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To: "H-HOAC-ED-JEH" <haynes@mail.h-net.msu.edu> Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 9:55 AM Subject: Re: Hiss and Evidence - Left Professoriate (Schwartz) Re Mr. Schwarts's >1. I know of no dissertations or other serious research done in the U.S. >academy, over the past 50 years, on anti-Communist unionism, that is not >apologetical for the Stalinists and hostile to the anti-Communists. I know of >no dissertation or other serious academic research on such topics as the >history of the West Coast seamen's movement after the 1930s, the anti-Communist >turn of Walter Reuther, the expulsion of the Stalinists from the CIO, the Canadian seamen's strike of 1949 and its impact on the U.S., the later history of the I.W.W., the later history of the S.L.P., the history of the Yiddish >Forward (at least not in the labor history field), the history of the Social Democratic Federation, the career of David Dubinsky, the role of the Jewish Labor Bund in the New York unions, Italian-American anti-Stalinist socialism (not counting the excellent work on anarchism, by Paul Avrich), or, frankly, any number of other and related topics. The labor history field is completely dominated by Stalinist nostalgia.< The paragraph above misses much that was written over the past 50 years. For starters, Bob Zieger's big book on CIO is far more sympathetic to the anti-communists than to the CIO "reds." Even Nelson Lichtenstein's critical biography of Walter Reuther gives the UAW anti-communists their just dues. Jim Barrett and Edward Johannsmeier in their biographies of William Z. Foster criticize his Stalinist proclivities and his alacrity after 1928 in placing Soviet interests above those of US workers. Bruce Nelson, who might be characterized as a leftist academic, in his history of West Coast maritime workers is far more sympathetic to the anatcho-syndicalists among them than to the communists. Robert Cherney, a sometime editor of this list, in his work on Harry Bridges certainly cannot be accused of being soft on communism. For every Maurice Zeitlin, Judith Stepan-Norris, Paul Buhle, Roger Keeran, the late James Prickett, who lauds the CIO reds as trade-union democrats, civil rights crusaders, and true internationalists, there is an equal or greater number of serious historians critical of commuism, especially in its Stalinist phase. A young historian at U. of Wisconsin-Madison, Tony Michels, has just completed a book manuscript on the Jewish immigrant left in the US with a truly interesting analysis of the link between Jewish Americans and the pre-Stalinist CPUSA (mostly its predecessor parties). And his next research project calls for extending his research and analysis into the era of communism proper. And Bryan Palmer, certainly a scholar on the left, is completing a two-volume biography of James Cannon that is absolutely devasting in its critique of Stalinists. Schwartz must have seen Palmer's long historiographical essay in ACH. Simply put, communists, particularly Stalinists, have not received a free ride in much, probably most, of the last half century's scholarship in labor history. Mel Dubofsky
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