Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism

by Richard Gid Powers

The American anticommunist movement has been viewed as a product of right-wing hysteria that deeply scarred our society and institutions. This book restores the struggle against communism to its historic place in American life. Richard Gid Powers shows that McCarthyism, red-baiting, and black-listing were only one aspect of this struggle and that the movement was in fact composed of a wide range of Americans―Jews, Protestants, blacks, Catholics, Socialists, union leaders, businessmen, and conservatives―whose ideas and political initiatives were rooted not in ignorance and fear but in real knowledge and experience of the Communist system.

“ Not Without Power is superbly written and richly detailed. Perceptive and thoughtful, it is an impressively thorough and valuable book.”―David J. Garrow

“One of the contributions of [Powers’s] provocative narrative history is to bring to life certain segments of anti-Communist opinion that have largely been forgotten.”―Sean Wilentz, New York Times Book Review

“[Powers] makes extensive use of primary sources and uncovers much that is new. He vividly recreates the complex relationships within and between several ethnic and radical communities within the United States, including their firsthand and often disillusioning experience with communism. . . . The depth and range of his work add a great deal to knowledge.”― Journal of American History

“A valuable, well-executed study and summation of a vast topic, one whose various threads the author has woven into a rich tapestry.”―Richard M. Fried, Reviews in American History

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

596 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Richard Gid Powers, born 1944, is a professor of history at the College of Staten Island and Graduate Center, CUNY, in the USA.

Powers has written extensively on American history, particularly on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the anticommunist movement of the mid-twentieth century.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to order this book used on amazon, it's currently out of print, and for good reason.

When Powers isn't busy trying to paint FDR as a Communist sympathizer, he's pitching this conspiracy theory that anti-Communists in the US are the victims of abuse by the Left. While he's correct in blaming the rabid anti-Communists (Hoover, Dies, McCarthy) for giving the whole lot a bad name, I have a hard time buying into his conspiracy/persecution theory.

Powers tends to either generalize or take one pro-Communist viewpoint or quote as the agreed view of the entire American Left. I found myself repeatedly questioning points he attempts to make, and because of his willingness to exaggerate doubting the soundness of his arguments.

If you do intend to read this, please do so with a grain of salt.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A MARVELOUS HISTORY OF THE ANTICOMMUNIST MOVEMENT

Richard Gid Powers is Professor of history at City University of New York Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, and is also the author of 'Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover,' 'Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI,' and 'G-Men: Hoover's FBI in American Popular Culture.'

He begins the Prologue to this 1995 book by citing President Reagan's famous June 12, 1987 speech in Berlin, where he proclaimed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Powers observed, "Reagan was reaffirming his solidarity with a long line of anticommunists... By the late 1980s the convictions that had brought Reagan to the Berlin Wall were known to few except the anticommunists themselves, their original force tarnished and obscured by bitter memories of Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, and now Oliver North. To recover this anticommunist tradition we must peel away the accretions of time to encounter the first Americans drawn into that century-long struggle."

He states that the "smokescreen of lies" that was created by anticommunists about communism "made it hard for anyone to believe that the danger of communism was anything except a figment of the paranoid imagination." (Pg. 91) When Sidney Hook and John Dewey protested against the "show trials" of the Stalin era, liberals and "fellow travelers" such as Corliss Lamont signed an "Open Letter to American Liberals" defending the trials as valid, and attacking Hook and Dewey (Pg. 143).

After Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, countersubversives "had their proof, and they could use Hiss's conviction to lend credibility to their most outlandish red web fantasies." (Pg. 225) Concerning McCarthy's infamous list of 205 names "that were made known to the Secretary of State and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department," Powers observes that "There was no list of 205 names, nor of 57, nor of any number. The figure 205 was the result of slightly faulty arithmetic. Secretary of State James Byrnes had written ... that 285 security risks had been located... and 79 had been fired. After subtraction, the remainder, 206, mistakenly became McCarthy's 205 in the speech." (Pg. 239)

He later notes that "The extreme radical right was melting down in the heat of insane power struggles... The John Birch Society membership now consumed their energies attacking each other over real or fancied insults... During the 1980 presidential campaign some Birch Society members attacked the Society for not seeing that Reagan was 'an absolute fraud, created and promoted by the Conspiracy... as a prelude to the final takeover.'" (Pg. 356)

He concludes on the note, "The heroes of the defeat of communism, Solzhenitsyn, Havel, Russians, Czechs, Poles---all have honored American anticommunists' stand against communism. Honored abroad, however, in their own country they are still without honor." (Pg. 429)

This book is a wonderful, and well-balanced history of this now-almost forgotten era.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powers asserts that the mainstream of American anticommunism was smart, principled, and correct, in marked contrast to the conventional association of anticommunism with conservative and authoritarian excess and paranoia, characterized by J. Edgar Hoover’s overreach, Nazi preeminence in 30s anticommunism, McCarthy and the black list, the John Birch Society, Vietnam, and Iran-Contra. He methodically undermines his argument by documenting the above-mentioned excesses of American anticommunism, and then relegating the Catholic activists and disaffected former reds and fellow travelers he admires to at best a supporting role in anticommunism who lent intellectual credibility to a movement animated by dogmatism and parochialism. The actual history of communism and Soviet power, which has unfolded largely after the drafting and publication of this book, further invalidates the nobility and correctness of the anticommunism viewpoint. The murderous and ineffective Soviet state was a menace principally to itself, and its real capability to project itself militarily into the west is now understood as serious but without depth. Communism’s political and cultural inroads into the US are also now known to have been insignificant as well. No wonder this book is out of print and difficult to find.