In the 1930s and 1940s, there were many prominent communist sympathizers: leading scientists such as J. B. S. Haldane and J. Robert Oppenheimer, powerful labor leaders, influential intellectuals, and various popular-front politicians, including at one period the vice-president of the United States. There was also a lot of tolerance for communists among people on the left who were not themselves communist supporters.
There was a logic to all of this: sure, the Soviets did a lot of bad things, but they were standing up for world socialism etc. and, except for that awkward 1939-41 period, they were on the front lines in protecting the world from a Nazi takeover. When it came to national politics in the U.S., Britain, and other western countries, neither fascists nor communists were ever about to take over, and there was a logic to considering communists as allies of the left, supporting labor unions and economic development. Meanwhile, the communists’ most visible opponents were conservative politicians who supported some mix of isolationism, racism, and economic austerity, and communist sympathizers had the option of dismissing the news reports of Soviet brutality and instead following the journalists who were sympathetic to the Soviet regime.
At the same time, yeah, liberals were bothered by communists. Communism was an uncomfortable ally of liberals: repressive policies in the Soviet Union, destruction of democracy in Eastern Europe, and manipulative tactics in the U.S. and western Europe, not to mention the annoying way that communists were trying to get propaganda value out of racial discrimination in the United States, even while liberals in the Democratic party were maintaining an electoral alliance with the white Democrats in the south. With great effort, the liberals were able to expel the communists from the Democratic party and mainstream liberal organizations in the United States. One step was the establishment of the liberal but firmly anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action in the late 1940s.
Years later, commenters on the left took issue with mainstream liberal Democrats’ success at kicking out the communists, as it was a step to dismantling the powerful New Deal coalition. Even at the time, there was something awkward about the ejection of communist from the Democratic party, in that the liberals who were doing the ejection seemed to be in accord with right-wing Republicans such as Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy—and, in any case, no amount of communist-bashing would satisfy Nixon, McCarthy, and their allies.
And, in retrospect, the Soviet threat to the United States was nothing like what had been imagined in the Cold War period. So the whole expelling-the-communists thing seemed like some combination of unnecessary from a military and political perspective, ridiculous and inhumane as with the Hollywood blacklist, and contrary to the progressive project by depriving liberals of a set of potential allies.
But, now, in light of political events in the past few years . . . I don’t know about that. Even setting aside straight-up concerns about policy influence—communist policies are generally associated with a restriction in political liberty and various forms of economic disaster—; beyond all that, maybe the communists were closer to taking over the Democratic party, and, ultimately, the United States, than it seems.
I base this speculation not on any historical information from the 1930s-1950s but rather by considering what’s been happening with the increasing acceptance of authoritarianism in the Republican party today, most dramatically on 6 Jan 2021 and continuing to this day, with leading Republicans associating with Alex Jones etc. Whatever chance there was for conservative Republicans to draw the line, in the way that liberal Democrats did in the late 1940s and early 1950s did against the communists, seems to have passed.
This is not necessarily a question of character; the situation matters too. Authoritarianism in the U.S. is strongly associated with Donald Trump, and any organized conservative anti-authoritarian movement would need to confront a figure who was very popular among Republican voters. There was no comparable communist-associated figure in the Democratic party of the 1930s-1950s. Henry Wallace was vice president and was popular among Democrats, but party leaders were able to remove him from the ticket in 1944 without taking personal risks. Also, nowadays there are presidential primary elections so it’s harder to get around the ideological voters within the party.
The closest comparison to Trump from that era is Joe McCarthy, and at the time the Republican party didn’t do much to disown him; they just let him flame out, which I guess might have happened to Trump had he just been a publicity-hound but didn’t run for president. McCarthy got big during the Truman administration and thus had the advantage of being an outsider, but he was in no position to run for president against Eisenhower. I assume that conservative Republicans were following the same strategy with Trump, many decades later: get the benefits of his political stances and let him burn out on his own. But somewhere between Ted Cruz’s 2016 primary election campaign and the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023, something changed: the party went all-in.
After dispatching Henry Wallace in 1948, the liberals in the Democratic party kicked out the communists and ruled out any future popular-front strategy. They did this at a time when such a move was relatively easy, but . . . good for them! Sometimes the time to make a hard decision is when it’s least difficult. A key difference, perhaps, is that Trump came as such a surprise. Communists had been doing their best to infiltrate U.S. politics since the 1930s: it was a low-level rumbling that offered both opportunity and concern to liberals. In contrast, the recent authoritarian push seems to be mostly a response to Trump, and conservatives weren’t ready to deal with it.
Anyway, all this history made me appreciate the 1940s-era liberals who put country before party and threw out the communists. They chose the right time to do it. They didn’t wait until it was too late.
It’s easy for people nowadays to criticize liberal or left anti-communism—for example, I happen to come across a book review that says:
[George Orwell’s] reputation took a hit early this century from a document that became known as Orwell’s List. This was a list of names of people Orwell believed to be fellow travellers of the Soviet regime. It was compiled in the late 1940s, known about from 1996 and published in 2003. Orwell gave it to Celia Kirwan shortly before his death. Kirwan was working for the Information Research Department, the decidedly Orwellian name for a section of the Foreign Office that sought to manipulate public impressions of the Soviet Union through propaganda. . . .
[T]o provide a list of names of communist sympathisers in 1949 to a government department – a list presumably based chiefly on gossip and inference and private conversations – is an act that some might find hard to reconcile with Orwell’s conception of the ‘decent’, or with his repeatedly expressed horror at a totalitarian society which has eyes on every wall and spooks at every street corner. Indeed, in the public-school vocabulary which came naturally to Orwell, it would be more natural to describe passing that list to Kirwan, in full awareness of who she worked for, as the act of a sneak.
I disagree with this criticism. There was a cold war going on, and communists really were doing their best to infiltrate left parties. I’m cool with Orwell passing these names along, just as I’d be cool if Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik or Rupert Murdoch or whoever would denounce authoritarian moves in the U.S. today. The situations are different—Orwell had already publicly denouncing Stalinists for more than 10 years before then, and he held no political office—; my point is that, seeing how difficult it is for U.S. conservatives today to resist the authoritarian takeover of their party, I have more appreciation for the liberals who took a stand back in the 1940s. Call them “indecent,” call them “sneaks,” call them “red-baiters,” call them “RINOs,” whatever: that’s part of the point, that they were putting country before party. Just as there were many leftists in the 1930s-1950s with strong communist sympathies—maybe they didn’t think Stalin was perfect, but they saw him as a strong counterweight to conservative aspects of western society, an appealing strongman, etc.—, similarly now there are leading rightists who are sympathetic to fascist leaders, conspiracy theorists, etc., for some mixture of tactical reasons and deeper affinities. As we’ve seen in recent years, taking on the extremists can come at a real political cost, and we should appreciate the leaders who did that.
“I’m cool with Orwell passing these names along, just as I’d be cool if Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik or Rupert Murdoch or whoever would denounce authoritarian moves in the U.S. today.”
That you would support informing to a government department on one’s fellow citizens based on “gossip and inference and private conversations” for holding dissident political opinions in a post against authoritarianism perhaps explains part of it’s appeal, no?
Coincidentally (?), I was just reading this from Orwell:
He also claims many American’s were *still* sympathetic to fascism at the end of WWII:
https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/ShootingElephant/jamesburnham.html
Thank you for posting this. Orwell always has a deeply thoughtful take on things.
Not only was McCarthy never nominated for President, he was censured by the Senate, including by many of his fellow Republican senators (who had obtained a majority in the Senate in 1952). At the same time, it should be remembered that Trump was also denounced by people like J. D. Vance that later came around once he was actually in power.
In the likely event that Trump wins, it will have nothing to do with communism. I feel sorry for anyone who donated money to liberals, because it was always clear they were going to light the money on fire and hand Trump the victory. Trump will be a disaster for most of America, but these liberal pundits will be just as comfortable, writing smug pieces about communists and Russians and sneering at the “deplorable” voters who were too stupid to vote for Kamala, never once indulging in any self-reflection. This is the third time the liberals are running against Trump, and if they haven’t figured out how to beat him, the party needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.
JSA –
This is the third time the liberals are running against Trump, and if they haven’t figured out how to beat him, the party needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.
Not to suggest that “liberals” (maybe a touch of essentializing and flattening going on there, as if “libruls” are a monolithic, top down authority of what happens in the Democratic Party) are beyond criticism, but I have a hard time blaming them because a plurality of Americans vote for a hate-mongering, authoritarian demagogue. Methinks Trump voters deserve more agency. Your defense of the poor besmirched “deplorables” seems a touch (unintentionally) ironic and condescending.
It can be the case that many MAGA voters are low-information and not very intelligent, while also being the case that it’s very bad politics to campaign on saying so. Democrats will still win the popular vote, and there are a substantial number of Trump voters whose primary issues were not hate and racism, who could have been won.
The issue here isn’t even Trump voters, though. Andrew is being somewhat indirect here, but I assume he’s preemptively blaming Jill Stein for whatever calamity befalls America in a second Trump term. It’s impressive that his post never mentions any of the stated reasons that (e.g.) Arab voters in Michigan give for supporting Stein, none of which have anything to do with communism. This should not have been a close election, and it’s only close because of choices the Democrats made, such as sending Richie Torres to campaign in Michigan, or campaigning on endorsements from Dick Cheney, John Kelly, Karl Rove, and John Bolton. It’s certainly an … interesting … campaign strategy.
Jsa:
No, I wasn’t thinking about, let alone “preemptively blaming,” Jill Stein at all. The topic of my post was the success of liberals in stopping communist infiltration of the Democratic party in the 1930s-1950s, contrasted with the failure of conservatives to stop fascist infiltration of the Republican party recently. It struck me that the anti-communist liberals of the 1930s-1950s have been insufficiently credited for their anti-communist efforts. Minor parties such as the Greens or the Libertarians are another story; they have their own goals.
I have plenty of reasons to second guess the Democrats strategy choices and I share your belief that they ‘should’ have been able to beat a candidate like Trump who has so many serious weaknesses. But I believe that, regardless of who wins, in many ways the election has been lost. The MAGA voters you refer to are quite numerous – there are literally 80 million voters that I admit I do not understand. They may or may not be stupid, they may or may not be racist, they may or may not be hateful, but I find myself living in a different world than them. Their world appears to be one where facts are irrelevant, where your “team” is all that matters, and where the role of government is to provide private benefits to yourself. How else can I explain their belief system? I take your advice about self-reflection seriously – I am trying to see what great truth I am missing. But all I see are humans exhibiting our tribal urges with no ability to engage our effortful system 2 abilities to constrain our worst impulses.
I’m not sure how and if this relates to Andrew’s post, but I see three distinct examples presented: the Democratic Party and communist/socialist efforts, the Republican Party and the McCarthy era, and the current Republican Part and the Trump era. I am not at all an expert about any of these. I believe my parents must have been on one or more of the lists mentioned in the first two of these, given their early days in labor unions. I think they had idealistic beliefs in what communism might have been – but I don’t think they ever felt any alliance with Stalin’s version. I can see celebrating the resistance of leaders to prevent the infiltration of extreme views from taking over the party, but I’m not sure if that was due to their strength of character or a result of World War II. Taking these 3 episodes of history and trying to draw conclusions is dangerous, so distinguishing between them is fraught with dangers.
I view all 3 episodes as similar – they all exhibit the tendency of extreme views to take over a political party, or perhaps the ease with which they can do so. In fact, the number of past and current examples where this has happened seems large. The ability of moderate views to be sustained is starting to seem the exception rather than the rule. I’d like to see research about this – I know Andrew has cited research about moderate vs extreme views and election success, but I think all of that research is fairly recent. I’d like to know what it was like in the 1800s or even before. And before there were democracies, what form did political views take? I think I’m finally ready for those general education courses in history.
Dale:
Regarding your comment about “the tendency of extreme views to take over a political party, or perhaps the ease with which they can do so”: Yeah, that was something that people were well aware of in the middle of the twentieth century, having seen the examples of Bolsheviks taking over the opposition in Russia in 1917, fascists taking over the conservative movements in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s, Japan becoming a military dictatorship, Nazi-supporting fifth columnists in Europe preceding and during WW2, communist infiltration of leftist parties in Eastern Europe after the war, Soviet spies infiltrating leftist movements in the U.S. and Britain, etc. In the late 1940s and onward, the U.S. and Britain actively intervened in Europe and elsewhere to keep communists out of power. A lot of this sort of thing looks terrible now—for example, I don’t think there’s anything good to be said about what was done in Guatemala and Iran in 1954—but perhaps some of those interventions were good in preventing worse outcomes.
Several decades later, there’s a tendency to think that the danger of communist infiltration of labor unions and the (non-southern) Democratic party was overstated—after all, the total number of communists in the country was low. But seeing the successful takeover of most of the Republican party by a fascist or fascist-adjacent group makes me wonder, hence the above post. This was the lesson that people drew from the Bolshevik and Nazi takeovers in 1917 and 1933, that a small group of extremists who were willing to be ruthless and violent could attain power.
Outside of post-war Eastern Europe (which was, pace Ford, under Soviet domination), what examples are there of a communist takeover of an existing left-wing or liberal party? Possibly in Latin America?
I am no expert on this subject, but as I understand it there has always been a split on the left between those who pursued power through electoral means and those who sought it by means of revolution. The former rarely seemed besotted with the Soviet Union. Britain’s Labour party spent much of the 70s and 80s fighting off “the Trots”, but their association with those groups in the public’s mind sapped their popularity and contributed heavily to their failure to win a majority for almost two decades. The infiltration by the KGB and others was most effective when it targeted not the Labour party, but members of the establishment like the Cambridge Five.
Nonrenormalizable:
The most famous example of communist takeover of existing liberal parties, or some version of this, was during the Spanish civil war. In the U.S., it never came close to happening, which I think is a big reason why the cold war anti-communist liberals were criticized for overreaction: the idea is that they destroyed a popular-front coalition out of fear of a largely nonexistent bogeyman, and, indeed, militarily the Soviets were never gonna conquer the U.S.-led western alliance.
But . . . until recently there was no example of fascists taking over an existing conservative party in the U.S., at least not outside of the south. And, even in the south, it might be more accurate to say that the political situation there was the result of centuries of fascism or fascist-adjacent government—rather than it being a takeover of an existing conservative movement, it was more of a fascist polity.
In the 1950s, Douglas MacArthur had some fascist leanings, and there was a point at which it looked like he would take lead the Republican party and then the government, but it didn’t look like, if he took power, he’d systematically dismantle the rule of law. Joe McCarthy had a lot of power and popularity for awhile, along with the support of much of his political party, but the anti-fascists in the party were able to wait him out. In the 1960s, communists or communist-adjacent actors tried to disrupt the Democratic party but they made close to zero progress from the inside.
Indeed, when I took a political science course in college in the 1980s, we read Louis Hartz and discussed why it was that the U.S. had never had fascism or socialism. Nobody even discussed the south, which did have a fascist regime for a long time (also see my quick summary and Peter Dorman’s comment).
The recent fascist, or let’s say, fascist-adjacent, takeover of the Republican party makes us aware that this sort of thing is possible, and that a wait-until-it-goes-away attitude from party leaders will not necessarily work: they were not able to have the best of both worlds by keeping the extremists at arm’s length away from power while still getting the votes of their supporters.
Which is what makes me appreciate the efforts of the liberals of the 1930s-1950s to kick the communists out of the Democratic party. Maybe they didn’t need to do this, maybe it had bad consequences for U.S. politics, but I can at least give them credit for doing something that was difficult and possibly saving us from something worse.
And, yes, the politics of the 1930s-1950s was much different from now.
Now we have two roughly equally sized and strongly ideological parties, with big business playing the role of a sort of third party that serves to balance the political system. My impression is that one hope of mainstream conservatives is that, even if a fascist-led Republican party fully takes control of the government, big business would serve as a counterweight. But I don’t know about that: as compared to the 2017-2021 period, a new Trump term would be expected to be staffed much more with extreme loyalists, congress would be more extreme, also the supreme court ruled on presidential immunity, and if they really pardon the perpetrators of political violence, all of that is a change.
Back in the mid-twentieth century, there were two large non-ideological parties—northern Republicans and northern Democrats—along with three outside groups that were more ideological: southern Democrats, big business, and organized labor. So even had there been a communist takeover of the northern Democratic party, there would’ve been many counterweights to it in the U.S. political system. On the other hand, it well could’ve been enough to shift the government to a pro-Soviet stance in international politics.
I don’t want to draw too close an analogy between the situation facing anti-fascist conservative Republicans now and the situation facing anti-communist liberal Democrats in the mid-twentieth century. But I see enough parallels to have a new respect for the liberals who fought the anti-communist fight back then.
Andrew, it seems to me like the fascist takeover in the US is orchestrated and funded by big business interests. I mean Musk is literally running an illegal sweepstakes to pay people to vote fascist. Peter Thiel, Koch, the pillow guy, and whoever else in the billionaire and big business class all seem to be funding this crap. Thinking business is a potential counter to fascism seems wrong to me.
Daniel:
Sure, but I think the big business people who support Trump see themselves as the counterweight; they see Trump and his supporters as valuable political resources they can control.
Andrew
I think “big business people”needs to be more developed. What you say I believe to be true of large businesses that either support Trump, or more frequently, are remaining uncommitted. They believe that Trump’s policies may never be enacted and that they are a counterweight to the worst of them. However, the big business personalities (e.g. Musk, the Pillow guy, etc.) seem different to me. Musk, in particular, seems to be getting off on the spectacle in much the same way as Trump does. I don’t think he is a counterweight to Trump – he is potentially competing for the spotlight. To the extent that their views coincide, they urge each other on. When they differ, it may well be a battle for supremacy. But I wouldn’t characterize that as a counterweight – it is not a voice of reason, but another narcissistic personality jockeying for power.
I do see big business as a counterweight, in the sense of capitalist profits influence on policy. For example, the Trump tariffs might be thwarted by big business interests – in this case, I don’t think Daniel is correct that the Trump fascism is a tool of big business. Many of the more extreme economic policies are likely to be resisted by large businesses. As far as tariffs are concerned, Musk and Trump are on the same page regarding Chinese EVs, but not necessarily in terms of tariffs in general. I do think Musk believes he can control Trump where their interests diverge. Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce interests see commonality with some Trump policies (e.g. corporate taxes) but not with others (tariffs) and I agree with your characterization of them seeing themselves as a counterweight. Whether or not they are successful is a different matter.
Dale:
Yes, big business represents a mix of interests. Thomas Ferguson has argued that clashes between different business interests can explain much of American political history. We mentioned this briefly in Red State Blue state; see here for a snippet.
According to Daniel, America has been taken over by fascists and (as repeated claimed on this blog) Israel and Kamala are committing and supporting genocide. I can see the quality of comments on this blog have descended into pure tinfoil hat territory.
Seems like a lot of tea leaves reading here about “big busines,” so I’ll weigh in.
Just read this article an i think there’s a shit ton of overlap between “big business” and the anti-“administrative state” ideologies aligned with the incoming Trump administration:
Companion piece to the ramaswamy interview:
https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga
I also suggest reading the transcript of the recent Ezra Klein podcast with Vivek Ramaswamy.
These people aren’t playing around. They see basically any form of an “administrative state” as an obstacle to big business. And Trump’s rhetoric largely mirrors what they haft to say.
I’m not convinced that he’s really in board. What he really cares about is his popularity and if those polices are implemented they could have serious blowback on his popular support (consider of inflation goes up along with his tarrifs). I think while these other people are serious, Trump won’t do stuff that hurts his favorability ratings. So maybe most of it is just campaign rhetoric.
There are other complicating factors as well. If you read the Ramaswamy interview it’s easy to see that he builds a wall of word salad lingo but there aren’t any specifics. Pulling this off, they’ll meet a ton of obstacles. How is Elon going to cut back by 50% on government spending as promised by Trump when so much goes to the military and social security and Medicare? He would basically have to cut everything else.
Also on the Vivek interview you’ll see that there are two opposing camps – the ones who want a rightwing takeover of the “administrative state” and those who want to eliminate it entirel. In addition to logistical obstacles, those opposing forces may stymie each other.
One can always hope.
Since I have a friend who did an entire PhD in political geography focusing on human rights abuses and genocide and the role of satellite surveillance and drone surveillance in detection and documentation, and when I ask him point blank is there a genocide going on in Gaza, and he says that it’s completely unequivocal yes, I’ll keep going with “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”. I think this is obvious to anyone who bothers to look at data like https://www.bellingcat.com/tag/gaza/ and if Israel had exploded thousands of cell phone bombs in the US we would call it terrorism and have invaded the country.
As for fascism. The question is really, what is fascism? and is it the stuff Trump is doing? I’ll follow Umberto Eco’s thoughtful views on this topic written in 1995, so well before the Trump administration and not tailored to fit it.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
What’s going on in the US with Trump and MAGA republicans ticks most if not all of those boxes: cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, action for actions sake, disagreement is treason, fear of difference, appeal to social frustration, obsession with plot, enemy is both strong and weak, pacifism is trafficking with the enemy, contempt for the weak, machismo and weaponry, selective populism, and Newsspeak are basically 13 out of 14, the one I left out is “everybody is educated to become a hero” which I’m not really sure about how it might apply. Trumps own ads on TV show the “other” as Mexican looking men in mugshots and says trump is for “you” and shows white men in militaristic equipment. It’s fascism plain and simple.
I hardly need to give examples when John Kelly, a retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s own chief of staff says he’s a Fascist: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-kelly/index.html
From Orwell above:
Then, the difference between “fascism” and “communism” is just the order of events. The end result is the same. Makes sense to me.
Also, both major political parties in the US are obviously fascist in the sense of merging industry and state (ie, corporatism). The “fascist takeover” already happened decades ago, so its funny to see people trying to stop it now.
And really people seem to like fascism, otherwise why would they keep voting for it? Even when the worst excesses of fascism (genocide, goals of territorial expansion, censorship, etc) are thrown in their face like this current Israel situation, they still keep voting for it. Read reddit politics and look at all the people saying you are an idiot if you don’t vote to support genocide.
Then the few politicians who are actually *not* fascist like Ron Paul (and maybe Bernie Sanders?) get called “extreme”.
The world will make much more sense if you look at it this way, but its probably not possible for most to admit they have been voting for fascism their entire lives. Having never voted for either major party, I have no such problem.
If there was a genocide in Gaza, there wouldn’t be anyone left in Gaza. I don’t care what your similarly lunatic fringe friend says. By the way, this is an old antisemitic slur design to remove whatever sympathy Israel might still get because of the holocaust. You know, and actual genocide that depopulated massive areas.
As for the insane fascism charge, I don’t have time to refute that because I’ve got enroll my kids in the hitler youth, vote for miscegenation laws, nationalization of industries while banning all trade unions, speech codes (other than those run by universities) and otherwise ban free speech, violent oppression of political opponents (other than the assignation attempts on trump, those don’t count) and about 1000 other things that would be happening if we really were taken over by facists, but somehow magically aren’t happening.
You need to get outside and get some air Daniel, because you’ve lost all credibility.
Anon:
1. Genocide does not require 100% mortality. There are still Armenians in Turkey, Jews in Europe, Tutsis in Rwanda, etc.
2. Please, all, no more than one post on a topic per thread unless you have something to add. Different perspectives are fine; going on and on is not so great, as it makes the comments section less interesting for others to read and contribute to.
> Genocide does not require 100% mortality.
Would you say that it requires a population decline at all?
One of the many things that complicates the comparison with Rwanda for example is the killing of two thirds of the Tutsi population in three months. (They didn’t need several tonnes of explosives per victim either.)
+1 to everything Dan Lakeland said.
Soviet foreign policy was expansionist. It’s been awhile but so many convincing monographs. Read for example, Robert O Freedman Soviet Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East.
The Vietnam War was still a mistake as was supporting the torture and terror regimes in Latin America.
After the Wall fell everything changed. Jean Kirkpatrick and others stopped being hawks.
Today Russia is not a threat and the Republicans, at least some of them, are the party of restraint and realism.
The Anarchists called this pretty early on. The end goal Marx had for Communism was that the state fade away. 19th century Anarchists laughed at that, and from what I know indirectly Marx moved more Anarchist towards the end of his life. But authoritarians used Marx to justify the Authoritarian-State-Capitalist system of the Soviet Union. Yes, the Soviet union was a capitalist system, in the sense that there was ownership by the capitalist class (which, in the Soviet Union, was also the ruling political class) and the capitalist class directed the use of economic capital and kept the surplus for use by themselves. Stalin starving the ukranians for one horrible example of the extremes this was taken to. The difference between the Soviet Union and the US wasn’t capitalism vs communism, but rather whether or not the middleman was cut out and the capitalists were simply placed in charge of the govt as well. In the US you have to buy politicians who are elected separately, in the Soviet Union they were one and the same from the beginning.
It’s fairly laughable in my opinion to say that a deeply hierarchical structured state would “fade away”. That’s just not what institutions do. My understanding is that Marx eventually came around to that idea towards the end of his life, but I’m far from an expert on that history.
There’s a derogatory term in the left “tankie” which refers to someone who claims to be leftist (ie. a friend of common people and advocate of generally egalitarian power sharing) who nevertheless excused the Soviet Union or “Marxist-Leninist” (aka Stalinist) authoritarian ideas.
Anoneuoid quotes Orwell in which he essentially says the same thing… that the “Socialism” of the Soviet Union was just a hopeful power-grab at “the whip” by the technocrat class (ie. scientists, doctors, lawyers, govt administrators etc).
I’m cool with Orwell passing these names along, just as I’d be cool if Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik or Rupert Murdoch or whoever would denounce authoritarian moves in the U.S. today.
Hmmm. I think it necessarily depends on who the list is being turned over to, and what they’re going to do with it. And I think the parallel breaks down when you compare turning over a list of names to denouncing authoritarian moves. They aren’t much like the same thing, imo.
It’s worth noting that Orwell wasn’t sending along secret information. AFAIK it was a list of Soviet sympathizers based on their public statements. He wasn’t reporting on criminal activity.
Andrew- Thank you for the clarification; I stand corrected.
The analogy seems a bit strained, since communists were the quintessential anti-fascists, and many of the liberal civil liberties victories of the late 60s were due to the red diaper babies who were qualitatively quite different from the neoliberals who represent the liberal movement now. As you say, we don’t have the counterfactual, so it’s possible that a world where communists maintained a higher profile would have been just as illiberal and authoritarian as Trump world. That doesn’t seem obvious to me.
“As you say, we don’t have the counterfactual, so it’s possible that a world where communists maintained a higher profile would have been just as illiberal and authoritarian as Trump world. That doesn’t seem obvious to me.”
Have you somehow avoided looking at every single communist regime that ever came to power?
The alternative isn’t between Stalinism and Fascism, and insisting on this false binary may be why the Democrats are losing. Andrew correctly noted that the extirpation of communists was a first step in killing the New Deal, and there is reason to believe a New Deal type of liberalism would easily beat fascism today, just as it did in the 1930s. The rise of fascism is more a function of neoliberalism offering no alternative than it is a function of voters being a deplorable mob. FDR had no problem making a populist appeal to masses of people with below-median intelligence.
As should have been clear from my post, I’m talking about a world where “communists maintained a higher profile”, rather than one where communists achieved hegemony. One can make the case that any ideology unchecked is going to be very bad, and the recent 30 years of neoliberal hegemony is no exception. I’m contrasting this hypothetical world with the current situation, where liberals continue to punch left and appear to be more worried about communism than about fascism. Given the campaign rhetoric and the alliance with so many fascist neoconservatives, it’s hard to imagine the current Democrat party ever offering a New Deal style alternative to fascism. To your point about communist regimes, I suspect that most establishment Democrats would happily agree that it’s far better to end up ruled by MAGA fascists than to end up like China.
Too many labels and assertions for me. Fascism, neoliberals, communism, populist, neoconservatives are all terms that are not clearly defined and I think overlap in many cases. Also, the populist appeal to “masses of people with below-median intelligence” today seems to be offered by the Republicans. So, if the Democrats were to offer the same, I don’t see how this would explain “why the Democrats are losing.” I will agree that the Democrats have had a hard time offering an alternative to Trump’s whatever-you-want-to-call-it, but I have a hard time knowing what alternative could be offered to the MAGA legions that would be successful. You appear to think that an FDR-type New Deal would accomplish that, but I’m not convinced (particularly since that seems to be exactly what Biden was trying to offer). Once the public sphere becomes dominated by personal private interests, and once demonizing the “other” becomes a successful strategy, it isn’t clear to me that there is any simple strategy for overcoming that.
Dale –
You’ve wondered what logic could lead to accepting MAGA campaign rhetoric, or more specifically campaign fraud conspiracy theories.
I think clearly, an important piece is the atomization of information sources.
I recently passed a sign saying “No rights for illegal immigrants” and I struggled to figure it out. Are people really just drawn to authoritarian fear-mongering and demagoguery? Are they just xenophobic or racist? That doesn’t seem congruent with the people I meet in my life.
Perhaps some are, but certainly you have to control for the effects of where and from whom people get their information. Take a look at this clip.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/video/maga-republican-conservative-trump-news-media-digvid
Joshua
My wife often blames the media, along the lines you are suggesting. I certainly agree that echo chambers are contributing to the decline of reason and diverse views – but I see these as symptoms, not causes. I really can’t see the support of the anti-immigrant rhetoric as anything other than racist views. They may be subconscious and unintentional, but they are dehumanizing. I can’t blame dehumanization on media influence, though it makes it much easier to sustain.
More to the point, you cite the need to know where people “get their information.” I agree, but equating “information” with what they hear in an echo chamber suggests something more serious than simply the source. Trusting a source with vested interests (and frequently a record of inaccuracy) is a sign of an inability and/or unwillingness to think carefully and engage in critical thought. It is easy enough to imagine why people might find extreme partisan assertions appealing – but I was brought up to believe that it was my responsibility to question such things. It appears that many people were not.
>>You’ve wondered what logic could lead to accepting MAGA campaign rhetoric, or more specifically campaign fraud conspiracy theories.
I think clearly, an important piece is the atomization of information sources.
That’s an important piece, but I think even more key is the rapidly widening cultural divide in the US, urban/metropolitan vs towns/rural, and anti-establishment thought.
If one believes that essentially the entire “mainstream media” and government bureaucracy is committed only to maintaining its own power, then it is easy to believe elections are faked, etc. Many of these people don’t trust the R party as a whole either (people who talk about “the uniparty”) – they want Trump specifically to smash the system.
(The Harris campaign promoting endorsements from e.g. the Cheneys is IMO a poor move because it can easily be read as supporting this narrative.)
A lot of largely rural / small town / central US smaller city* people see the Democratic Party as smug, arrogant experts & coastal elites who look down on rural or non-college people.
Many others believe that the Democratic Party is an existential threat to their state or area’s economy/way of life (e.g. “climate measures will destroy our oil/cattle ranching industry”), and/or that the Democratic position on issues like abortion is sufficiently evil that basically any opposition to it is “the lesser of two evils.
*I don’t entirely like the “urban/rural divide” framing because there are decent size cities that are very much on the “rural” side of this: e.g. Midland TX, or Cheyenne WY.
More simply, the French just defeated fascism electorally when the centrists allied with communists, and the communists did the heavy lifting. In WWII, the USSR and China did the vast bulk of the heavy lifting, both in terms of lives sacrificed and in terms of fascists killed. The existence proofs we have of defeating fascism tend to involve alliances with communists. I am not aware of a single case where liberals have won by eliminating the communists and then appealing to conservatives’ sense of fairness by saying, “We got rid of *our* left wing extremists, now you need to get rid of *your* right wing extremists!”. This seems to fundamentally misunderstand fascism.
> In WWII, the USSR and China did the vast bulk of the heavy lifting, both in terms of lives sacrificed and in terms of fascists killed.
This is the single most frustrating half-truth of WWII historiography. You are implicitly crediting Stalin for being ridiculously profligate with his men’s lives, in opposition to the Western democracies who chose to focus on throwing the steel of mechanized machinery, not flesh, at the Nazi German front.
Not to mention that the Western Allies strategic bombing campaign, while obviously morally fraught and ineffective at destroying civilian morale, was very effective at redirecting German war production to defensive air power (at the time of the Battle of Kursk, the Germans spent more money on producing aircraft than tanks!). Operation Bagration simply could not have been as effective as it was without the Western Allies naval and air campaign as well as the immense amount of aid given to the Soviets via Lend-Lease (constituting ~10% of Soviet mechanized equipment).
Following up on Jack;’s observation.
This is just off the top of my head, so details may be wrong. But Germany had about 2-3 million people (mostly men I think) in their 1944-45 air defense system. They used lots of aircraft, artillery tubes, and propellant that would have been very helpful on the Eastern Front. The bombing campaign consumed lots of German resources—resources that could have made a substantial difference in the ground war.
I don’t understand the reference to “China doing heavy lifting.” The Japanese consistently defeated the Chinese forces. Japan was defeated by the naval blockade (mostly US), the bombing campaign, and the entry of the USSR into the Pacific War. Historians are divided regarding the importance of each of these factors. The Chinese paid an enormous price, but they were not substantial factors in the defeat of Japan.
But “extremism sympathizers” is highly subjective? Different groups may see Trump as “Nazi” or “opposite of Nazi”, or historically FDR as “communist” or “fascist”. Therefore sincerely believe defeating their supporters/opponent benefits the country?
That is definitely a factor. Not sure if it’s directly related to the abortion issue, or if it’s a broader thing where the anti-establishment/frontier mythos/rugged individualist stuff is more appealing to men than women.
(It’s interesting to me that the anti-establishment stuff has become so strongly R in the Trump era. Anti-vaccination and alternative health stuff was associated with “crunchy granola leftists/hippies” not that long ago, and now it’s full on the other way with RFK Jr campaigning for Trump and all the post COVID vaccine stuff.)
Coalitions shift weirdly fast, and I think post COVID internal migration may have re-sorted the country politically. (That or polling is just completely meaningless this cycle. Otherwise it seems impossible to reconcile a small national PV margin for Harris with polls showing stuff like +5 Trump KS and +3 Harris IA.)
Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to a different comment.
I imagine that Democratic antipathy to communist infiltrators is in no small part down to the Dixiecrats who opposed an end to segregation and the conferring of full civil rights to Black Americans. What is more remarkable is that the Democrats went the other way in the 1960s and ceded a persistent electoral advantage in the South, rather than follow the present Republican course of appealing to ever more insular and hateful constituencies as a means of maintaining their power.
The core of this argument is that somehow the extremists aren’t responding to any conditions on the ground and they will disappear if you throw them out of the party early enough. This doesn’t work in the present. The situation that’s causing them now is economic: levels of income inequality are bigger than at any time since the 1920s, extreme hunger and food insecurity are up, rent and mortgages are becoming more and more unaffordable, etc, so people are rejecting the mainstream party members because they don’t help fix this. This trend will only grow stronger if nothing is done.
Hitler himself rose to power because of hyperinflation and the Great Depression in Germany as well (communist parties were also popular). The elites preferred him over the German communists…
What’s that old saying? “If politicians don’t solve a problem, someone will take advantage of it.”
“Hitler himself rose to power because of hyperinflation and the Great Depression in Germany”
Attributing Hitler’s rise to power to hyperinflation seems to have become conventional wisdom. However, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic peaked in 1923 (same year as Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch), and from roughly 1925 to 1933, when Hitler took power (or power was given to him even though he never won a majority) Germany actually experienced *deflation*.
Unless there was “hyperdeflation” back to the previous amount of purchasing power, people still suffered economically. That’s the point. It’s economic suffering that causes this.
“The mass poverty […] was not the outcome of hyperinflation, but rather the by-product of mass unemployment, deep recession, and falling prices during the Great Depression of the early 1930s”
https://www.hertie-school.org/fileadmin/user_upload/20191101_Inflation_Redeker_neues_Layout.pdf
@Andrew,
Thanks for the detailed reply!
Re: Spain of the 1930s, my knowledge of that very frenetic era is also quite slim, but as I understand it, it is not a simple question of left-wing infiltration of a Socialist Party as a means of seizing power. Spain had already been through a military dictatorship before the left-wing governments came into power, and the popular front that formed there came into being (like the one in France) as a response to the threat of fascism. But I’m happy to be corrected on this.
I think the dangers of a turn to communism in the US of that era are overblown. Compared to Spain, and indeed Imperial Russia, the US economy was much more developed and had an established framework of industrial relations and trust-busting prior the Great Depression. With leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Evan Hughes, there was recent precedent in the ability to advocate for better conditions for working people without associating with the most radical elements of the left.
Further, I think the establishment of a truly communist government in the US was impossible then for the same reason as it is now: the average American is conditioned from childhood in a mindset that is far too individualist to accept such a system of state control, unless it is “wrapped in the flag” and caters to their existing prejudices of in-groups and out-groups. We saw in the acute phase of the pandemic how far solidarity and self-sacrifice for the sake of fellow citizens went under circumstances of very mild coercion. Possibly the only thing that can unite Americans on such a scale is an attack on the homeland by a clearly defined enemy, like Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 — and worryingly, that may not even be the case any more.
As for the question of if a communist-influenced US government in the 30s-50s would be allied with the USSR — we are well into the land of hypotheticals in this scenario, but I am not so sure. The US could have ended up like Yugoslavia (a slightly freer country than the Soviet Union, but united only under a charismatic leader) or China: very wary “frenemies”.
Btw, have you read Roth’s “The Plot Against America”? Maybe not his best work or the best alternate history ever, but reading it (pre-2015) it did at least make me more aware of how close the US was to taking a wrong turn. What’s surprising to me is that (and I know there are other commenters here who feel otherwise) today’s turn to the far right comes in the backdrop of relatively well-performing economy — certainly far-removed from the Depression.
>>today’s turn to the far right comes in the backdrop of relatively well-performing economy — certainly far-removed from the Depression.
I don’t think it is economically driven, but culturally. I’d argue that it is not unique to the US (Brexit in the UK, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, etc). I think it’s a combination of the decay of a post-Cold War “end of history” mindset a generation later; reaction against purely social* leftward movement e.g. on homosexuality; reaction against immigration (which is now widespread in many countries America sees as ‘left’ of us, e.g. Australia and Canada); etc.
The US manifestation of it is unique though because the US is super anti-establishment & has a huge urban-rural divide (no place in eg the UK is really equivalent to MT/WY/NE/SD/ND etc., for example).
*As opposed to economic left/right, foreign policy, immigration etc. Id say the US median voter today is much farther left socially, much farther right on immigration (polling has shown stuff like 56% approval for mass deportations!), much less hawkish on foreign policy than 20 years ago.
For the US, I think any explanation is limited of it doesn’t account for the significant gender divide in voting. Given that there are fairly fixed pots of voters at either end of the 2-party spectrum, apparently gender is associated right now with a large % of the “swing” vote. Of course, going from that association to an underlying causality gets complicated.
That is definitely a factor. Not sure if it’s directly related to the abortion issue, or if it’s a broader thing where the anti-establishment/frontier mythos/rugged individualist stuff is more appealing to men than women.
(It’s interesting to me that the anti-establishment stuff has become so strongly R in the Trump era. Anti-vaccination and alternative health stuff was associated with “crunchy granola leftists/hippies” not that long ago, and now it’s full on the other way with RFK Jr campaigning for Trump and all the post COVID vaccine stuff.)
From a distance, American anti-communism was paranoid. The purges and persecutions were not justified.
But liberal and conservative anti-communism in Europe went hand in hand with support for Hitler. The British establishment and even Poland allied themselves with Hitler against the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia:
“Czechoslovakia submitted to the combination of military pressure by Germany, Poland, and Hungary, and diplomatic pressure by Britain and France”
“Poland would oppose any attempt by Soviet forces to defend Czechoslovakia”
Andrew –
I think you might find this interesting, as a kind of companion piece to your ode to the anti-communist liberals. It’s an interview with historian Gary Gerstle who discusses (among other interesting topics) how conservatives and Republicans and capitalists “acquiesced to the New Deal order” – because of their need to do so to protect against inroads from communism. I think it fills out the picture you painted quite a bit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gary-gerstle.html
I think you are being very charitable to the 1930 supporters of Russia. There was good evidence of what Russia really was by then. The Great Purge pre-dates this. Incidentally Orwell wrote a book called “Hommage to Catalonia” which absolutely destroys, based on first hand observations, any notion that Russia had any morals. I think the best you can say is that the Russian sympathizers were naive and wrong. It is also false to say that there were no communists in the US govt. McCarthy was a demagogue and a drunk, but there were serious issues. The names Lachlan Currie and Morgenthau are not widely mentioned these days, but there you are. Here’s an amusing fact. The HUAC was formed in the 1930’s as a vehicle for the Democrats to smear isolationist Republicans as ‘unAmerica’ etc. It’s first chairman was a representative from NY who was in fact a Russian spy ! Look up books by Haynes and Klehr for this sort of information.
Since LGM has refreshed this debate (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/03/taking-fascism-seriously-2):
What Gelman I think overlooks is that in the post war period, the memory of both fascism (defeated) and Stalinism (still ongoing) was still fresh and there was a sufficiently broad consensus in the US and Western Europe that we don’t want either of those ever again (the Global South is a different matter – they suffered not from Stalin or Hitler but from Western imperialism). That consensus held for about 80 years and then faded into history, with a new generation of fascists rising to electoral power in several countries. I think the temporal distance from the historical memory is key to understand why fascism is again on the rise after 80 years have passed and all the witnesses have died.
I think Gelman widely overstates the Communist “threat” of those years. Nowhere in the West did a Stalinist party come close to power by democratic means, not because McCarthy was right but because there was no popular appetite for that kind of system. People in the West could see what it did in the East bloc, and while there were heavyhanded anti-communist propaganda efforts, it has to be said that the propagandists didn’t have to make much up because reality was the best propaganda. I grew up in Germany on the Western side of the inner-German border. There were very few Communist sympathizers I assure you.