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Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left
Brought up by Communist parents in America in the forties, emerging as a leader of the New Left in the sixties, and becoming disillusioned in the eighties, Ronald Radosh tells a moving story of growing up in the other America of the Left and finding the way home at last.
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First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 11, 2018
This is an excellent memoir of a red diaper baby and his journey. And it holds enough of a name drop and "he was there and this is what we spoke of" aspect to captivate. Because he really does the journey of the title in close associations and joining entity action too.
It was especially enthralling to me because as difficult as all these groups and directions are in history and in identification, I had contact myself with one or two of the Chicago branches. In fact my earliest history prof. at U. of I. (Chicago Circle then) way, way back in the day was a red diaper baby himself. I still remember some of his "can't own a lodging" logic. Taught and preached. And also his quirky habit of admitting that he never stopped for red lights while driving in Hyde Park either in the wee hours when "no one else is there to wait for me anyway". I'm not kidding. In 1966 he was telling kids of 17 about to go to their draft this kind of "we think" consciousness. But making up quite an individual mind about red traffic lights? This book has some super dishy material about Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and includes tons of other early groups of Communist core or their tangent members for the "experiments"as the red diaper kids experienced them. Always in actions, not just words or in a "classroom" posit. And some of their individual outcomes and over time their particular intersects with Ronald Radosh as he moved for work or other reasons.
That professor in 1966 was a red diaper baby (Jewish as well and he took off all the high holy days) too and went to the summer camps that Radosh describes here so well. And he also had relatives hiding out in South America because of actions within labor disputes retaliations. And an entire branch of Dad's family too who had vanished getting "support" on trips to Russia for "solidarity".
What a precious time of ideal naivete that was in memory! When you could get hired as a Dept. Head Prof. without yet finishing your PhD or having published. And in NYC on top of it. At one point Ronald, living his social conscience tried about 4 to 7 jobs in just 3 years. All of this in "equivalency" to now (1960's and 1970's) is hilarious in comparisons. It certainly was for me anyway. Especially upon how you could gather jobs like mosquitoes in Minnesota- I did too. I remember it well.
Oh a tale of "what goes around, comes around"! And how methods of tone and action have vastly changed. It does not at all surprise me that his (Ronald's) first "doubts" seem to have come when working for the Welfare signs and having close association and PR jobs for NAACP when he experienced how they treated him in association for the job and also in "trying to help" with communications. Trying to live up to his Communist core "a point of faith and not reason". And IS that true.
Lots more here within these pages of 1st person history excellence. A very difficult read within a searching life all told. His writing isn't the best, and his job and living directions became quite varied- so all of it, yet chronological, can be hard to grasp within all the intersects.
We (this author and myself) might have been in the same McGovern airport greet, I think. I really did LOL when he said his second wife, then girl friend or just married wouldn't participate because she thought he (McGovern) was way too far "right".
When he couldn't get the press jobs without concealing his leftist bent and so hid all of his Communist party background! (And he laughs in the book himself for that vast change- because he states how it is entirely and exactly the opposite within these last 12 or 15 years in media)
Oh the labels of relativity within the politico "eyes". Bad then, worse now!
But this book is an excellent review through the historic and wider than USA Communist groups and morphs of their tangent associates from about 1900 onward. His parents and grandparents mighty players.
It was especially enthralling to me because as difficult as all these groups and directions are in history and in identification, I had contact myself with one or two of the Chicago branches. In fact my earliest history prof. at U. of I. (Chicago Circle then) way, way back in the day was a red diaper baby himself. I still remember some of his "can't own a lodging" logic. Taught and preached. And also his quirky habit of admitting that he never stopped for red lights while driving in Hyde Park either in the wee hours when "no one else is there to wait for me anyway". I'm not kidding. In 1966 he was telling kids of 17 about to go to their draft this kind of "we think" consciousness. But making up quite an individual mind about red traffic lights? This book has some super dishy material about Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and includes tons of other early groups of Communist core or their tangent members for the "experiments"as the red diaper kids experienced them. Always in actions, not just words or in a "classroom" posit. And some of their individual outcomes and over time their particular intersects with Ronald Radosh as he moved for work or other reasons.
That professor in 1966 was a red diaper baby (Jewish as well and he took off all the high holy days) too and went to the summer camps that Radosh describes here so well. And he also had relatives hiding out in South America because of actions within labor disputes retaliations. And an entire branch of Dad's family too who had vanished getting "support" on trips to Russia for "solidarity".
What a precious time of ideal naivete that was in memory! When you could get hired as a Dept. Head Prof. without yet finishing your PhD or having published. And in NYC on top of it. At one point Ronald, living his social conscience tried about 4 to 7 jobs in just 3 years. All of this in "equivalency" to now (1960's and 1970's) is hilarious in comparisons. It certainly was for me anyway. Especially upon how you could gather jobs like mosquitoes in Minnesota- I did too. I remember it well.
Oh a tale of "what goes around, comes around"! And how methods of tone and action have vastly changed. It does not at all surprise me that his (Ronald's) first "doubts" seem to have come when working for the Welfare signs and having close association and PR jobs for NAACP when he experienced how they treated him in association for the job and also in "trying to help" with communications. Trying to live up to his Communist core "a point of faith and not reason". And IS that true.
Lots more here within these pages of 1st person history excellence. A very difficult read within a searching life all told. His writing isn't the best, and his job and living directions became quite varied- so all of it, yet chronological, can be hard to grasp within all the intersects.
We (this author and myself) might have been in the same McGovern airport greet, I think. I really did LOL when he said his second wife, then girl friend or just married wouldn't participate because she thought he (McGovern) was way too far "right".
When he couldn't get the press jobs without concealing his leftist bent and so hid all of his Communist party background! (And he laughs in the book himself for that vast change- because he states how it is entirely and exactly the opposite within these last 12 or 15 years in media)
Oh the labels of relativity within the politico "eyes". Bad then, worse now!
But this book is an excellent review through the historic and wider than USA Communist groups and morphs of their tangent associates from about 1900 onward. His parents and grandparents mighty players.
February 8, 2010
quite interesting if you are familiar with the socialist left. He never
really explains how he made the leap to being a rightwinger. He does
claim that Ronald Reagan gave us full employment (unlike his former
comrades Michael Harrington and Irving Howe). A lot of his criticism of
the left is or seems legitimate. Of course, a lot of leftists have had
similar experiences or come to similar conclusions but never became
rightwingers. He has a number of damning ancedotes. But a lot of people
he criticizes are dead so we won't get another version.
really explains how he made the leap to being a rightwinger. He does
claim that Ronald Reagan gave us full employment (unlike his former
comrades Michael Harrington and Irving Howe). A lot of his criticism of
the left is or seems legitimate. Of course, a lot of leftists have had
similar experiences or come to similar conclusions but never became
rightwingers. He has a number of damning ancedotes. But a lot of people
he criticizes are dead so we won't get another version.
April 17, 2014
Similar to, but more succinct, than Horowitz's Radical Son, it details the author's political journey from lefty to conservative. Particularly excellent are his scholarly takes on the Rosenberg case (at 169; Rosenberg was a Soviet spy) and on Pete Seeger taking artistic direction from Joe Stalin (at 35).
March 8, 2018
Radosh has lead an interesting life. He presents events colored by his current views. Early in the book he implies that everyone on the left or anyone espousing a progressive point of view was a Communist. This is troubling.
March 23, 2018
The title misrepresents this book a little. It's a memoir of an old lefty, born red, and his journey towards leaving behind that perspective, with a lot of information on his personal role in those movements. Good as a condemnation of American communism, but still, it is just a memoir.
December 31, 2022
3.5 stars.
April 10, 2014
Although this book was published in 2001, Radosh recently (2014) discussed it on the book channel, which makes me wonder why there would be renewed interest in the book since you usually don't find reviews of books that old on TV.
Ronald Radosh was a red diaper baby from New York City. Decades of activism, in fact a career of commitment to the communist faith (and it is a matter of faith, not reason), could not keep him from reverting to reality. Why he changed and other communists did not is the real question. Something made him adhere to the path of truth.
The communists switched positions when it seemed useful to the party and abused those who resisted: What did the USSR want? Sometimes it was allied with the Nazis, for instance, sometimes not. The official policy had nothing to do with the nature of Nazism. Many communists lashed themselves to the mast and came through WWII still red.
A visit to Cuba in the 1960s began to shake Radosh's faith. A visit to a cigar factory showed him that the "workers' paradise" gave these workers no recourse from long hours meeting the state's cigar quotas. A refrigerator factory with the air full of fiberglass did not provide masks for the workers. During a visit to a seemingly idyllic mental hospital, where he met one quite sane homosexual imprisoned for being gay, he learned that the Cuban patients had the highest number of lobotomies in the world. One of Radosh's group, Suzanne Ross, said, "We have to understand that there are differences between capitalist lobotomies and socialist lobotomies." Anyone with the faintest contact with reality -- anyone who had not been lobotomized -- could understand the insanity of that sort of belief.
During that tour Radosh also argued against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, supported by Castro. Radosh wasn't convinced by Castro's reasons so he was called counter-revolutionary, and a black woman in the group said he was racist for caring about white Czechs when the U.S. was supporting the oppression of blacks in Mozambique etc. etc. etc.
When the Rosenberg files were made available, Radosh wrote a book about the case, published in 1983. He began by assuming that they were innocent, but documented facts convinced him that they were in fact spies. Saying so turned his leftist friends against him. At this point, perhaps Radosh still couldn't be said to be pro-American, exactly, though the Rosenbergs acted to increase the possibility that the USSR could kill Americans; the left thought of the Rosenbergs, and presumably themselves, as martyrs. But the underlying thought in actual 20th century communism was always that it doesn't matter how many people have to suffer and die (not by their own choice) to make a "better" world.
The end of the Vietnam war was a big loss for American communists. Attention shifted for a while to Nicaragua. (Interesting sidenote: On a group visit to Nicaragua to talk to the Sandinistas, Radosh found that Bianca Jagger was sleeping with a top Sandinista.) It became clear that the Sandinistas were no better than their enemies, and in fact were bombing people; the Contras morphed into a group much more closely tied to the peasants.
Not one event but a lifetime of observing the internal contradictions of the left made the intellectually honest Radosh move to the right. At the end he says:
"In its many shape-shifting forms -- radical feminism, ultra-environmentalism, pro-Arabism, political correctness, the new anarchism -- this leftover Left has developed new issues and causes, all fought for with the same earnestness, arrogance and thoughtlessness that we brought to the fight for communism and then socialism from the 1940s through the 1980s. Our history should have been a cautionary tale, but as the causes of yesteryear collapsed, my old friends found it hard to reevaluate their experiences or acknowledge that they were wrong. Instead, they repeated the platitude about 'real' socialism never having been tried, and about 'actually existing socialism' having been tried first in the wrong country. Today's Left has no Soviet Union as a beacon [well, maybe Putin will bring it back], but its reflexive hatred of the American system is intact.
"I watch the unfolding of events with profound thankfulness that the stakes are lower now than when the New Left of the 1960s sought to demolish America from within. [This book was written before Obama became president, of course.]
"Arthur Koestler defined [my old comrades] once and for all when he wrote that 'clinging to the last shred of the torn illusion is typical of the intellectual cowardice that prevails on the left.'"
Radosh was able to drop his illusions.
Ronald Radosh was a red diaper baby from New York City. Decades of activism, in fact a career of commitment to the communist faith (and it is a matter of faith, not reason), could not keep him from reverting to reality. Why he changed and other communists did not is the real question. Something made him adhere to the path of truth.
The communists switched positions when it seemed useful to the party and abused those who resisted: What did the USSR want? Sometimes it was allied with the Nazis, for instance, sometimes not. The official policy had nothing to do with the nature of Nazism. Many communists lashed themselves to the mast and came through WWII still red.
A visit to Cuba in the 1960s began to shake Radosh's faith. A visit to a cigar factory showed him that the "workers' paradise" gave these workers no recourse from long hours meeting the state's cigar quotas. A refrigerator factory with the air full of fiberglass did not provide masks for the workers. During a visit to a seemingly idyllic mental hospital, where he met one quite sane homosexual imprisoned for being gay, he learned that the Cuban patients had the highest number of lobotomies in the world. One of Radosh's group, Suzanne Ross, said, "We have to understand that there are differences between capitalist lobotomies and socialist lobotomies." Anyone with the faintest contact with reality -- anyone who had not been lobotomized -- could understand the insanity of that sort of belief.
During that tour Radosh also argued against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, supported by Castro. Radosh wasn't convinced by Castro's reasons so he was called counter-revolutionary, and a black woman in the group said he was racist for caring about white Czechs when the U.S. was supporting the oppression of blacks in Mozambique etc. etc. etc.
When the Rosenberg files were made available, Radosh wrote a book about the case, published in 1983. He began by assuming that they were innocent, but documented facts convinced him that they were in fact spies. Saying so turned his leftist friends against him. At this point, perhaps Radosh still couldn't be said to be pro-American, exactly, though the Rosenbergs acted to increase the possibility that the USSR could kill Americans; the left thought of the Rosenbergs, and presumably themselves, as martyrs. But the underlying thought in actual 20th century communism was always that it doesn't matter how many people have to suffer and die (not by their own choice) to make a "better" world.
The end of the Vietnam war was a big loss for American communists. Attention shifted for a while to Nicaragua. (Interesting sidenote: On a group visit to Nicaragua to talk to the Sandinistas, Radosh found that Bianca Jagger was sleeping with a top Sandinista.) It became clear that the Sandinistas were no better than their enemies, and in fact were bombing people; the Contras morphed into a group much more closely tied to the peasants.
Not one event but a lifetime of observing the internal contradictions of the left made the intellectually honest Radosh move to the right. At the end he says:
"In its many shape-shifting forms -- radical feminism, ultra-environmentalism, pro-Arabism, political correctness, the new anarchism -- this leftover Left has developed new issues and causes, all fought for with the same earnestness, arrogance and thoughtlessness that we brought to the fight for communism and then socialism from the 1940s through the 1980s. Our history should have been a cautionary tale, but as the causes of yesteryear collapsed, my old friends found it hard to reevaluate their experiences or acknowledge that they were wrong. Instead, they repeated the platitude about 'real' socialism never having been tried, and about 'actually existing socialism' having been tried first in the wrong country. Today's Left has no Soviet Union as a beacon [well, maybe Putin will bring it back], but its reflexive hatred of the American system is intact.
"I watch the unfolding of events with profound thankfulness that the stakes are lower now than when the New Left of the 1960s sought to demolish America from within. [This book was written before Obama became president, of course.]
"Arthur Koestler defined [my old comrades] once and for all when he wrote that 'clinging to the last shred of the torn illusion is typical of the intellectual cowardice that prevails on the left.'"
Radosh was able to drop his illusions.
November 20, 2013
An interesting personal history of a man who spent much of his life on the far left of the political spectrum. Commies tells of Radosh's journey through the Communist, Socialist, Soviet-sympathizer and other Fellow-Traveler circles in the America of the latter-half of the Twentieth Century, and of his eventual disillusionment with and abandonment of hard-left ideologies. I burned though it, eager to learn what drives those on the left to thinking the way they do, and what can lead someone who's leaned so hard to the left in the past to recant the red mentality. Anyone who considers themselves even remotely sympathetic to communist/socialist/leftist ideals should read this book immediately before proceeding any further with their lives.
March 8, 2009
I'm really trying to learn more about the dissenting left in the '50s-'80s and this story of Radosh's time in and move away from the left as part of that project. It's a strange mix of name-dropping, pointing out hypocrisies (his own and certainly others'), and oversimplification (mostly intentional, I think) of much about the politics and psychology he experienced.
August 12, 2014
I didn't realise everyone who counted as Communist. Otherwise, this made me uncomfortable.
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April 12, 2016Arlington
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews