RE: RE: Bureaucracy

["michael pugliese" <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Earl Browder, was ejected from the CPUSA after the publication
in a French Communist journal of the, "Duclos Letter, " which
accused Browder after the Teheran conference of '44 of being
a liquidationist lackey of US imperialism. See the biographies/studies
of Browder by James Ryan and Maurice Isserman. The latter has
blurbs from Victor Navasky, hardly a Cold war Liberal, so I'd
assume, it doesn't carry the virus of anti-Sovietism. Michael
Pugliese P.S. George Charney's, Dorothy Healey's, Al Richmond's
and Junius Scale's autobiographies as well as '56 reformist John
Gate'es memoir are valuable in placing Browderism in the CPUSA
in context.--- Original Message ---
>From: "Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>
>To: "'pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: 4/4/02 3:39:30 PM
>

>I wrote:
>>> Applied to the CPUSA, the phrase "democratic centralist"
involves an
>abuse of the word "democratic."<<

cb: >Are you saying that the majority's votes were ignored in
some election
>of Gus Hall ? Earl Browder ? John Reed ? Henry Winston ?  Sam
Webb ?  on a
>provision of the Constitution ?
>
>> Give me specific examples of where the vote of the majority
was not
>followed in the CPUSA ?

Actually, that was a typo. I meant to write the "CPSU" -- specifically
referring to the period of the 1920s and after, since I have
limited
knowledge of the inner workings of the CPUSA. (That it was a
typo makes
sense in the context of the larger message: it was followed by
the sentence
"The elections in the old USSR were a sham, while the members
of the CP
didn't have real democratic control over the leaders or over
the Party
Line.")

But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular
with the
CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership
of the CPUSA
for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow?

gotta go...

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine


>