GAUCHE

Haven't read it yet but at a guess I'd say he's fucking really wrong or right depending on what you already think anyway.

That's because he's wrong on just about everything that he *could* be right about but is right about everything he's *wrong* about.

He's even wrong about that which he's wrong about because he's right about that which he's right about.
 

He's wrong as usual, and offensively so - unless you really think the CPGB was the moral equivalent of the BUF. In which case presumably Edward Thompson ranks with Harold Nicolson as a fellow-traveller of 'totalitarianism', Eric Hobsbawm is the moral equivalent of John Tyndall, and we should be demanding 'no platform' for the CPB. (OK, so that last one wouldn't be such a bad idea... (Joke.))
 

OK Will, I think I get your drift, but Phil - I think on this Kamm is largely right. The indulgence of Stalinism among large sections of liberal and left opinion is genuinely shocking, and the "We didn't know" excuse is utterly lame.
 

Okay - I've now read that piece by kamm. It is some of the most disgusting drivel I've ever read and you, Mr Anderson, should be ashamed of yourself for pointing towards it. kamm's an idiotic buffoon with the mindset of a MCarthyite with-hunter. His 'historical method' is that of a child with crayons and in the process he's a dishonest apologist for rightist dementia (at best).

In his sometimes role as 'The Thunderer' in The Times on March 07, 2006 Kamm wrote about the flawed political antennae of Hollywood. Alright, you may well say, 'easy target and there's nothing wrong with that' and of course you would have a point. But buried in the piece criticising Clooney's latest vehicle 'Delusions of King George'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-2072786,00.html
was the following gem:

"The film industry is out of touch not in its achievements but in its historical certitudes. When the director Elia Kazan received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, much of the audience declined to applaud. Kazan�s crime had been to testify, 50 years earlier, to communist involvement in the entertainment industry."

Ummm, No, I don't think so. Kazan wasn't ostracized by his peers for bravely telling the truth. He chose to name the names to the House Un-American Activities Committee of people who as a result of his cooperation would never work again in their chosen career, who had no chance to defend themselves or to cross-examine the hearsay evidence that was adduced to the Senators. Thousands of far braver people faced with the same choice refused to testify and suffered the blacklisting themselves rather than visit it on others.

As I said -- Kamm -- an apologist for rightist dementia. He should get a spot at Harry's Place alongside the other fuckwits there.
 

Thanks to Paul for the link, and of course I agree with his observation about the indulgence of Stalinism and note that other comments here don't address it. I carefully didn't say that I thought the CPGB and BUF were morally equivalent (a phrase I dislike and rarely - if at all - use). I said (which is not quite the same thing) I couldn't see a substantial moral difference between staying in the CPGB through the invasion of Hungary and membership of the BUF through the period of Nazi aggression. Nor can I, and I'd be interested to see a principled explanation where such a substantial difference lies. Nor do I think Eric Hobsbawm is the moral equivalent of John Tyndall; insinuating that I must is, however, a nice instance of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Hobsbawm has written important scholarly works of nineteenth-century history, and - as I expounded here - naive apologetic for monstrous crimes.

Re: Kazan. It's dishonest to impute to me support for McCarthyism when I state in the same article Will quotes that anti-Communism and McCarthyism were distinct. It's also historically ignorant not to understand that the liberal and socialist anti-Communist intellectuals I have written quite a lot about (Sidney Hook, Norman Thomas, Arthur Schlesinger and others) were fiercely opposed to McCarthy. So far as I'm aware, only one of this group - Hubert Humphrey - ever suggested the Communist Party should be outlawed. I do, as it happens, consider Elia Kazan to have been a brave and honest man who told the truth about Communist activity in Hollywood, a fact that is not gainsaid by his having given that testimony to a committee of bullying know-nothings.

Speaking of know-nothings: there were not "thousands" who were blacklisted, but between two and three hundred in the film industry and roughly the same number in other branches of entertainment. Many of these did in fact continue to work in their chosen career over the next decade, though in foreign films or on the stage rather than American films under their own names (some did still work in Hollywood but under pseudonyms). The blacklist ceased to operate from the late 1950s. The change is thought by historians of the period to have been marked by the success of Spartacus, which was adapted by the enthusiastic Stalinist Dalton Trumbo from a novel by the Communist writer Howard Fast. And of course Kazan "adduced" no evidence at all (of hearsay or anything else) to "the Senators", because the House Un-American Activities Committee was a committee of the House, not of the Senate. Hence the name "House Committee". If you're going to accuse others of being idiotic buffoons comparable to a child with crayons, it's best to avoid this type of error.

Oliver
 

That charming man William of the Rubbish referred me here for a spot of Kamm-bashing, but I'm really not in the mood.

As for communism, there may be parallels to be drawn between the early 20th century attraction to fascism and Marxism-Leninism, but only in the sense that both are highly idealistic and totalising movements, and such things always end in blood and tears.

Declaration of interest: I was a member of the Communist Party in the early to mid-1980s, and was during that time a follower of New Left and eurocommunist thinking. My politics today could be described as left-libertarian, or even anarchist of a kind. I can no longer describe myself as a socialist.

But unlike many ex-communists, I regard the CPGB as having played – at least in its early and late periods – a positive role in British politics. Never a serious electoral force, the party was the intellectual conscience of the mainstream left and labour movement when the Labour Party's Methodist social democracy had run out of steam, and was dominated by a bland, paternalistic corporatism, with the ultra-left struggling for control of local party branches and city councils.

The CPGB was a community of peculiarly British individuals of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds. Party members were certainly not monolithic in opinion, but on the whole sensible, disciplined, and even moderate souls. Many of them struck me as being Christians without god, church and scripture. I knew a few stalinists (and Stalinists) in my time in the CPGB, but most of my old comrades I remember with some fondness.

Most of the party members I knew were post-1968, and certainly post-1956. There were some older members who stayed in the CPGB through the Hungarian revolution, and others who left and later rejoined. But all were of the opinion that the CPGB was their party, and not a mere satellite organisation of the CPSU.

The CPGB was at the time of the Hungarian revolution still very pro-Soviet, and more could have been done then to steer the party in a different direction. But that is what did eventually happen, and I cannot bring myself to damn those who stayed in the party and made that happen.

My politics may have changed much since the early 1980s, but my character hasn't, and I could never have been a member of a CPGB dominated by dupes of the Soviet Union, and the moral equivalent of the British Union of Fascists. That is effectively what Kamm is calling the CPGB, despite his protestations to the contrary.

Leninism failed, and, given its history of bloodshed and ideology poverty, I'm very glad it did. But demonising the Communist Party of Great Britain is silly, and anyone who does so cannot be taken seriously.
 

"The CPGB was at the time of the Hungarian revolution still very pro-Soviet, and more could have been done then to steer the party in a different direction. But that is what did eventually happen..."

A fine euphemism allied to an unsubtantiated assertion at variance with the known facts. Not only did the CPGB support the invasion of Hungary, it never changed its position on this. Even when the Party uttered mild criticism of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the party ideologist (who we now know was a Soviet agent) James Klugmann insisted that the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring were not comparable: the invasion of Hungary had been justified on grounds of the potential in that country for counter-revolution.

At the same time, the Party secretly took (literally) sacks of cash from the Soviet Embassy and laundered it. This amounted to admitted annual six-figure sums throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and there is strong circumstantial evidence that the payments continued through the 1980s. So the Party not only supported the bloody suppression of democracy, but also directly, dishonestly and corruptly accepted secret subventions to allow them to do this from the very state that was doing the suppression.

I concede I'm less interested in the diverse class and ethnic backgrounds of CPGB members than the fact that this is what their party stood for and did. If there are people who read Paul's blog who can't grasp, as he does, either the history of British Communism or the import of its political record, then I certainly hope - even though it isn't especially difficult to be right on this issue, with all that we now know from the Soviet archives - that they will indeed take the opportunity of this spot of Kamm-bashing.
Oliver
 

I'm not here to defend the politics of the CPGB, but I do wish some people would keep a sense of perspective, and not be so caught up in grand and overly simplified narratives. The CPGB was a complex beast made up of individual human beings acting in all too human ways.

Moscow cash? Disgraceful. As was the fact that only a few party leaders knew about the secret donations. As for the payments continuing into the 1980s (after Gordon McLennan had ordered that they cease), this is an allegation, just like the one about Reuben Falber being an MI5 agent.

The Hungarian revolution was such an embarrassment to the party that it was never going to make a public act of contrition for having supported the Soviet invasion. Instead, there emerged a consensus of opinion that accepted what Pete Fryer had reported from Budapest, and which led to his expulsion from the party. It was within party circles that I first heard the term "1956 Hungarian Revolution". Elsewhere it was an "uprising".

Oliver Kamm really should get out more and experience the world beyond his personal library and Internet searches.

To get back to Paul's original point about the level of stalinism within the British left, this is indeed shocking, but I question whether this is due to CPGB influence especially. Authoritarian leftism comes in many forms, from the protestant paternalism to which I referred earlier, to the quasi-religious cultism of the ultra-left.
 

It appears Francis S finds nothing to fault in my historical account of British Communism's positions and conduct, he just urges "we keep a sense of perspective" on the whole affair. Keeping - or rather, gaining - a sense of perspective about a cause that supported and was secretly financed by a foreign despotism was the point of my post, and I'm grateful for the comments here that demonstrate I wasn't (as I had feared I might be) stating something so obvious as to be banal. A party operating on principles of democratic centralism does indeed commit its members to the party's positions, and those positions were despicable.

The claim that McLennan ordered the secret payments to be stopped is a creative interpretation, by the way. As Francis Beckett noted in his sympathetic history of the CPGB: "McLennan claims that he said he wanted it stopped and assumed that it stopped at once. In fact it carried on for another four years. Asked why he never checked, he says: 'I wanted no involvement, all I wanted was it stopped." There is a sense here that if something is not discussed it does not exist."

Beckett goes on to quote McLennan's successor: "Nina Temple says: 'Whenever you needed money Gordon would say, "Go and see Reuben [Falber, the party functionary who received the money and laundered it through the Communist Party's employee pension fund]."' When she wanted to dispute one of Falber's decisions McLennan told her: 'If you ever question Reuben you're out. Reuben looks after the money and I trust him totally.' There is one small but perhaps significant discrepancy. McLennan claims he never discussed it with Falber. Falber says there was in fact one discussion."

It is not an "allegation" that the secret payments continued through the 1980s so much as a legitimate inference from the large and unexplained bequests that came the party's way. I used the term "circumstantial evidence" only because the huge sums taken, laundered and spent in the 60s and 70s are admitted, whereas Falber did not admit that he took money in the 80s as well. His word, as against the circumstantial evidence, is worthless, because we know his standards of honesty and probity.

Oliver
 

It was an effort staying awake long enough to read through Kamm's prose (as usual). Last time I looked in my dictionary 'testify' and 'ban' had different meanings. If he doesn't understand the difference best I go back to sleep.
 

Circumstantial evidence consists of circumstantial observations supported by a significant body of corroborating evidence. Oliver Kamm's inference about secret payments continuing into the 1980s hardly fits this description.

The CPGB always had money, from many and varied sources, and only a handful of senior party officials and MI5 knows the full story. Francis Beckett certainly doesn't, and this much is clear from his sensationalist and largely unsourced book. Don't get me started on his discussion of the party and the miners' strike!

Let's see if I've got this straight – Reuben Falber was such a bounder that any tenuous interpretation of the facts that Kamm or Beckett can come up with has more worth than Falber's word? It seems to me that Blogger Kamm is engaging in the kind of amateur punditry he professes to despise.
 

I understand the difference between "testify" and "ban" better, clearly, than Will understands the difference between the House and the Senate, but even so I can't claim to understand his question, and I look forward to his elaboration.

I'm pleased to see, however, that Francis has now abandoned any defence of the CPGB other than to state that it's unproven whether the party received clandestine funds from a foreign tyranny and laundered them in the 1980s as it had done for the previous 20 years. Indeed it is unproven, because that's something that the late Reuben Falber did not admit. We can however say with certainty that this is what the Party did throughout the 60s and 70s, that the CPGB continued to receive unexplained sources of funding through the 80s that the party's own General Secretary was unable to explain, and that Falber at that time continued to be responsible for administration of the party's employees' pension fund, which had been the vehicle for the previous two decades' money laundering. We also know he lied continually about his corrupt activities. So yes, Falber's word is worthless and, in the absence of any explanation from the only people who would know, it's a reasonable hypothesis that the source of the Party's funds remained what it had been for 20 years.
Oliver
 

I'm pleased to see, however, that Francis has now abandoned any defence of the CPGB other than to state...[blah]...

Don't misrepresent me; I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself. It has been some 20 years since I last supported the CPGB, and gave up on Marxism other than in its most truistic formulation.

I'm well aware that in the blogging age, truth is said to emerge through loud and repeated declarations of opinion. Call me old-fashioned, but I regard that as a pile of crap.
 

I do too, but in this exchange I have stuck closely to what is known about the history of Communism in the USSR, Britain and the US, and have corrected some clearly mistaken notions. As I understand it, your objection is not that my facts are wrong but that we need to have a sense of perspective on what British Communism wrought and said. A sense of perspective is what I have tried to add. It wasn't a mere idiosyncrasy for Paxman's partner's aunt to be a member of the CPGB through all those years.

Oliver
 

As I understand it, your objection is not that my facts are wrong...

My objection is to your creative extension of the facts in service of personal political prejudice, and seeming inability to grasp the complex dynamics of institutions such as the CPGB. Through this exchange and your other writings, I get the distinct impression that you have no interest in people unless they have power and influence.
 

Well, I certainly have political prejudices and many personal lacunae, but I have still characterised accurately the positions and conduct of the Party to which Paxman's partner's aunt belonged almost to the end of its life. It is in my opinion odd that that allegiance should cause so little comment, which is why I wrote about it.
Oliver
 

Here
 

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1176139662.html


Re: Oliver Kamm, 'democracy promoter' extraordinaire . . .

Posted by Tim Holmes on April 9, 2007, 6:27 pm, in reply to "Oliver Kamm, 'democracy promoter' extraordinaire . . ."
User logged in as: Tim Holmes

I posted this in reply today:

Kamm's standard elitist fare is entirely predictable from this "left-wing" stalwart, as is his attempt to out-Tory the Tories. My favourite part of his article, though, was this:

"The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial."

Is there a more perfect or precise description of Kamm's own mode of operation? As The Indecent Left blog pointed out last September:

"Those who read [Kamm's] output in 2003 might recall what he did when his misquotation of the New York Times was exposed. He silently deleted the posting and never spoke of it again. The traces are extant, as is the article itself in the Wayback Machine. He was apparently unable to bear the irony that a piece accusing Chomsky of misrepresenting the New York Times itself misrepresented the New York Times more seriously."

http://indecent-left.blogspot.com/2006/09/anti-chomsky-campaigns-and-lying-liars.html

Perhaps the real source of Kamm's antipathy towards the blogosphere, then, is that it is there his antics are most fully exposed. A far more likely explanation, of course, is that, like Norman Johnston, he is simply a self-parody.

http://www.memory-hole.blog.co.uk