A Socialist on the High Court? Part One

Elena Kagan's controversial "Final Conflict" thesis on socialism was written in 1981 when she was 21 years old. Professor Harvey Klehr, an expert on the socialist and communist movements, told me that while he sensed "a lurking sympathy" in the document for the left-wing of the Socialist Party, he didn't find a "red flag" that would derail her nomination. Kagan's thesis covered the rise and fall of the socialist movement in New York City from 1900-1933.

Clearly, however, the socialist movement has risen again, under the cover of the "progressive" tradition that includes not only the President who appointed Kagan but her backers at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP).

The embrace of Kagan by this movement is the real "red flag." But Investor's Business Daily (IBD) has noted in an editorial the "free ride" that Kagan has received in her confirmation hearings, as Republican senators have mostly "played dead" and the major media have acted as "compliant shills" for the nomination. Yet, as noted by IBD, Kagan has a radical record that includes:

Twisting scientific findings in order to protect the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. Banning military recruiters at Harvard Law School to please radical homosexual activists. Arguing as solicitor general that books, and maybe pamphlets, too, might not be worthy of First Amendment protection. Seeming to agree that it would be constitutional for the federal government to tell people what to eat. As we have seen with Van Jones, who has been rehired by CAP, it is today fashionable in left-wing or "progressive" circles to be a socialist and even communist revolutionary. This wasn't always the case.

Jones resigned his White House job after the scrutiny into his Marxist background and membership in STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) was threatening to implicate Obama and Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in his hiring. It recently came out that Obama favored Jarrett for the U.S. Senate seat he vacated after his election to the presidency.

The open collaboration with Jones by CAP represents a sharp break with the anti-communist liberals, once a major force in the progressive movement and the Democratic Party, who had rejected any ties or associations with supporters of totalitarianism and communist dictatorships.

During the 1980s, for example, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates, including the American Institute for Free Labor Development, actively fought the communists, especially in Latin America. This stance was dropped after John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995.

CAP's so-called "Campus Progress" affiliate has continued this break with the anti-communist liberal tradition by running a very sympathetic interview in 2008 with Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd. The Weather Underground was a Cuban-trained Communist gang, led by Obama associates William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, that waged violence and murder in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The group killed Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell on February 16, 1970.

In analyzing the more recent history of socialism, a good place to start is Henry Wallace's Third Party movement in 1948, the Progressive Party. Wallace was not an insignificant figure, having been vice president in Franklin Roosevelt's third term.

In his report, "From Henry Wallace to William Ayers-the Communist and Progressive Movements," Herbert Romerstein points out that while Wallace wasn't a communist, the party was under Communist Party USA (CPUSA) control. "The Communists even reassigned some of their members from Soviet espionage to run the Progressive Party," he says. The CPUSA was funded by Moscow and was so obedient to the Soviet line that it backed the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Picking up where Kagan's thesis leaves off, Romerstein notes that Earl Browder, who headed the Communist Party in the 1930s until 1945, had boasted in 1960 about the success of the communists under his leadership. Browder had said:

"Entering the 1930's as a small ultra-left sect of some 7,000 members, remnant of the fratricidal factional struggle of the 1920's that had wiped out the old 'left wing' of American socialism, the CP rose to become a national political influence far beyond its numbers (at its height it never exceeded 100,000 members), on a scale never before reached by a socialist movement claiming the Marxist tradition. It became a practical power in organized labour, its influence became strong in some state organizations of the Democratic Party (even dominant in a few for some years), and even some Republicans solicited its support. It guided the anti-Hitler movement of the American League for Peace and Democracy that united a cross-section of some five million organized Americans (a list of its sponsors and speakers would include almost a majority of Roosevelt's Cabinet, the most prominent intellectuals, judges of all grades up to State Supreme Courts, church leaders, labour leaders, etc.). Right-wing intellectuals complained that it exercised an effective veto in almost all publishing houses against their books, and it is at least certain that those right-wingers had extreme difficulty getting published."

In this context, a far more questionable treatment of the socialist or "progressive" movement can be found in a lengthy report issued by the Center for American Progress entitled "The Progressive Intellectual Tradition in America."

Curiously, it ignores Henry Wallace and his communist-dominated Progressive Party.

I asked John Halpin, who wrote much of the CAP report and also co-authored The Power of Progress with John Podesta, CAP president, about this omission. He replied:

"Henry Wallace received fewer votes than Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in 1948 and carried no states. Nearly all progressive and liberal support went to Harry Truman. Wallace was a decent man and his work on agriculture and his stands on ending segregation and fighting for racial equality were admirable. However, because of his foreign policy stands and his naive approach to Communist influence in the party, most of the major progressive and liberal voices of the time-including Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Reinhold Niebuhr-gathered within Americans for Democratic Action, an explicitly anti-Communist, pro-civil rights organization. Long term, Wallace's 1948 campaign had no real impact on progressives."

But while the Dixiecrats faded from the scene, the "progressives" did not. This is a critical point.

"Following their humiliating 1948 defeat, Wallace's Progressives refused to surrender. They instead embarked upon a 'Long March' that led to their ideological heirs' capture of the modern Democratic Party. A key milestone in their re-birth was 1968. That year, Democrats turned against Truman-JFK-LBJ Cold War policies. That same year, former Progressive Party national convention delegate Senator George McGovern emerged as the heir to the martyred Robert Kennedy. Four years later, McGovern captured the Democratic nomination and re-wrote party national convention rules to cement the transformation of his party's leftward drift. The Obama victory of 2008, and the personnel and policies of his administration, largely translate into a victory for Henry Wallace's ideological heirs, not for Truman's. The Truman-style Democrat is largely extinct."

Halpin's reference to Wallace's "naive approach to Communist influence in the party" suggests recognition that communism was and is a danger and that Wallace was not sufficiently alert to this problem. But is this the case with the modern-day progressive movement? CAP's employment of Van Jones-and rehiring, after details about his communist background had emerged-suggests it is not.

The non-communists like Wallace who tolerated communists became known as "fellow travelers" or dupes. The Communists used such people to influence non-communist Americans in the trade union movement and the Democratic Party.

Romerstein notes, "Two secret Communist Party members became Democratic members of the United States Congress. They were John Bernard from Minnesota and Hugh DeLacy from Washington State. A 'friend of the Party' was Vito Marcantonio, who was elected to Congress first as a Republican, then as a Democrat, and finally as a candidate of the Communist Party controlled American Labor Party in New York."

DeLacy's memorial service was attended by Rep. Leon Panetta, now the director of the CIA under Obama, who had paid tribute to DeLacy and his wife as "lifelong activists for social justice."

Bringing the history of socialism and communism up to the present time, Romerstein has explained how the "New Left" of the 1960s and 70s included Communists involved in such groups as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and its terrorist offspring, the Weather Underground. Later, some of these Marxists would emerge in the group called "Progressives for Obama," which included Carl Davidson, formerly of SDS, and Barbara Ehrenreich and Cornel West of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose Chicago branch had backed Obama from the start.

Van Jones worked closely with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a Communist Party spin-off group. Several members of his STORM group traveled to Cuba in 1999 as part of the notorious Venceremos Brigade, organized with the active involvement of the Weather Underground.

Karen Nussbaum, a top official of the AFL-CIO, participated in one of those trips to Cuba. But when I asked her about it, after she made a presentation at the 2009 Campaign for America's Future conference, the leading "progressive" organization in the U.S, she turned and walked away.

As documented by several Congressional committees, the Communists also manipulated or controlled the major anti-Vietnam War organizations, using liberals, "progressives" and socialists as fellow travelers.

This was critical because the Communists could not win the war on the battlefield. In addition to media figures such as Walter Cronkite, who turned the enemy's defeat in the 1968 Tet Offensive into a victory for the communists, Hanoi was depending on the anti-war protests to force a U.S. military withdrawal.

As leftist Danny Schechter wrote, in the introduction to North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap's book How We Won the War, "Throughout the war, the Vietnamese cultivated the active political support of peoples and governments throughout the world... Politically, the Vietnamese always believed in the importance of the anti-war movement...They encouraged it as best they could, knowing that creating a climate of opinion hostile to the war would be one important way of ending it. In the end, their victory was accelerated by Congress' refusal to vote more aid. That refusal was a response to a climate of public opinion which the anti-war movement helped to forge."

Perhaps the most significant example of the support for the North Vietnamese was displayed by Tom Hayden, who was caught with a June 4, 1968, letter to "Dear Col. Lao," a North Vietnamese official, which ended, "Good fortune! Victory!" Hayden, once married to "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, would later emerge as a member of "Progressives for Obama."

Meanwhile, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communists reorganized, with many of them establishing the CCDS. Not as widely known, however, is the fact that a secret member of this group was Barbara Lee, who would become a member of the U.S. Congress, leader of the congressional Progressive Caucus and leader of the congressional Black Caucus. She would be honored in 2009 as a "progressive" champion by the Campaign for America's Future.

Van Jones spoke to a 2006 CCDS fundraiser. Another figure active in the CCDS was Harry Hay, the former Communist Party member who founded the modern gay rights movement.

"Unlimited government control over private property is what Mussolini preached."

Exactly, and this theory is referred to as fascism.

"Both are socialist,"

At the core, yes. To the same extent one can say that communism is a form of socialism, too. They certainly have much in common. People use the term fascism for control without formal ownership and socialism for outright ownership of the means of production after their expropriation by the proletariat-driven government.

"and both claimed to be socialist. Mussolini also claimed to be a Marxist initially. But then he disagreed with Marxism on precisely that point. "socialist and even I’m willing to take Mussolini at his word, that he was a socialist."

People refer to themselves as Democrats but, too, but they are no longer: they are mixture of neo-Communists and Social-Democrats. The media talking heads will tell you too that they are non-ideological, so what? Obamites claim that he governs from the "center" -- will you take them at their word, too?

Nazis -- the National Socialist Workers Party --- adopted a platform rather different than that of the Social Democrats. Nazis adopted Mussolini's fascism, which is why we refer to them as fascists: to distinguish them from other socialists (in the broad sense): communists on the one hand and Social Democrats on the other.

It’s extremely important that corporations, both large and small, are able to speak freely about all candidates without any bureaucratic interference.

Actually, there is (was) an important ideological divide between fascists (phalangists), who are rightists, and Nazis, who were (are), as you point out, leftists and Socialists.

The divide was always recognized by Nazis and Italian fascists during their long collaboration, even though they cooperated in so-called "fascist courts" in 1944 in the trial of e.g. Count Ciano for treason.

The litmus test is that the Nazis were always a Volk-oriented party. To them, the Volk was the highest good, and they served the interest of the Volk and its Fuehrer. They were hostile to the old titled nobility, which accounts for their cultivation of hothouse "Nazi" generals like Erwin Rommel and blackshirt heroes like Otto Skorzeny (who rescued Mussolini from the Italian antifascists, and later put together the phony GI cadre who changed road signs around during the Battle of the Bulge) who had no ties to the old Prussian junker nobility of which the Wehrmacht was so full. This was one reason for the existence of the Nazi Party's army, the Waffen SS.

The Nazis were anti-nobility, pro-Volk and so were a Left party, like the socialists and Communists in other countries.

The Italian fascists were pro-nobility. Their highest good was service to and defense of the State, and anything that could support the State, like the old nobility and the Catholic Church, they coopted and supported as far as possible. They were State-centric, as opposed to Volk-centric, which made them phalangists or rightists.

"They were State-centric, as opposed to Volk-centric, which made them phalangists or rightists"

To me, this is a distinction in rhetoric only. Take instead Lenin's theory of the State. In Phase II of socialism --- the so-called "developed socialism" or true communism -- the state is supposedly unnecessary; it will die off (the specifics of dying are omitted, as far as I can remember). But what about Phase I, the developing socialism? The State, Lenin claimed and Stalin after him, is absolutely necessary. But for whom? The same answer, always: the people, the Russian equivalent of Volk. The workers, the proletariat, is supposedly the most socially conscious class (having nothing to lose but their chains), and hence (nonexistent causality here) representing the interest of the entire society, which now includes even the "expropriated members of the bourgeoisie" (i.e., the impoverished by state capitalists and land owners).

What's the point here? The fascists, both the nobility-tolerant Italians and the more overtly Volk-oriented Germans did everything ostensibly :for the people." In actions, as opposed to some parts of rhetoric, Germans did pretty much what did Mussolini: control almost all aspects of private businesses, from prices to the ability to sell the business, but let the (remaining) profits accrue to the formal owners. In contrast to fascist socialists, communists formally own the means of production, so that the profits accrue to the state ---- that is, the same Volk.

P.S. One have to be careful when accepting the rightists-leftist terminology handed down by political "scientists." Even sophisticated models in that "science" are still uni-dimensional, from left to right. This is always too simplistic but becomes grossly misleading when applied to 1920s-40s. Germans that voted in Hitler had essentially three choices: Nazis, Communists, and a thin layer of Social Democrats. All of these are on the left, just varying degrees of the left. But, since communists had been considered leftists for some times, and Nazis were not communists, in a unidimensional world they must have been on the right. That is what political scientists have concluded and perpetuated that myth: today it is common "knowledge" that Natzis are right-wing. But it is like saying that a murderer is law-abiding only because he is different from, and not as bad, as a serical killer.

The truth is, the entire Germany veered Left in the early 1930s, and the choice was merely among various flavors of Left. This is not unlike what we see today: the Republicans have become Social Democrats (big government, open borders, etc.) and Democrats have become neo-communists and neo-fascists. And it is the Tea Party movement that essentially says, "Certain Republicans don't fool us by being to the right of the Dems; you are all leftists." The left-right conceptualization is quite misleading when applied to both 1930s and present-day events.

Your reasoning is a bit imprecise. One could say, following your logic, "Some people differentiate oak and elm-trees, but anyone with half a brain can see that they are the same --- trees."

Sure, you abstract away from their differences, they both become equivalent as members of the category "trees." But they are different, and when those distinctions are relevant, we use the more precise terms "elm-tree" and "oak," respectively.

As you can see the problem is not of intelligent but care in logic and speech.

When you abstract away the distinctions between fascism and communism as economic systems, you could put them broadly into the category "socialism in broad sense." BUt they are different in an important way: the degree of control of the means of production (no, not the vague "merger" of state and corporations --- that is speech-talk of Mussolini). As I pointed out earlier, a business-owner is strictly regulated by the state but still retains the profits. Under socialism, the profits are retained by the government in the name of the people. You cannot abstract away this important distinction.

P.S. The frivolity of your speech can be easily seen in that there were quite a number of despotic kings in history. Would you say that their regimes are the same as communism and fascism? I hope not.

Some communists may have exercised more control than some fascists but they all control the economy. Hitler told the factory managers what to produce. I don’t think the fact that Stalin was even more controlling than Hitler rises to the level of a difference in kind. Mao was even more controlling than Stalin yet they were both communists. Sure they try to differentiate their brand from the other guys but that’s just because the fascists don’t want you thinking they are communists and the communists don’t want you thinking they are fascists. The fascists have a bad name in Britain for example so any self-respecting potential tyrant is going to adopt the communist band name. The last thing he wants is for you to confuse him with Hitler so of course he has a long list of things which he claims differentiate him from Hitler. For one he’s a socialist. But then so was Hitler, though he might not admit it because that would make him look too much like Stalin. Hitler believed in the Leader Principle which states that the leader is paramount. But then so did Stalin, Mao, Jung Il and virtually every other dictator you can name. The differences are primarily rhetorical. When you look at what the primary difference between fascism and communism is, you can’t really identify one. Who gets the profits? Do you really think they actually end up in different pockets? The only difference is that Stalin CLAIMED the profits were going to the workers or the state. In the end the profits end up in the hands of the power elite In both systems though. That’s why the North Korean people are starving while Jung Il is rich.

I don't doubt that you are Brilliant, but you have some reading to do, my friend.

Your manager has some control over you. A slave-owner owns you. Would you say this is just a difference in the amount of control. True, but it is a qualitative difference. That is why we differentiate freely accepted contract from slavery. Nobody in his right mind would say, yeh, yeh, never mind the differences --- it's just a difference in degree of control.

Likewise, there is a considerable, qualitative difference in the amount of retained freedoms and prosperity between fascism, which leaves much of ownership in private hands, and socialist, which does not.

"Mao was even more controlling than Stalin yet they were both communists."

No, he was not. But, where differences become important, we use the terms "Stalinism" and "Maoism." The differences are unimportant only to you and only because you care only about one aspect of the phenomenon.

Not intending to offend you, such superficial approach is OK only at the first pass through the material. If we want to understand the issue deeper --- even the issue of control itself --- we must dig deeper, and that is where the differences between fascism and communism become important.

To put it simply: if you want to disregard these differences in your own analysis --- fine; but if we want to be understood by other people, you and I must take into account the differences that other people find important, and use the corresponding terminology.

"he’s a socialist. But then so was Hitler, though he might not admit it "

As I have already mentioned, the word "Nazi" stands for The National Socialist Workers Party. Hitler has thus admitted to being a socialist. He was proud of it.

"Hitler believed in the Leader Principle which states that the leader is paramount. But then so did Stalin,"

Please don't be offended but this sounds like a line form a textbook for our dumbed-down students. WHat you wrote is a parody on Hitlerism. There was a lot more to it than some "leader Principle" (an invention of the textbook's author). You've got to read up on the period and the economics of that period (it will very long and rather difficult). Until then, you may want to suspend judgment.

"Who gets the profits? Do you really think they actually end up in different pockets? "

This part is quite easy. Every baker, and dry-cleaner, and shop-owner has retained all profits under Nazis. That was not the case in the Soviet Union: every bakery, every laundry facility belonged to the government (in the name of the "people"). That is largely the reason for shortages )of everything) in the Soviet Union. By contrast, people (except Jews) ate well, wore clean cloths and had jobs under Hitler. Germany was prosperous.

Interesting, in the early 1920s, a few years after the Communist takeover, Russia, which had been the bread basket o Europe, started to starve. Lenin allowed a "deviation" from the Marxist line: private ownership of small enterprises (you'll find it under "New Economic Policy (NEP)" in the history books). Every ting reappeared at once. People were well-dressed, had what to eat and became considerably happier. Such is the difference between a lot of control and complete lack of ownership.

Read up on the details, if you are interested.

"Stalin CLAIMED the profits were going to the workers or the state."

And that was true. All of the profits (sans the usual corruption) went to the people. It's just "people," unlike bakers and cobblers in Germany, has absolutely no say in what to do with those profits. So they remained hungry. Once again: that's the difference between a lot of control and complete lack of individual ownership.

"In the end the profits end up in the hands of the power elite In both systems though."

No, the profits do not end up in the hands of elites: they only pass through those hands. The elites did not consume the enormous tractor plants, power plants, nuclear warheads and tanks: the "people" did.

Which is why I urge to read and reflect more on the subject before you make any judgments about it.

Thank you for your detailed reply.

I don't doubt that you are Brilliant, but you have some reading to do, my friend.

"Mao was even more controlling than Stalin yet they were both communists."

"he’s a socialist. But then so was Hitler, though he might not admit it "

As I have already mentioned, the word "Nazi" stands for The National Socialist Workers Party. Hitler has thus admitted to being a socialist. He was proud of it.

"Hitler believed in the Leader Principle which states that the leader is paramount. But then so did Stalin,"

"Who gets the profits? Do you really think they actually end up in different pockets? "

Read up on the details, if you are interested.

"Stalin CLAIMED the profits were going to the workers or the state."

"In the end the profits end up in the hands of the power elite In both systems though."

Which is why I urge to read and reflect more on the subject before you make any judgments about it.

Thank you for your detailed reply.

“WHat you wrote is a parody on Hitlerism.”

I’m quite aware of that. I just used that example because this is the kind of thing an academic would say when he’s desperate to convince you that there is some qualitative difference between fascism and communism. The truth is that Stalin, Mao and all dictators believe in the “Leader Principle,” though they may not call it that. That’s why they are dictators.

And I suppose you could say that in theory, communists don’t let the baker have the profits. But in reality, they do, except in rare instances. Castro lets the baker have the profits. Chavez lets the baker have the profits. Mao may not have, at least at first, but eventually the Chinese communists let the baker have the profits. Even the Soviet leaders eventually let the baker have the profits.

The so-called differences between fascism and communism are largely illusory. No matter what you id as the defining characteristic of fascism, I can probably name a communist state that does it.

I suspect you can probably propose something as the defining characteristic of communism that I can’t find a fascist state that does it. But that’s primarily because there are so few examples of fascist states. After Hitler, the word “fascist” was not very popular, so dictators styled themselves after the communists instead of fascists.

On the other hand, if you id something as the defining characteristic of communism, I can probably find an example of a “communist” country that doesn’t have it.

What they all have in common, though, is that they are all totalitarian governments. Some are more totalitarian than others. Some exert more control over the economy. But they are all totalitarian, and in the final analysis, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between one totalitarian dictator and another, at least ideologically.

In practice, some dictators have been more adept than others, but that is not an ideological difference. It’s not a systemic difference. It’s more a personality difference, and you can’t really can a personality and sell it as a brand.

“WHat you wrote is a parody on Hitlerism.”

The so-called differences between fascism and communism are largely illusory. No matter what you id as the defining characteristic of fascism, I can probably name a communist state that does it.

On the other hand, if you id something as the defining characteristic of communism, I can probably find an example of a “communist” country that doesn’t have it.

“WHat you wrote is a parody on Hitlerism.”

The so-called differences between fascism and communism are largely illusory. No matter what you id as the defining characteristic of fascism, I can probably name a communist state that does it.

On the other hand, if you id something as the defining characteristic of communism, I can probably find an example of a “communist” country that doesn’t have it.

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