, prosper
ous peasants (kulaks), political parties and every form of free
expression (also the usual pogroms against Jews) —as well as
starving millions and "relocating" millions of others to Siberian
wxk camps — the U.S. government's reaction against any
group that opposed the status quo was censorious and brutal
(though not as monumentally murderous as Stalin's), and all
were lumped together as communists ("Bolsheviks" was the
popular rubric, and also "anarchists," by vtfiich was meant the
same thing) whether they were or not From Attorney General
Palmer and his infamous "Red Squad" raids against anyone
suspected of liberal, leftist or union sympathies; which included
deportation of "aliens" — to Senator Joseph McCarthy's bogus
JANUSZ KAPUSTA
lists of purported communist sympathizers in government and
the House Un-American Activities purge of the entertainment
industry in the early years of the Cold War — repression in the
form of witchhunts, character assassination, blacklisting and
imprisonment was unyielding, and for a time at least, politically
and publicly popular.
American political reaction to communism long before
the Cold War was summed by Don Whitehead in his book The
FBI Story. He wrote that as early as the 1920s "communist
crusaders" like J. Edgar Hoover had discovered in communism
"a conspiracy so vast, so daring that few people at first could
even grasp the sweep of communist vision. It was a conspiracy
to destroy totally and and completely the religions, governments,
institutions and thinking of the Judaic-Christian world, the
Buddhist world, the Moslemic wjrld, and all religious beliefs."
Communism was "the most evil, monstrous conspiracy against
man since time began "
Most labor unions, liberal and alternative political parties
and organizations, and of course the Communist Party USA,
were infiltrated by police and intelligence agents who often
staged illegal acts to turn public opinion against any and all
challengers to the established order:
-The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which had
great success organizing Pacific Coast loggers before World
War I — Dump the bosses off your back, was a slogan 'Wobbly'
organizers used in the wxxis; the preamble to the famous IWW
Little Red Book states unequivocally that the wjrking and capi
talist classes have absolutely nothing in common
-The International Longshore & Warehousemen's Union
(ILWU), which joined with maritime unions to stage the Great
1934 Strike and shut down most West Coast ports for months.
-The United Auto Workers, who invented the sitdown
strike in the 1930s and were attacked by hired "goonsquads"
armed with clubs and guns.
-The shooting of striking miners in the South and West
by state militias.
-The killing of striking steelworkers by police on Memor
ial Day 1937.
The savage and persistent persecution of the American
labor movement was justified by accusation that the unions were
communist inspired and part of the "international communist
conspiracy" that was determined to destroy the American Way
of Life Such maledictions of Kremlin infiltration were also
declared against the Civil Rights Movement to support the use
of clubs, dogs and firebombs to keep Jim Crow alive; similar
accusations and methods were used against Vietnam antiwar
activists in the 1960s, many of whom did flirt wth Marxist, Trot
skyite, Maoist and socialist ideas.
Communism inspired fear and hatred throughout the
Western world. Proxy wars between the conflicting ideologies
of communism and capitalism were fought in faraway places,
peasant armies against peasant rebels (a few of whom were
Marxists), often accompanied by brutal massacres of civilians;
more than 100,000 suspected communists were murdered in
Indonesia alone. Such was the dread of Marxist-Leninism that
Adolf Hitler gained considerable support on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean for his claim as the potential slayer of the Red
devil. At Nuremberg in 1934, during one of his massive rallies,
Hitler said, "Only brainless dwarfs cannot realize that Germany
has been the breakwater against the communist flood, which
would have drowned Europe and its culture." British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain's concessions to Hitler at Munich
in 1938 were in the hope the Nazis would expand eastward into
Russia and leave the West alone. At the same time, England
and France rejected Stalin's hopes for a tripartite resistance to
Germany.
Aware of Western antipathy toward him (the mirror of
his own reciprocal hatred for the "running dogs of capitalism"),
Stalin, who had critically weakened his armed forces with purges
of top officers, sought to appease the Nazis. He made an exped
ient alliance with Hitler, himself willing to postpone in the interest
of the moment his desire for lebensraum, the plan to depopulate
the great Russian heartland for German settlement. (Contrary to
Chamberlain's hopes, Hitler planned to mop up the West and
neutralize it as a threat before invading the USSR.)
Self-preservation from the ravages of an ancient enemy
was not Stalin's only agenda. He spread his tentacles into east
ern Poland after the Nazis broke its back in the west, and he
sent his purge-impaired army into Finland, at first thwarted by
a heroic defense, then got his way by overwhelming force of
numbers. (Stalin used his armies as "prolifigately as Asians"
throughout the war, with a reckless fatalism "no other European
army could afford or was psychologically capable of," William
Trotter wrote in Winter Fire). In the meantime he seized the
Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Hitler betrayed the "unholy" pact by invading Russia in
June 1941. Only after a titanic effort that cost more than 20
million Russian dead (and millions of Germans), the Nazi war
machine was destroyed by the defenders of 'Mother Russia'.
(Stalin knew communism had few defenders and wisely called
for saving country rather than party.) The wartime alliance with
the Allies that resulted from the Nazi invasion also made Stalin
(a greater murderer than Hitler) a popular figure in the United
Sates. War propaganda made him into a cuddly "Uncle Joe"
for the duration.
The 'Great Patriotic War1, as the Russians called their
incredible struggle against the Nazis, was the peak of the
communist "revolution," though the Soviets inherited an empire
as spoils of the war and waged a Cold War against Western
Europe, the United States and satellites for nearly half a century.
The war fatally weakened the infrastructure of the United Social
ist Soviet Republic even as it expanded into an empire, billowing
like a red star before collapsing inward upon itself In particular
its bloated military combined with increasing internal corruption
and social paralysis were as fatal as syphilis to Russian com
munism. ignored for decades until insanity and death.
World War 2 ended European hegemony and broke up
the great colonial empires. The Soviets quickly took advantage
of their tremendous victory and moved first into Eastern Europe
and with brutal use of power (which included murder and deport
ation to Siberia) installed puppet regimes which were kept in
tight rein for decades, dispatching soldiers and tanks into East
Berlin (1949), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and
Poland (1979) to quell outbreaks of revolt
The U.S. and USSR spent hundreds of billions of dollars
developing nuclear arsenals, each posing the threat of the other
to continually escalate the race at the same time they raced
through generations of nuclear weapons Each claimed to be
defending humanity against the darkness the other would plunge
it into, and the contradictory idea of "preventive war” — starting
a war to prevent war — was a common rationale for threatening
world obliteration. Nations polarized willingly or reluctantly into
an East/West Cold War characterized by nuclear terror and
Imported Beer On Tap
Fish & Chips
WE RE NO.1 ON 2 ST.
ASTORIA • 325-0033
ASTORIA COFFEE HOUSE
«& BOOKS)
1154 COMMERCIAL # 325-7670
1