Role Of Communists Research Articles

In the Mirror – Communists, Steel, and Ideology in Western Pennsylvania, 1941-1952: Part 1

Phillip Bonosky, writer, steelworker, and union leader was an articulate voice for the Communist Party USA for seven decades. He maintained a detailed journal, likely unique in the American Communist movement. The following article employs the journal as its crucial source. Entries shed light on steel labor and the role of Communists in the labor movement in Western Pennsylvania during the early and mid-40s, which is this article’s framework. Of Lithuanian background, Bonosky was a blast furnace worker and editor of the newspaper of the local Steel Workers Organizing Committee until he was blacklisted from the industry in 1942. He thereafter became a Party organizer in McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, Monessen, and Braddock, among others, whose social life and atmosphere receive his painstaking attention. Crucial is his response to “Browderism,” named for Party leader Earl Browder. Bonosky’s promotion of Browder’s premises, featuring the basic amelioration of class conflict under capitalism thus obviating the need for a Communist Party – indicates that many grassroots workers viewed, and in fact, backed the controversial theory.

In the Mirror – Communists, Steel, and Ideology in Western Pennsylvania, 1941–1952 Part 2

Phillip Bonosky, writer, steelworker, and union leader belonged to the Communist Party USA for 75 years. He maintained a strikingly unique journal documenting his experience. His stance during the early post-World War II anti-Communism, during which he was blacklisted and his sister was persecuted is therein presented. His reflections reveal much about the role of Communists in the labor movement in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio during the mid-40s. As a Party organizer in Canton, Ohio and in Pennsylvania’s McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, Monessen, and Braddock, he contributed his efforts to strikes, protests and other work at the grassroots. Central is his response to the demise of “Browderism,” named for Party leader Earl Browder, whom Bonosky had adamantly supported. Bonosky’s devastating self-interrogation of his swallowed-whole acceptance of Browder’s projection of the amelioration of class conflict under capitalism thus obviating the need for a Communist Party – forms one of the journal’s many unique features.

Tchapaev à La Havane : le cinéma révolutionnaire cubain et la question du réalisme socialiste

This paper seeks to assess the influence of realist socialist aesthetics on Cuban revolutionary cinema. After briefly retracing the emergence and flowering of socialist realism in the Soviet Union, as well as the trajectory of Cuban Communist Party before and after the Revolution, this study focuses on the position of ICAIC’s (official film institute) filmmakers and managers with regards to this exogenous aesthetic doctrine, and seeks to determine whether socialist realism ever gained the status of official standard in Cuba. This reflection is developed connecting cinema and revolutionary cultural politics, with its invariants and evolutions, and keeping in mind the broader context of changing political guidelines of the Castro regime as well as the role of Communists in the revolutionary process.

The Comintern and Black Workers in Britain and France 1919–37

This paper looks at the attempts of the Communist international to organise amongst African and Caribbean workers in Europe, and particularly in France and Britain during the inter-war period. It locates these attempts within the overall objectives of the Comintern to organise all workers, to organise in the colonies and to address what was referred to at that time as the ‘Negro Question’ – that is the liberation of all those of African descent. The paper particularly highlights the role of communists of African and Caribbean origin and the organisations they formed. It suggests that a sense of belonging was connected with political organising and that for black workers their sense of belonging could also include identifying with other workers and a sense of class allegiance. The role of the communists was to encourage the founding of some of the first workers' organisations amongst the African diaspora in Europe and to provide an ideology to that sought to unite all workers.

Why socialism has a future

Working people's struggles for socialism have significantly shaped the contours of the 20th century. Communist and socialist movements won the support of countless millions of workers and poor farmers, and came to power across one‐third of the planet. The October Revolution in Russia, the leading role of Communists in many struggles against Fascism, the postwar development of socialism in Eastern Europe, the triumph of the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the socialist orientation of many anti‐imperialist movements in the Third World seemed to confirm Marx and Engels’ conviction that the fall of capitalism was “historically inevitable.”

The Left in the Detroit Labour Movement

The role of communists in the history of the North American Labor movement has always been controversial. In recent years some balance has been restored to that history by the growing body of work by and about Communists who were middle-level leaders in the CIO unions and a few studies that deal more broadly with their activities. Balanced, of course, does not mean less controversial. It simply means that more information and more points of view are being made available. Christopher Johnson's biography of Maurice Sugar is a solid piece of work that fills a major gap in the history of the United Automobile Workers (UAW). Sugar grew up in northern Michigan and studied law at the University of Michigan before World War I. At the university he joined the socialist movement, becoming essentially a Debsian socialist. He served time in prison for his opposition to the war (failure to register for the draft). After the war, with the rightward movement of the Socialist Party, he the Party and generally gravitated toward the Communists, although Johnson makes a convincing case that he never joined the CP and was organizationally independent. He was, from the start, a lawyer for the labour movement and remained that for most of the rest of his life. He gained a substantial reputation among Detroit unions for his abilities and his fairness. He was able to take advantage of whatever technicalities the law allowed but he was not simply a technician. His loyalty to the labour movement was widely respected. In the 1930s he became chief counsel for the UAW and remained in that post until fired by Walter Reuther on his accession to power. He was associated with the Addes-CP caucus and was a major advisor to what was then called the left wing in the union. Johnson's description of Sugar's union activities and legal battles make fascinating reading. There are, however, certain limitations to Johnson's book. The