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Left-wing anticommunism, also known as the Non-Communist Left (NCL) in CIA and State Department documents, refers to people and organizations that claim to be left-wing but opposed Marxism–Leninism or especially the Soviet Union under Stalin's administration.[1]
Since the split of the communist parties from the Second International to form the Marxist–Leninist Third International, social democrats have been critical of the communist movement due to its anti-liberal nature.[2][3]
Examples of nominally left-wing critics of Marxist–Leninist states and parties are Friedrich Ebert, Boris Souveraine, George Orwell, Bayard Rustin, Irving Howe and Max Shachtman.
Causes
CIA infiltration
Winning over and harnessing the power of the NCL became central to the US propaganda struggle against the USSR during the early Cold War. This strategy directly inspired the creation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), as well as international journals like Der Monat and Encounter; it also influenced existing publications such as the Partisan Review.[4] Arthur Schlesinger Jr. highlighted the Non-Communist Left's growing power in a popular 1948 essay titled "Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center."[5]
In fashionable intellectual circles in the United States and Europe, anti-Stalin views became "almost a professional stance", "a total outlook on life, no less, or even a philosophy of history."[6] Prominent figures in this group include Arthur Koestler, Melvin J. Lasky, Dwight Macdonald, Sidney Hook, Stephen Spender, Nicolas Nabokov, and Isaiah Berlin. (The NCL notably excluded Jean-Paul Sartre because it could not accept his individualistic existentialist views.) Key organizers of the CIA's Non-Communist Left operation, titled QKOPERA, included Frank Wisner, Lawrence de Neufville, Thomas Braden, Charles Douglas Jackson and Michael Josselson.[7] Other supporters within the intelligence community included George F. Kennan, W. Averell Harriman and General Lucius D. Clay.[8]
The NCL began to lose its cohesion and its appeal to the CIA during the radicalism of the late 1960s. Opposition to the Vietnam War fractured the coalition, and 1967 revelations of CIA funding (by Ramparts and others) were embarrassing for many of the intellectuals involved. Soon after the story broke, Braden (with tacit support from the CIA) wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post which exposed CIA involvement with the Non-Communist Left and organized labor.[9][10] Some argued that this article represented an intentional and final break of the CIA with the NCL.[11]
Labor aristocracy
Left-wing anticommunism is often a manifestation of the labour aristocracy, a concept brought up by Marx and Engels with reference to the English labour movement, who attributed it to the industrial world monopoly of England which enabled the bourgeoisie to bribe the upper section of the workers.[citation needed]
This continued to be brought up by Vladimir Lenin with reference to the "Liberal-Labour" movement in England and the later split in the Second International induced by betrayal of the working classes of Europe by the leaders of their respective social-democratic parties upon the outbreak of the war.[12]
General views
Left-wing anticommunists are often motivated by revolutionary/socialist idealism and individualism, which motivates them to reject existing socialist experiments and movements which improved peoples' livelihoods and brought a tremendous amount of experience. Several of them criticized the Soviet Union as "not socialist," "siege socialist" or "state capitalist."
Statesian anarchist Murray Bookchin derisively remarked that he does not care about the "poor little children who were fed under communism."[13]
Problems of the revolution are often pinned onto the leadership, which is villified. Political analyst Michael Parenti notes,
The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the direct actions of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic's own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.[citation needed]
By country
United States
The American Federation of Labor has always been strongly anti-communist. The more leftist Congress of Industrial Organizations purged its Communists in 1947 and has been staunchly anti-communist ever since.[14][15]
United Kingdom
In Britain, the Labour Party strenuously resisted Communist efforts to infiltrate its ranks and take control of locals in the 1930s. The Labour Party became anti-communist and Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee was a staunch supporter of NATO.[16]
See also
References
- ↑ Sarah Miller Harris (2016). The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War: The Limits of Making Common Cause (1st ed.): 'The CIA and the non- Communist left'.
- ↑ Rajani P. Dutt, The Two Internationals (1920)
- ↑ Hakim (2020-04-23). "Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder"
- ↑ Saunders, Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 162. "The headquarters of 'professional' anti-Stalinism was the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, and the magazines whose editors who sat on its board, namely Commentary, the New Leader and Partisan Review."
- ↑ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schlesinger-notrightleft.html
- ↑ Philip Rahv, quoted in: Saunders, Cultural Cold War(1999), pp. 161–2.
- ↑ Saunders, Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 99
- ↑ Saunders, Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 66.
- ↑ Saunders, Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 401–402. "Richard Helms, who was now director of the CIA, was, according to Rostow's memo, aware of the article, and conceivably of its contents also. The CIA had ample time to invoke its secrecy agreement with Braden, and prevent him publishing the piece."
- ↑ Braden, Thomas (20 May 1967). "I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'". Saturday Evening Post. pp. 10–14. Retrieved 19 September 2012.
- ↑ Saunders, Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 398–399.
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1912). Debates in Britain on Liberal Labour Policy. Moscow: Progress Publishers. [MIA]
- ↑ Blackshirts and Reds : Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997), Michael Parenti
- ↑ Harvey A. Levenstein, Communism, anti-communism, and the CIO (1981).
- ↑ Markku Ruotsila, British and American Anti-communism Before the Cold War (2001).
- ↑ Paul Corthorn and Jonathan Davis (2007). British Labour Party and the Wider World: Domestic Politics, Internationalism and Foreign Policy. I.B.Tauris. p. 105. 9780857711113.