The Romance of American Communism

by Vivian Gornick

The Romance of American Vivian The Romance of American Basic Books, FIRST First Edition Thus, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Basic Books, Inc., 1977. Octavo with blue top stain. Hardcover. Book is very good light toning on pages. Dust jacket is very good with small tear to front cover and light shelf wear. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 362999 Literature We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Memoir, American History, The United States Of America, Theory

278 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 1978

About the author

Vivian Gornick is the author of, among other books, the acclaimed memoir Fierce Attachments and three essay collections: The End of the Novel of Love, Approaching Eye Level, and, most recently, The Men in My Life. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Look. . .Life is shit, people are shit but,” he leans forward intently, “sometimes life is great and people are great. And when that happens it is hard to walk away from, no matter what else is happening. Well, that's the way the CP was for me. Sure there was a lot of shit in the CP, and a lot of shitty people. But the only times I felt life was great were in the CP. Despite everything life had meaning. It redeemed itself. Over and over again, it redeemed itself. Because it had real meaning. And while I was part of it I had real meaning. 48-49

"My love of the theater and my attraction to the Communist Party stem form the same impulse: the creative impulse. The impulse to live through my action. To recreate myself. To find myself in that which embodies the common psyche of man, the binding commonality the archetypal experience”
I stare, disbelieving, at her. What on earth do these sentences mean: Does she really use such language naturally? Diane catches the meaning of my stare. Abruptly her manner changes. Amusement quickly crowds into her serene blue eyes, an earthly laugh escapes her throat, and she says: “No shit, I really feel that way.” 228

“You chip away, chip away at the fuckers”. . .. “Everytime somebody sees things just a little different than they did before say me or any other Communist talked to them, I figure it a gain. Me I talk to everybody all the time. Doctors, janitors cabdrivers. Any anytime I do something or say something and somebody says to me, 'Gee, that was a nice thing you did or a good thing you said. Why's you do that?' I say, 'Because I'm a Communist.'”. 253

[Julia D · Rating 5 out of 5]

a classic and a must-read, I cannot stress this enough! This was my second time reading it, thanks to Verso for re-issuing it!
“Oral history of the CPUSA” does not do justice to what this book really is, which is a historical documentation of the emotional lives of members of the CPUSA. Maybe this distinction isn't clear, but anything you learn about the workings of the party, events, decisions, organizational matters, comes to you tangentially as Gornick and her subjects narrate their experiences of life in the communist party in 30s 40s and 50s. It focuses primarily on what it subjectively felt like to be there, and to be a communist in general, rather than trying to develop an objective total account or theory.
This books greatest strength comes from its tone and writing style. It is fiercely sympathetic to its subjects, intensely emotional, and frankly really beautiful. Gornick herself describes the style as “romantic” in the new introduction, only she makes it clear that looking back the finds some of her choices embarrassing and regretful. The denunciation of her own stylistic romanticism is amusing since it is this “romantic” style that sets the book apart. It's the reason a lot of people love it and why it is, and will remain, a cult-classic on the American left.

[Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who wants to understand the (inter)personal aspects of Communism should read this book, especially if you are or used to be a Communist. Absolutely essential and intensely resonant. There's so much love and hatred and beauty and hope and anger and bitterness and regret and passion packed into these interviews. "It was through Communism that, in our time, one could grapple most fiercely with what it means to be a human being."

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

spellbinding

[Soph Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that have a 'before you read them' and 'after you read them' quality - this is one of them, and you should read it as soon as you can (whether or not you're a socialist organizer).

"Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class."

[Dan Sasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are living through a transformational moment in political history at the moment. Today’s right and left do not in any way shape or form represent the values of the left and the right of twenty years ago and it will be interesting to see where we go from here.

I have been spending a bunch of time reading about the history of the American left and the American right to try and identify these various transformational arcs throughout history and it appears these seem to occur every 30-40 years.

The Romance of American Communism is effectively a personal exploration of the lives of American Communist Party members, capturing both the idealism and disillusionment of those who committed themselves to the movement. The author was herself a former member of the CP, her parents were members and it was all she had ever known. In writing this book, she interviewed former members from various walks of life to better understand their stories in the party. Gornick’s book is a human-centered narrative, focusing on the emotional and psychological experiences of Communist activists.

Gornick’s goal is not to analyze policy or ideology but to capture the emotional essence of being a Communist—the sense of purpose, camaraderie, and eventual heartbreak when the dream collapses. The book is divided into three broad thematic sections that follow the arc of their political lives.

There were various themes that came through the various individual experiences. For members, the CP was not just a party, it was a way of life, a spiritual calling, a religion. The Party provided structure, purpose, and community, but it also demanded total loyalty and obedience. The Party required you sacrifice anything and everything for it - your sister is viewed as a Trotskyist because of the classes she is taking at NYU, cut her out of your life. Yes, that was someone’s experience. Finally, communism was a romance that ended in heartbreak, leaving many former believers feeling lost and betrayed.

It was not a bad book but it should most definitely not be the only book you read to learn about communism. Her interviews were conducted with what appeared to be more idealistic and disillusioned members and the perspective is pretty one sided. The stories of espionage, violence, repression and authoritarianism were all missing. This was the era of Stalinism, I don’t know how you tell a full story without this perspective. All that said, the story was still an insightful window into the hearts and minds of those who lived through one of the most controversial political movements in American history

[Andy Vanderford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Accounts of the fun times Baby Boomers had as Communists without much interest in Socialism itself aside of the community it provides. 🤮

[Matt Ely · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about Americans who were involved in the Communist Party, yes. But that's not really what it's about. It's about romance.

This book chronicles how a diverse group of people fell in and out of love with a political hierarchy. It's about how they were revitalized, awakened by that love. It's also about the cruelties they committed and were willing to commit in the name of love. It's about how what began as liberating love became a constraining commitment, grasped more for fear of the alternative than for love in itself.

To echo the HUAC line, I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party. But I have loved. I think we all have. We've loved systems that gave us something we could find nowhere else. Maybe it was a religious community or an athletic team or a school or a job. Maybe it was a friend or a partner or just an idea. We gave ourselves over, to one degree or another, to the power of something greater than ourselves. We loved what we saw ourselves become through the influence of this Great Other. We were transformed by the transaction. But most of our loves don't last, and they appear, in retrospect, like mere infatuation. We don't understand how we could have been what we were; we stand resentful or appreciative or seeking to be re-enamored.

If you have ever loved and given yourself over to an idea, in small ways or large, you will find yourself in this book. It's about the before and the after of love, the worthiness and the wastefulness of it all. And five decades on, these voices shine through. I think you might be glad to spend some time with them.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tears filled my eyes for a large portion of this book. It is a rapturous journey, from the highs of ecstatic vision and elated fulfillment to the lows of devastating loss and hopeless isolation. Gornick’s history shattered my soul and then filled me with purpose. It articulated my deepest longings and gently held me through my most intimate fears. I emerged on the other side a new person, but more myself than I ever have been.

It is no wonder these people, Communists, could endure such intense persecution, years of isolation in exile or underground, and even at times grave indignities or humiliation at the hands of their own fellow party members. A life in the Communist Party was a life brimming with grounded, yet transcendental purpose, and a knowledge that through their work in the CIO, housing struggles, and more, they were building something real and lasting in the world.

This book goes a long way toward dismantling the convenient myth of the monolithic Communist Party, which “makes it easy to abstract and wipe out the complexity of the experience, to ignore and deny that powerful root of political passion to which its origins are tied.”

From different angles, many of the interviewees describe a deep bond with their fellow party members and fellow human beings. The quality of that relationship comes to light in contrast to friendship, romantic love, and even intimate, vulnerable knowledge of oneself and others that some experienced after leaving the Party. Instead, the comradeship described by CP members emerged as a strange familiarity and trust one had with others who had preemptively committed their lives to the great cause of human liberation.

“There was an underpinning to everything in our lives that affected the entire variety of daily decision, reference, observation, everything! No one who didn’t live through it can understand what it was like or why it was so hard to give up. People now long for community, they’re dying for lack of it. Community can’t be legislated. It’s an organic sense of things that comes up out of the social earth. It’s a commonly shared ideal. That’s what it is. Nothing else will ever create community. And we had it. We had it in every conscious as well as unconscious response to ourselves, to each other, to the world we were living in, and the world we were making. (…) It wasn’t just good wine in our veins, that life, it was ambrosia.”

The intensity of that bond and community had a terrible underside. The Party came before spouses, family, and at the cost of many members’ mental wellbeing. The trials and expulsions were dehumanizing and humiliating. “A kind of Swiftian upside-downness overtook the best people in the CP: the small became big, the Yahoos were in charge, the babbling abstractionists filled the tribunals.” Spouses threw their longtime partners out of the house immediately upon expulsion, childhood friends suddenly shunned one another on the street when accusations of disloyalty were raised within the Party. After the Party’s effective collapse in ’56, so many ex-Communists were left bereft, bewildered, and broken. They had sacrificed their most intimate relationships and failed to build a life outside the all-consuming world of the CP, leaving them isolated and directionless.

Few, however, regretted their years in the Communist Party, regardless of where they landed. Marxism opened up a door into participation in human history that could never be closed. “You know, that's one thing almost all Communists share, the memory of what it was first like to read Marx, like fireworks exploding in your head, and the love you felt for the human intelligence. . . . God, I have never felt so free in my life as I did in those first days when I discovered Marx and the existence of my own mind at the same time-in that cold, filthy apartment in Chicago.” Person after person report the scales falling from their eyes. “Marxism was the transforming stuff, the new color, the new space, the new texture, the one that brought to the surface the life until then obscured.”

In almost all cases, the passion ignited wasn’t a mere flare to burn out quickly, but was harnessed into an enduring commitment through organization, ritual, and the satisfaction of the collective project. It was a fusion of ideas, structure, and action so powerful that former Communists could not recognize what the movements of the 1960s were doing as “politics” at all. “What’s their plan? Where’s their discipline? How are they different from the ordinary guy who says they're fucking us in Washington? … If I wanted to join the Left today, I wouldn't know how, where, what. The relation between ideology and party and political action is crucial. There must be structure. Without it, everything falls into a vacuum, dissipates itself in the atmosphere, accomplishes nothing.”

The key differences between the old Left and the New Left were political, of course (the reductionism, the one-dimensional conceptions of humans and their liberation, which are only briefly remarked on here), but more importantly, the sense of responsibility for undertaking a vast project of human liberation together. That involves organization, including the difficulties of organization like accountability to others, leadership, and real democracy. But one thing that comes through from this book is that you cannot have the mass project and organization without the fires of passion driving the structure. And you cannot light the fires of passion without a soaring ambition, which can take the disaffected generations and lead them toward a new life and a new world, designed not to reconcile them to decrepit capitalist institutions as they exist, but to give them an organization and dream of their own, powerful and cherished, with which they can pull themselves out of their wretched existence.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read all year! Incredibly good writing, so insightful and relevant that it's hard to believe it was written in the 1970s. In the author's view, the American Communism has been written about as cold, calculated, and (ill)logical. As a red diaper baby though, she remembers most the emotional side, and so the 2nd wave feminist travels the US to interview ex-Communists through an emotional lens. It ends up being as much about loneliness as it is about Communism. And as always with the Communists, truth is much stranger than fiction.

[josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

gorgeous, compelling, and only occasionally marred by the author’s total disdain for dogma

[Aggrey Odera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books and ideas really are beholden to the times. When first published in 1977, at a time when communism in America had already lost its lustre for whatever few adherents it had had in the first place, this book was strongly panned by critics. Both rightwing and leftwing critics- most notably Irving Howe and Theodore Draper declaimed their hatred for it. It quickly ran out of print. It was seen as glorifying, even valorizing communism, whose primary attachments in the American mind at the time were Stalin and the Gulag.

Yet these attachments were the furthest thing from Gornick’s mind. She was a staunch anti-Stalinist. Gornick had, in fact, been inspired to write the book by her involvement in the radical feminist movement of the 1970s. In the course of her feminist work, she saw how the ideology itself, something that ought have been an animating force in the individual lives of its adherents, a connection to a purpose bigger than the self, was transformed into dogma. Feminism became the hatred of men.

These experiences reminded Gornick of her life growing up as a red diaper baby in New York (from 1936 to around 1956). Then, the lives of her parents - and those of their comrades/ fellow travellers - almost all of them working class migrant Jews, ordinary men and women,- had been imbued by a “sense of one’s own humanity that made life feel large; large and clarified”. This connection to an international brotherhood of fellow workers and sufferers under the yoke of capital brought an inner sense of clarity that became “not just an attachment but an addiction”. And yet, it was this sense of being "all in", Gornick surmises, that rendered American communists blind to the totalitarianism and malevolence of Stalinist Soviet Union which, as the first- and the only meaningfully powerful- communist state in the world, was seen as the vanguard for all global communists.

When Khrushchev’s 1956 speech denouncing Stalin came out, and amidst the throes of McCarthyism, the majority of members of the Communist Party of the USA quit. Communism as a belief system lost all its credence in American life. Yet Gornick thought that something was lost when this happened. She thought that that animating force which had made her parents and their comrades believers in something larger than themselves could be rescued from the pernicious association communism had with Stalinism. No one was wiling to lend a sympathetic ear, so the book lay dead for a long time.

In 2020, with Bernie Sanders having galvanised American youth, with the label “socialist” not being an insult anymore, Verso issued the first reprint of the book. Gornick’s depiction of the lives of American communists, the romance that lay in the ideology of them for them, the sense of interconnectedness to broader purpose, is now more favourably appraised. It is also much easier to separate from dogma - what with the Soviet Union being dead for three decades now.

As Gornick acknowledges, the book reeks of sentimentalism. In her attempt to showcase the inner lives of these communists, she ends up valorising all of them. The men are handsome to a man; the women all beautiful - in that dignified way that is possible even in poverty. They are all clear in expression, their ideas weighty and their feeling moving. But Gornick does not regret the sentimentalism. She thinks that a deeper lesson lies here, one that speaks profoundly to our own Bernie Sanders times: that indeed, ideas can so animate us, so connect us to one another, that in our fights for social justice, our quests to end oppression wherever it exists, we feel a “centerdness”, and glow brilliantly with the firmness of our convictions. This is part of what it is to be attractive . The challenge now, is to make something of this animation. It is to organize ourselves to pursue our goals as a left. And perhaps, Gornick hopes, in reading about the ideological romance that permeated her parents’ lives and those of their comrades, we may encounter lessons that may prove useful to us.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vivian Gornick, where have you been all my life? As famous and prolific as she is, I don't remember ever reading anything by Vivian Gornick before. I actually just stumbled upon her this week when I encountered a short book of her insightful literary essays entitled, The Men in My Life. Loving this small book, I moved on to a larger book, The Romance of American Communism. This book is phenomenal. A work of oral history, The Romance of American Communism traces the rise and fall of American Communism by relying on many of its surviving members. Gornick was perfectly positioned to write this book. A product of of the New York Jewish Left, Gornick grew up around every shade of American socialist, cooperative enthusiast, trade unionist, Wobbly-descendent, and communist. She also writes beautifully, and seems just how to conduct interviews that honor their subjects without a critical spirit of inquiry. The variety of communist experience was of course vast, and Gornick captures that variety. Still, Gornick's respondents elucidate some big and unifying themes in the movement. Many people were practically born into communism, especially those whose families emigrated from Tsarist Russia or other lands of poverty and persecution. Others were appalled by the Depression and specific injustices, often in the California agriculture districts. Many communists were attracted to the idea that they were participating in something larger themselves. Interestingly, a great many men and women said communism helped them to "discover" politics for the first time. In other words, prior to recruitment, these men and women had no way to explain their lives, and how those lives connected to communities, and how those communities connected to the world at large. After recruitment, these men and women had a diagnosis for what was wrong in the world, and felt that they could make a difference. Over time, communism was confronted with state-sanctioned harassment. Also, Stalin's Show Trials and later Soviet conduct in the Cold War did much to dampen the enthusiasm of American communists. But even after the diminution and end of the American communist movement, former communists remembered how much the movement had meant to them. Participation in the Party had given their lives meaning. They had made friends and lovers by way of their political activity. Some were disillusioned, but even many of these were convinced that nothing else in their lives had been so important, so meaningful.

[Rolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read all year. Vivian Gornick, with absolutely beautiful writing, goes around the country and interviews former members of the Communist Party USA. They came from anywhere and went on to everywhere. For nearly all, no matter how much being a communist screwed up their lives, marriages, social circles and more, there was a no more invigorating prism to view the world.

Gornick chronicles the perils of dogma superseding inquiry, of a transformative vision made subservient to a political apparatus. It was tragic. American left radicalism was destroyed inside and out from cannibalistic infighting and state surveillance and violence.

The lessons of struggle are relearned both frustratingly and crucially with every new generation. This book is an account of the connections formed and impacts left from living a life of concerted rebellion. Oh the romance.

[Ric Doringo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depending probably on your age, your class, and of course your politics, you have particular images in your head when you hear "communism." Who would ever become a communist in America? Gornick's book - re-released at the perfect moment - answers that question. In the 1970s, when the first edition came out, she interviewed a host of Communist Party rank-and-file members to uncover their experiences in the party from the 1930s and 40s to the mid-1950s after the USSR's 20th Party Congress where Khrushchev revealed Stalin's brutalities; an event that sent the CP USA into a tailspin. The most intriguing part of the book is how so many people were motivated to join the CP because of their concern for the rights of working people, the racism they saw in their communities, and their genuine desire to make this country more equal. They were, in many ways, Romantics. It will change your view of US politics in the mid-twentieth century.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving series of portraits that adds up to a convincing, heterodox case for seeing mass participation in the Communist Party as an act of passion: passion for others, for a cause greater than the individual, for a more humane world to come. The stories shared by Gornick's interlocutors show us people that move between exhilaration, unflinching certitude, cruelty, wistful nostalgia, bitter betrayal, despondency, shame, fury, and, critically, hope. It drags a little bit in the middle as some characters are less interesting than others and a few of Gornick's stylistic flourishes and structural moves dull through overuse. Still, The Romance of American Communism closes strong with a compelling affirmation of the Communists'complex legacy of destroying themselves while nevertheless bending the arc of history toward justice.

[Cool_guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly overheated yet nonetheless valuable oral history of the Communist Party in the U.S. My initial thought is that it's a lesson in the dangers of identity formation via politics. Politics, Marxism specifically, is a tool to build a better world. To build a self, on the other hand, it's better to draw from many sources. But that's not quite fair.

For many of the men and women profiled in this book, the Communist Party was the only game in town. Poverty deprived them of all other options. The Communist Party functioned just like the Populist movement had, two generations before, as outlined in Lawrence Goodwyn's classic, "The Populist Moment." It gave the powerless the self-confidence to confront the world, to make it better, and in the process transform themselves.

[david · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overwrought and overwritten, with little context about what members of the CP actually did.

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love character sketches and love reading about misguided idealism, so this should have been a homerun for me, but I struggled getting through it. All the interviews are structured similarly and there is no forward momentum. Also, this is more of a critique of dogma movements than anything else. The author would never dare to draw a line between the actual beliefs of communism and the dysfunction of the American Communist Party. I really like the author and find her work on feminism compelling, and many interviews were poignant and moving (particularly in the final section), but I started skimming and ultimately found this unsatisfying.

[Ren Mooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! It gave me so much more knowledge on American Communism especially in pre-WWII days. I really haven't learned as much about the early 1900's American communism so this book really gave a good array of opinions and experiences. Every anecdote and experience was so interesting and genuine in the way communism affect the lives of organizers as well as everyday people. No story was the exact same and hearing of the early days and how much attitudes shifted during the 1950's. Really enjoyed this read 4.5/5

[Jean-Mathieu Francois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a historical study of the memory of being a communist militant and an "ex" communist, and a historical document of post-communist attitudes (the author, at the time of writing a feminist activist, conceives of the CP experience as a general guide for political movements, her particularity second-wave feminism). Mostly drawing from NY socialists and those who left the party after '56, this book feels essential for communists today as a reminder of the affective side of Marxist Leninist class struggle, as well as a good study of the particularity of American communism. As the book deals with the memory of communism, it engages with and distinguishes various of ex-communist anti-communists (in particular Koestler, Wright, and Silone). I balked at the strain of dialectics that endorse american mythology regarding exceptionalism and liberalism, but I believe this reflects the author's bitterness about the hierarchy of the Comintern.

[Angus]

magnificent, hard recommend for all my leftie friends :)

[celestine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book gets five stars for its straightforward reporting of mostly former members of the CPUSA’s recollections of their lives and experiences in the CPUSA. And 1 to 2 stars for the painfully liberal analysis peppered throughout. The CPUSA made mistakes, but the analysis of those mistakes found here is absolutely incorrect and supremely idealist (that is, immaterialist). For a proper analysis of the CPUSA’s mistakes you’re much better off going to Harry Haywood’s masterpiece Black Bolshevik.

From a communist perspective here, all I can see in all the sad ex-communists’ analyses of their own experiences leaving the party, most in the aftermath of Kruschchev’s phony revelations of Stalin in 1956, is American liberalism seeping into these comrades’ understandings of what was going on. It’s quite depressing. But quite illuminating in how much capitalist and liberal and revisionist propaganda really did quite a number on these folks. And a relevant reminder of how one must be steadfast in their rejection of liberal narratives of the communist experiments around the world to this day.

[Hobart Mariner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully diverse array of CPUSA members from all backgrounds, interviewed skillfully by a feminist writer from the 1970s. The most interesting are the working class members, who were drawn in by the illumination of their own exploitation that some basic theory provided. Gornick herself comes from this working-class socialist background and the first few pages are beautiful autobiography.

The main thesis is that, contra many accounts by former Communists, people were not drawn into the party and brainwashed/programmed by Marxist dogma. She instead presents a picture of the Communist experience as one of personal growth and fulfillment, which is ultimately, tragically destroyed when it comes into contact with the sclerotic, unjust Party hierarchy and Kruschev's revelation at the 20th Congress of the crimes of Stalin. Gornick is motivated by the fact that these people were her kith and kin growing up but are unfamiliar to most Americans; she aims to present their emotional/intellectual trajectory in largely sympathetic, if sometimes critical, terms. Really it's an energizing and interesting piece of oral history, presenting a group of forgotten radicals who thought that they had their hands on the steering wheel of capital-H History and were brutally corrected.

My favorite interviews: Preisen , Nikowsski, Goode, Lange, The Richmans, Bitterman (apt!), Ehrenpreis, Lanzetti, as well as Gornick's sketches of her own trajectory from socialist youth to apolitical early adulthood and then into second-wave feminism, complete with its own dogmatic rifts and denunciations.

There are a few issues with the book. While the intra-party show trials are accurately depicted as a fraud, she doesn't exercise any critical judgment of how white party members view charges of "white chauvinism" as phony baloney. Some experience with contemporary progressive movements shows that these accusations often have substance. This is tied to the book's other chief problem of overwhelming whiteness. By my count only two-non-white members were interviewed.

The author is much more alert to (and brilliant on) the problems that confronted women in the Party. A few of them were allowed to flourish and become high-ranking members; the rest were drudges and camp followers in thrall to despotic husbands. Here the author's second-wave feminism and keen journalistic eye are at their best, exposing the self-serving hypocrisy of men who preached workers' liberation while exploiting their wives like beasts.

One of the book's minor drawbacks is the author's tendency to dwell on the physical appearance of each person. I just don't find descriptions of how they look that interesting.

It would be foolish to pass over this book on account of these flaws, however. It comes together as a picture of a generation of people who were animated and energized by the class struggle, trained and disciplined by the Party, and ultimately abandoned, destroyed, rejected, and betrayed.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this brilliant and eye opening book Gornick interviews dozens of former members of the Communist Party of the United States (or CPUSA), asking each why they joined, their experience as members, why they left, and where they landed after. Each of her subjects had highly varied thoughts and feelings about CPUSA and their experiences in it. Throughout all their stories there are many variations between highly positive valences and highly negative ones, such as:

"And even I, the only time I would have dared, if I could, hate the Party was when my father gave two dollars to the Party that meant the difference between beans and chicken for us.

"But that was it. The Party came first. Always. And because it did come first we often forgot how poor we were. That was another thing I used to think about a lot. Imagine being as poor as we were, and not having the Party. Imagine being that poor with nothing to explain your poverty to you, nothing to give it some meaning, to help you get through the days and years because you could believe that it wouldn't always be this way.

"That's what our politics was to us. It literally negated our deprivation. It was rich, warm, energetic, an exciting thickness in which our lives were wrapped. It nourished us when nothing else nourished us. It not only kept us alive, it made us powerful inside ourselves."

And also:

"I knew [organizing] among the fruit pickers in the Thirties, nothing else has ever made me feel as alive, as coherent. It was for that, for the memory of that time, that I hung on. For that I lived with the narrowness and the stupidity of the Party. For that I fought. It's what socialism was all about for me. The great sweep of Marxist revolution had that image-memory of the Thirties woven into its fabric; that fabric wrapped itself around the dailiness of political life, Party life; when the twists and turns of that daily life grew confusing you pulled that fabric closer around you, felt its warmth coursing through you, and you said to yourself: 'This is what I am."

And striking a more discordant note:

For thousands of Communists, being a Communist remained as nourishing an experience as becoming a Communist had been. For thousands of others, it became a bitterness of vision evaporating into dogma: the growing self disintegrating into the stifled self. The former experienced the wholeness of the CP world as a transcendent source of personal integration, the latter experienced that same wholeness as a mental prison within which their own development languished, arrested.

What was true for all of them was that being a Communist defined them in a way that is almost impossible to understand today. It was the overriding element of identity, the one which subsumed all others.

And Abetta's experience:

Dave Abetta still considers himself a socialist, still believes that socialism must ultimately replace bourgeois capitalism in the civlized countries of the world [wait, which aren't 'civilized'?], still believes that his years in and around the CP were the very best years of his working life. "To work 1n context," he says, "is without doubt the most satisfying and effective way to work. For me, the CP was an irreplaceable context. Every case I fought, every brief I wrote, every legal decision I took part in was enlarged by the structure within which I worked. That structure made me think better, act more deliberately, see further than I would have otherwise."

But on the other hand, Abetta continues:

"You see, the work was all. Nothing else in my life made a dent in me. The work and the CP. Only that. My friends fell by the wayside, my family fell by the wayside, music, books, the whole variety of human pleasures, human exchanges outside of politics, all went.

"I lost the ability to develop personal relations. I don't know how anymore. My family never forgave me. My children are strangers to me. Polite strangers. But strangers nonetheless. There s a coldness between me and my wife that will never thaw, I think. How could it? All those years I shunted her aside, or patted her on the head, or locked myself up in my office for days on end. . . ."

And finally:

"So it was with me and the Communist Party. And so it is to this day. Through all the worst years in the Party I felt—as I do today—'This is a mighty beast we have got hold of, this idea of socialism. It has brought to the surface elemental pain and need. It has got hold of us now but if we hang on and ride the beast we will have hold of it, and then a new day will dawn.' The Party at its worst, Stalinism, state socialism, the lot, was the beast thrashing about. Chekhov had said we must squeeze the slave out of ourselves drop by drop. That idea speaks to a process of civilized patience, an order of highly controlling intelligence. But fifty years of Communism in the real world have taught us that human transformation does not come about in this manner. The first impulse of the powerless upon seizing power is not generous it is murderous. The slave aroused is at first a beast, Plato's tan coming out of the cave blind, awareness exploding in terror ad fury, But in time, in time. . ."

I have reservations about this story however, particularly how it leads to mistrust and ultimately rejection of the political, and Gornick's argument that structure, organization, and discipline seems to necessarily lead to authoritarianism. Dogmatism in all forms does not take anyone in the right direction, but a theory of political change that lacks the political, that rejects discipline, organization, and structure, may lead to a personal sense of fulfillment (if you are among the lucky), but it does not lead to societal change.

That being said, of course criticism is easy. And also I am an outsider, have not lived anything like these experiences, and could only be considered what they once would've called a fellow traveler, if that. Therefore, in the end I can only highly recommend this extremely illuminating work on both the rocky history of CPUSA, and Gornik's personal reconciliation with it.

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Oy, those meetings! You know why most communists aren't politically active today? Because they can't stand the thought of ever going to another meeting!.... You think making a revolution is all agony and ecstasy? It's not, its mostly drudgery. Hard, disciplined, repetitive work that's boring and necessary. But what keeps you going is that twenty times a week something would happen--out there in that lousy capitalist world or inside among your comrades--and you'd remember."

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"'You're an intellectual and a revisionist!' I hadn't heard those words since childhood. Overnight, it seemed the politically correct and politically incorrect were upon us, and the speed with which ideology developed into dogma made me reel. It was then that my sympathies for the Communists re-awakened,and I felt new respect for the ordinary, everyday Communist who, on a daily basis must have felt repeatedly subdued by dogma. 'My God', I remember thinking, 'I'm living through what they lived through!'"

Same as it ever was.

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book, in how it articulates the inner vibrance of political life, what it cautions and teaches for contemporary activists and how it gives us a broad but relatable sense of who these people were.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is second book by this author that I read, and she is one of those authors that can write about any subject and make it interesting because of her intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm. I would definitely purchase a copy of this book and any of the authors other books.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. Unique in its form and subject matter, “The Romance of American Communism” presents a series of written portraits of and interviews with former members of the US Communist Party. The author, a journalist and feminist who grew up in a working class, socialist Jewish household in NYC, attempts to capture the affective and relational experiences of participating in the CP, as well as the way former members account of themselves and their lives after leaving (the vast majority of the interviewees left in the mid-50s after learning of Stalin’s mass murders of Russian and Ukrainian purple). A compelling and intimate view on social and political conditions in the US in the first half of the 20th century, as well as on how the old left and the new left understand themselves and one another. I was especially inspired by interviewees who organized during the strikes of the 1930s. A favourite passage, from Marian Moran:

“The years with the fruit pickers became a world within the world… A microcosm of feelings that never left me, not even when I left them. I lived with the pickers, ate, slept, and got drunk with them. I helped bury their men and deliver their babies. We laughed, cried, and talked endlessly into the night together. And slowly some extraordinary interchange began to take place between us. I taught them how to read, and they taught me how to think. I taught them how to organize, and they taught me how to lead. I saw things happening to people I’ve never seen before. I saw them becoming as they never dreamed they could become. Day by day people were developing, transforming, communicating inarticulate dreams, discovering a force of being in themselves. Desires, skills, capacities they didn’t know they had blossomed under the pressure of active struggle. And the sweetness, the generosity, the pure comradeship that came flowing out of them as they began to feel themselves! They were — there’s no other word for it – noble. Powerful in struggle, no longer sluggish with depression, they became inventive, alive, democratic, filled with an instinctive sense of responsibility for each other. And we were all like that, all of us, the spirit touched all of us. It was my dream of Socialism come to life. I saw than what it could be like, what people could always be like, how good the earth and all the things upon it could be, how sweet to be alive, and to feel yourself and everyone else.” (100)

Words for today.

[Nisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential rendering of the people who made the Communist Party the force that it was in the 30's and 40's and the lives they led before the party, during, and after. It is incredibly moving in this regard alone. The origin stories of how people became radicalized and decided to organize for the first time were a balm for my soul, a fire in my belly, and a direct line to my heart all at once. Yet even beyond these specific stories (which are glorious in their specificities, detailed, and vividly woven) Gornick’s presentation of their stories can also function as a kind of meta story which encompasses the singular highs and devastating lows of life on the organized left--the comrade relationships forged in struggle, the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself, the excitement of purpose and meaning, as well as the pain of betrayal, the dissolution of a community overnight, and the isolation of finding one's way after such experiences. These communists are so deeply human--passionate, flawed, insightful, and in some cases, bitter and unable to exit the grief that engulfed them as a result of what they went through.

Gornick's concluding chapter, written in the 70's, unfortunately didn't really hit for me reading it from the vantage point of the 2020's on the other side of neoliberalism, but I liked that she emphasized there (and throughout) that while it may be easy to criticize these communists (and there is much that is criticizable), it is much more difficult to answer the question of what we would have done, and, more importantly, what we will now do. For in addition to the worst of what we see in the party here (Stalinism, show trials, obsession with the party line, rank misogyny), it is impossible to leave this book without feeling a palpable sense of hope. These people "came from everywhere" to build a better world together, and they gave decades of their lives for this purpose. They come alive talking about it, showcasing over and over again the beautiful, transformative experience that collective organizing can be. Strikingly, almost all of them, despite how disillusioned they were after leaving the party, felt their years were worth it and that they wouldn't trade them for anything. There is much for organizers of today to learn here.