“CP studies are now poised to go beyond the
Cold War-revisionist dualism. Historians
are likely to find a community-oriented social movement operating in concentric
rings around a hierarchical, stratified political party. Perhaps the conclusion will be, as Klehr,
Haynes, and Firsov proclaim with quite different intent, that ‘there are many
worlds of American Communism.’” – Linn Shapiro, 1996[1]
Linn Shapiro went on to write Red Diapers:
Growing Up in the Communist Left after her 1996 dissertation, but
she never attempted to dive deeper into what she overtly described as a social
movement that had various spheres of influence and activism. In this essay, I want to rationalize how such
a movement can come into existence, and why this perspective is important for
rationalizing the development of social radicalism in a general sense.
Social movements always have a
center of gravity; a pivot point upon which its adherents and supporters can
claim identity. Sometimes this center is
an individual, such as Martin Luther King and the post-1958 non-violent Civil
Rights Movement. Sometimes this center
is a broad, national organization such as the Knights of Labor or the American
Federation of Labor from 1886-1889.
Historians are keen to pick up on these centers and utilize them as a
focus for defining a social movement in general. But to stop at the center is to fall victim
to its gravitational singularity—to assume, or presume, that the center is what
defines the movement as a whole. This is
not always true: One would be hard
pressed to suggest that the Civil Rights Movement, while centered around the
words and methodology of Dr. Martin Luther King, did not function with orbiting
satellites that occasionally crossed paths with others. Just like their gravitational center, these
satellites were a collective of individuals, organizations, both local and
national, as well as political parties that sought to appeal to the interests
of the masses.
This is an important concept to
consider as we move forward, because it suggests that while movements are
usually directed and defined by a pivoting nucleus, they also extend beyond
this nucleus to engage with society in ways that the nucleus itself cannot. A prime example would be the American
Communist movement from 1929 to 1945, the so called “heyday of American
Communism.”[2] American Communism as a movement operated in workshops, political rallies, homes,
communities, and unions across the United States; but it retained a
gravitational center in the Communist Party of the United States of America
(CPUSA). This is not the same as saying
the Party is what defined the movement—quite the contrary: This suggests that while the CPUSA created
the foundation for Communist activism in the United States, the activism itself
found manifestation in orbit of the CPUSA via various forms of local and
national organizations as well as various groups of individuals. Like the electrons of an atom, they created
the binding force that contained American Communism, an action that the nucleus
itself cannot perform.
Social movements, whether
political, economic, or civil, cannot be defined by one organization or another. While the gravitational center does indeed
exist for many social movements, they also contain various elements that extend
beyond the center to reach individuals that may not be attracted to the center’s
pull in an overt way. The American
Communist movement during its heyday managed to incorporate tens of thousands
of individuals who would not directly consider themselves communists—rather they
saw in the movement the potential to obtain real and practical change. A great example of this tendency was
described by Frank Folsom in Impatient Armies
of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed:
“The most fully employed persons I met
during the depression were the communists.
They worked 10 or 12 hours a day—maybe 16, if you counted yakking
time. Most got no pay. They were in on every protest I saw or heard
of. If they didn’t start things themselves,
they were Jonnies-on-the-spot. The
communists brought misery out of hiding in workers’ neighborhoods.”[3]
Folsom, who was not a Communist Party member, saw potential
and meaning in what the communists promoted in a time of dire economic straits,
and increasing tension between workers and the State.
This is
an important aspect of social history to consider, and I welcome thoughts and
criticism about this model for rationalizing the development of a movement on a
national, and perhaps even international, scale. Internationally, this model could also
describe the Communist movement from 1917-1991, with various gravitational
centers extending from Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, creating a system of concentric
rings that functioned as various groups and individuals in nations around the
world. But again, I would emphasize that
the gravitational centers hold significance in an ideological way, as opposed
to a direct and coordinated method or strategy that trickled down to the
orbiting functionaries. To see it as
direct and coordinated would delegitimize the works of individuals and groups
in their respective regions, and it would ignore the work of historians and
sociologists who have suggested that movements are more dynamic than their
overt fronts.[4]
Ideally,
future researchers and scholars can utilize this model to build upon the
existing scholarship, and expose new ways of understanding various forms of
social movements. I encourage others to
participate in this discussion and perhaps bring in new ways to understand it,
and shed light on the possibility of pursuing this approach in different kinds
of social movements, both inside nation-states and more broadly on an
international level.
[1]
Linn Shapiro, “Red Feminism: American Communism and the Women’s Rights
Tradition, 1919-1956,” Dissertation, American University, Washington D.C.,
1996.
[2]
This is in reference to Harvey Klehr’s book, The Heyday of American Communism.
(New York: Basic Books, 1994)
[3] Quoted from Franklin
Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor: The
Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed; reprinted from T.H. Watkins,
p. 117
[4]
Hans Toch, The Social Psychology of
Social Movements (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); for a more specific
example that countered the works of previous historians who assumed centrality
in American Communism, see Jacob Zumoff, The
Communist International and US Communism (London: Brill, 2015)
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