How One Left-wing Academic Star Portrays Lillian Hellman as a Role Model for Today
Later, she returns to Hellman, who she says was unfairly called a Stalinist. She writes that she showed “reprehensible behavior” when in 1938 she defended the “murderous purges that she either knew or should have known about.” She also supported the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, and never apologized for doing so. So what, then, is wrong with saying Hellman was a Stalinist, for a good portion of her life? And shouldn’t she be condemned, as Kessler-Harris does at that point?
Had Kessler-Harris ended with that paragraph, her article would be fine. But she then writes that Hellman’s “unapologetic communism signals profound frustration with democracy gone astray.” After all, our system was “controlled by the wealthy,” and all Hellmann wanted was a “ ‘better life’ that lies at the core of American radicalism.” Couldn’t one have sought a better life other than by joining the American Communist Party? No, Kessler-Harris writes that what we must see is that in the “turmoil of the 30s” there was a “desperate but unavailing search for alternatives that roiled the intelligentsia of her time.” And hence Kessler-Harris has the apology: “In Hellman’s mind…the good that the Soviet state might achieve, once its economy and social policies took shape, outweighed the condemnation of naysayers.” These were, she writes, “expressions of hope as much as indications of folly.”
Actually, what we see is the folly of a left-wing academic like Kessler-Harris, who obviously agrees that “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs,” as the old rationale for Communism went. The problem, of course, is that they never got an omelet, as well as having destroyed not some eggs in the process, but millions of lives. This is supposed to be her idea of putting the Cold War behind us?
Next, Kessler-Harris praises the wartime Popular Front — the period of moral confusion in which liberals aligned themselves with Communists, thinking that their goals were one and the same. She sees this as a noble crusade for “antifascism and racial equality.” She notes that Hellman worked at the time with the black baritone, the secret CP member Paul Robeson, “against Jim Crow rules in the Army.” Doesn’t she recall how the CPUSA put racial equality on the back-burner during the war, instructing its cadre to ease up, since the U.S. had to work with the Soviets to win the war and calling attention to racism at home interfered with that effort?
Finally, she praises Hellman’s “insistence of the freedom of belief to the end of her days.” Here, she agrees with Hellman’s self-serving explanation that the Communists “never did any harm,” but of course, the anti-Communists supposedly did. So Kessler-Harris is really not putting the old sides aside, but in fact is endorsing one of them, the anti anti-Communist side.
Stalinism, she says, is meta-category,” a “label that trumps all others.” So let us not “play the Stalinist card” which allows historians “to overlook multiple and changing perceptions of self and others,” whatever that means. Let us not, she writes, “oversimplify the complex realities of American identity.”
Evidently, she does not taker her own advice. In her book, Kessler-Harris, writing about the anti-Communist social-democrat Sidney Hook, refers to him as a man who “earned his political stripes as an anticommunist and had since moved to the far right.” Actually, Hook was most well-known as a Marxist philosopher and a life-long social-democrat. That he accurately saw Hellman as a Stalinist leads Kessler-Harris to describe him without nuance as someone who was “far right.” Were Hook still with us, he would have penned an angry letter noting his belief in social-democracy, as well as atheism and secular humanism.
In what is perhaps the most telling paragraph in her book, Kessler-Harris writes the following:
In the late twentieth century, victory went to those who defined communism as the enemy of national security. Each new revelation of espionage, every document that revealed a close relationship between the Comintern and the CPUSA, strengthened the hand of anticommunists.
What upsets her is that Lillian Hellman is “forever viewed through the lens of a persistent communist threat.” So in fact, rather than being outside the fray — an impartial scholar that she considers herself to be — Kessler-Harris is a firm anti anti-Communist, writing to defend Hellman’s false belief that Communists did no harm to America, and to attack those who rightfully were anti-Communists. Her paragraph on the “victory” of those who proved through documents — I suspect she is referring in particular to Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes — that the Communists were playing a dangerous role in the United States is what really gets to her.
When she concludes that we should celebrate Hellman because she was proud of opposing only the opponents of Communism and rationalizing the Communists as well-meaning individuals, Kessler-Harris reveals that rather than being an impartial, above-the fray scholar, she is simply another member of left-wing academia whose members talk to themselves, bemoan the American victory in the Cold War, and eulogize apologists for Communism like Lillian Hellman as heroic.
Rather than one part of a group of historians who “distance themselves from those old debates” she is in fact a member of the group that continually seeks to besmirch those historians who are proudly anti-Communist, while seeing unabashed, unreconstructed Communists like Eric Hobsbawm as “distinguished.” Towards the end of her article, she notes that “a cultural icon as large as Woody Guthrie” now has his own Communist past “acknowledged,” and yet his Oklahoma birthplace is giving him a “tribute it long withheld.” Woody Guthrie, who wrote some great songs, was not the kind of CP activist who took part in the cultural wars in the way Hellman did, and the analogy falls totally flat.
In the end, Kessler-Harris sees Hellman as one who was marginalized because she saw America “in unconventional ways.” Nonsense. She was marginalized because many saw her as a mediocre playwright, as a liar and phony, and as an apologist for Stalinism. Try as she may, Kessler-Harris has not been able to rescue Lillian Hellman’s well-deserved rotten reputation.
Perhaps Stalin was not a Stalinist too, according to the distinguished historian from Colombia U. They also have a prof there Nadia El Haj, whose specialty is the “myth” of Ancient History. Hire David Irving for Holocaust studies so Colombia will have a trifecta
I read that article, and thought my head was going to explode. Honestly, reading the Review is going to make me pop an ulcer.
Well, reading the Chronicle of Higher Education makes me feel that way.
Why do you torment yourself that way?
Just an ol’ commie (and a more strident one than Hellman, you can bet) being “plus royaliste que le roi.”
I found this a very interesting post because it deals with a question that I keep hammering on to no avail: Why do the writers and pundits refer only to left and right? And if that is what those on the Marxist side prefer, as Mrs. Kessler-Harris happily states, rather than the more specific Stalinist, or Maoist, or Communist, or anti anti-Communist because it is so vague and bland, why do we oblige them?
Van Jones got fired by the White House not because he was an avowed Communist, of which they were fully aware, but because he openly stated his commitment, thus turning the spotlight on the the whole cabal. The American electorate, including a lot of Democrats, untutored in the fine academic distinctions, lump them all as Socialists. Leftist doesn’t bother them. Socialism they would never vote for. Socialism is the word the New Democrats dread more than anything else. Good pejorative words DO count. We don’t have “Reds” or “Commies” to use any more. What’s wrong with using “Socialist” even though it is academically imprecise.
So,once again Dr. Radosh, why do we oblige Mrs. Kessler-Haarris by sticking with their preferred identity as Leftists?
The problem with calling a communist a commuist is that most of them don’t know they’re communists; they just consider themselves educated. Which, of course, makes us anti-communist conservatives the uneducated.
Good point Art!!!! I have known many a Marxist who has never even read a sentance of Marx.
It is true that we don’t teach either students or adults to read rival ideologies so that our electorate is deprived of critical tools. For instance, I wonder how many antiracist liberals believe that they are striking a blow for freedom through escapist mass media? I tried to describe the more subtle forms of racism here: http://clarespark.com/2012/04/24/the-subtle-racism-of-edna-ferber-and-oscar-hammerstein-ii/. Both Hammerstein and Ferber were ardent liberal anticommunists who did the work of fellow travelers, by romanticizing America’s “victims.” In the end, escapism and theater ruled their imaginations. We should teach our students to recognize primitivism for what it is.
Ron, why do you distinguish Guthrie’s politics from Hellman’s if only in a cultural sense. I’m sure he was a nicer guy and a lot more naive than Hellman (if that word can be stretched to describe her at all) but he was a committed communist whose work was in the interest of the party and used by it to great advantage. Given it’s longevity one might think he had greater cultural influence than a largely forgotten playwright. By the way SANE might have been avowedly non communist but it’s goals were one and the same, a disarmed west at a time when the soviets were a force to be reckoned with. Otherwise, I enjoyed your article and look forward to reading the review.
Note to all: Read “Bloodlands — Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” for a full, horrifying picture of just how obscene Stalin apologies are.
Ron writes: “What Kessler-Harris has done is define it as one who supports a wonderful aim — “social justice.” I mean, who can be opposed to that?”
To those who want a better understanding of why Stalin was and is considered to be one of the most evil humans who ever lived, by all means read “Bloodlands.” Also read the works of Solzhenitsyn:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-autobio.html
Although all of Solzhenitsyn’s work is interesting and worth reading, you really don’t need to read all of it to learn just how vile Stalinism was. The Gulag Archipelago is more than enough to explain that in all the detail you will ever need. I think of the other’s as bonuses – they give you additional information and context – but The Gulag Archipelago is the only truly vital one of Solzhenitsyn’s works that everyone should read.
For those unfamiliar with Solzhenitsyn, I should point out that The GUlag Archipelago is very long – close to 2000 pages in three volumes – and I know that will discourage many people from even starting it. But I assure you that it is the single most important and transformational book I have read in my entire life. It has haunted me since I first read it and continues to influence my political thinking.
Before reading Gulag, I was beginning to have concerns and doubts about the Left but I had no real convictions. I simply lacked a significant factual basis for those convictions. Gulag, with its wealth of truly heartbreaking accounts of just how people were treated under Stalin, gave me an abundance of genuine, thoroughly documented factual evidence that is more than sufficient to repudiate communism completely.
Despite the wealth of horrors you encounter in Gulag, it is also suprisingly uplifting. The latter half of the third volume gives some supremely inspiring accounts of how some people retained their fundamental decency as human beings despite some of the most appalling circumstances imaginable. Just when you think no one could possibly retain a shred of humanity in the face of such overwhelming odds, you encounter people who did. Even one of the most vicious dictatorships in history did not crush the spirits of some of its citizens. That makes The Gulag Archipelago surprisingly hopeful despite the horrors you see in its pages.
The Gulag Archipelago is an absolute “must-read” for anyone who actually wants to know WHY Communism is bad. Not in an abstract, theoretical way but in a concrete day-to-day way. If you read this book, you will learn exactly how Soviet citizens lived and just how their state oppressed them in great detail. Then you will know on the deepest personal level just why Communism is so evil.
“I found myself asking the questions that others had posed before me.”
It’s really very surprising how many times academics find themselves doing stuff. “This morning I found my self brushing my teeth, and wondered ‘what have others said about teeth brushing’?” Then, a few years later, there appears the book about how Obama brushes his teeth and how Progressives have leveled the teeth-brushing playing field by subsidizing toothpaste and the Toothcaid package. Stalin brushed his teeth: can such a man be what toothless right-wing fanatics say he was? I think not!!
I’m curious to find if Kessler-Harris has anything to say about the charge recounted by Paul Johnson in “Intellectuals,” that Hellman lifted the story of “Julia” in Pentimento whole from the life of another woman who in fact survived WWII and contacted her afterward.
Hellman, and Hammitt, were both nasty pieces of work, mean drunks who lead lives with less than no self-conscious awareness. And I heard that from a commie who partied with them. So, yeah, the perfect role model for today.
In the book, “The God That Failed”, former Communist, Louis Fischer, wrote about the “Kronstadt Moment”, that horrific act committed by the Soviet regime, that turned Communists and former supporters against the regime. The “Kronstadt Moment” refers to the Soviets’ brutal suppression of the Sailors’ Revolt at the Kronstadt naval base in 1920. Fischer’s “Kronstadt Moment” was the Soviets’ collectivization of agriculture in the late 1920′s. For others, it was the Ukraine famine in the ’30′s, the “show-trials” and purges that occurred soon after, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. Through it all and afterward, Lillian Hellmann remained a loyal and vocal supporter of a foreign totalitarian regime committed to the downfall of the U.S. That she was also a liar and a vile human being was revealed in the libel suit, brought against Mary McCarthy, that blew up in her face. That cost Ms. Hellmann a lot of supporters. That there are academics who continue to serve as apologists for such a nasty piece of work shows the depths to which academia in America has sunk.
“Now, most people define a “fellow traveler” as an individual who blindly supported the Communist line, and who regularly apologized for actions they knew were morally wrong and the consequences of which were horrendous for those who lived under the reign of Communist regimes.”
You never hear much from people like Kessler-Harris about those consequences, do you. You never hear them discuss what a lousy life the vast majority of people had under dictators like Stalin, Pol Pot, or, even worse, Mao. To people like Kessler-Harris, the victims of brutal communist regimes are either simply statistics, numbers which sane people couldn’t even imagine, or some sort of distasteful ends that justified their communist means.
It’s nice for people like Lillian Hellman and jerks like Kessler-Harris to debate communism as if it were a fine wine or some abstract political theory in the safety of the United States. Yes, these people are very brave talking about communism here in a stable democracy. It’s quite another thing if you were unfortunate enough to live under a communist regime. Perhaps before Kessler-Harris keeps singing the praises of a communist like Hellman, maybe she should read more books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or even George Orwell, people who saw communism up close and personal and saw what a homicidal fraud it really was. I trust they have some of those books at her university.
To a liberal what’s important are intentions, not results. That’s why communists are excused and Nazis are not. The communists wanted a better world for everybody, the Nazis were only interested in Aryans.
Back in the ’30s, pretty much the only well-known intellectual who wasn’t some kind of state-collectivist was Ayn Rand…
Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
In support of this statement is Hellman’s book “Pentimento”, which has a chapter, “Julia” about an old friend of Hellman. In, “Julia” Hellman smuggles money into Nazi Germany to support Julia’s anti-Nazi activities. It was believed to be a true story, until after the movie “Julia” was released. It was then learned that it was a fiction. The film’s director, Fred Zinnemann, commented, “Lillian Hellman in her own mind owned half the Spanish Civil War, while Hemingway owned the other half. She would portray herself in situations that were not true. An extremely talented, brilliant writer, but she was a phony character, I’m sorry to say. My relations with her were very guarded and ended in pure hatred.”
I treasure Mary McCarthy’s epithet on the Dick Cavett show: “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.”
And champion-of-the-people Hellman was rolling in it. She owned, inter alia, Dashiell Hammett’s copyrights. Classic champagne socialist and all-round execrable human being.
It’s nice for people like Lillian Hellman and jerks like Kessler-Harris to debate communism as if it were a fine wine or some abstract political theory in the safety of the United States. Yes, these people are very brave talking about communism here in a stable democracy. It’s quite another thing if you were unfortunate enough to live under a communist regime.
A very interesting point, Libertyship46.
Now, I don’t claim to have made a thorough scientific study of the matter but I have anecdotal evidence to suggest that virtually the only people who really believed in Communism as an ideology were the activists that tried to establish it. Once Communism was actually established in their country, joining the Communist Party was something done to further your career, like a salesman joining a county club to make influential business contacts.
I once worked with a Croation woman who grew up in Tito’s Yugoslavia, which was Communist. I asked her once how many people in Yugoslavia actually believed in Communism. She said she’d never met anyone who did. She said she knew members of the Yugoslav Communist Party but they had only joined to improve their chances of career advancement. They had no real belief in Communism.
I once talked to a Czech man who had fled his country in 1968 when Russian tanks crushed their dream of “communism with a human face”. I asked him if he’d ever known anyone who really believed in communism. He thought about it a bit and could think of only one: his father. Apparently, his father had “drunk the koolaid” and actually believed in Communism as an ideology, something that would make the world a better place. But that’s the only real Communist I’ve ever encountered and even that was just a second-hand contact since I never met this man’s father.
On the other hand, I’ve encountered quite a few Communists on newsgroups but they all seemed to native-born Americans and Canadians. They “talk the talk” with all the formal Marxist phrases about the “oppression of the masses” and how the imminent “dictatorship of the proletariat” will overturn all injustice and lead to a utopia on earth. But precious few of them have ever lived in a Communist country and experienced it close up. I am convinced that VERY few of them would retain any love of Communism if they spent more than a few days in a Communist country, particularly if they lived as the ordinary people there live. They might manage to hang on to a few of their illusions if they travelled as tourists seeing only what the regime wanted them to see but I can’t imagine more than a tiny handful of True Believers staying that way once they’d seen how ordinary people in contemporary North Korea, or the Stalinist Soviet Union or Maoist China actually lived.
The scriptwriters for the 1939 movie Ninotchka (one of whom was Billy Wilder) had a pretty clear picture of Communism and what was going on in Russia — not as clear as that of the Russian people, but a lot clearer than that of the Communists living in the West. A few examples via IMDB:
Ninotchka: Why do you want to carry my bags?
Porter: That is my business.
Ninotchka: That’s no business. That’s social injustice.
Porter: That depends on the tip.
===================================
Ninotchka: The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.
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Leon: A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I’ve been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years.
===================================
Russian Visa Official: Everything is in order. Enjoy your trip to Russia, Madam.
English Lady Getting Visa: Thank you. Oh, by the way, I’ve heard so many rumors about laundry conditions in Russia. Is it advisable to take one’s own towels?
Russian Visa Official: Certainly not, Madam! That is only Capitalistic propaganda. We change the towel once a week.
==================================
Russian Visa Official: To an unseen caller: “Hello! Comrade Kasabian? No, I am sorry. He hasn’t been with us for six months. He was called back to Russia and was investigated. You can get further details from his widow.”
What many forget is that even those American leftists who DO understand the malovent shortcomings of Communism but advocate it anyway do so precisely because they arrogantly, egotistically, believe that they, themselves, will remain among the “top-dogs” as part of the ruling Nomenklutura in control of the aparatus of the state as rewards for their steadfast devotion and advocacy come “the revolution.”
– “and” and “the” come to mind.
“First, she says Hellman was briefly a Communist and later a “fellow traveler.” But she writes that this was “in the sense that she remained sympathetic to the broad goals of social justice for which she believed an abstract communism stood”
-this is the same chick who waltzed into someones parlor in 1940 and breathlessly announced, “The Motherland has been invaded!”
Anything for a laugh, I guess…
If you want to get a rise out of a communist-sympathizer, call Stalinism by its true name — Monopolistic Capitalism. Stalin was not against factories or the use of capital (machinery) to make the modern icons of capitalism (steel and artificial power). He stole the Ukranian wheat and starved the farmers who grew it to the point of famine so he could build the factories that he saw turning out steel and modern conveniences which was all part of his five year plan. Stalin had no problem with capitalistic factories. What he did not like was competition. He took over the government and then turned all capital ownership over to himself as head of the government. This did not do away with capital production, only private ownership and competition. Hence monopolistic capitalism which breaks on the rock Lord Acton warned against. “Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely” and Stalin was a police snitch under the Czar and the owner of a completely corrupt criminal mind that was directed by an unwavering will that had a rudder frozen in one direction only, preservation of personal power over everyone within his horizon. (How he got fooled by Hitler, never made any sense). So next time someone supports communism, in practice, tell them to use the proper nomenclature, “Monopolistic Capitalism.” See their heads explode. When they disagree, ask them to explain the difference. Ultimately under Stalin, Mao or anyone else of that ilk, there is no diffrence. Even Mao tried to build steel mills in everyone’s back yards (the steel was worthless, the rice was not grown or harvested and millions died of starvation). Monopolistic Capitalism does not work. Try competitive, privately owne, free market capitalism. It will work the best everytime, in direct proportion to the degree that government does not meddle.
Isn’t it about time we laid to rest the idea that during the thirties if you were for “social justice” or trade unions or civil rights you had no choice but to join the CPUSA?
My parents, for example, joined the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas. The SP, for that matter, outpolled the CPUSA in 1932 by about five times, so if there was a basis for a left wing party it was them rather than the communists. But joining the CP didn’t allow you the thrill of surrendering yourself intellectually to the inevitable march of progress; few, if any, people were drummed out of the SP for deviating from the line.
Strangely enough, among academics the SP draws little nostalgia or interest and those who joined the CP are seen under the lens of what Vivian Gornick once with a straight face called “the romance of American communism.”
By the way, my father left the SP in 1940 over the war issue–he didn’t think it was an imperialist war. My mother clammed up when I asked her about 1944 so I think she voted for Thomas then, but when she left the SP she went to Truman, not Wallace.
It is a myth that anything but a flirtation with communism can be excused as due to “good intentions,” and anyway, I keep thinking about what Saul Bellow used to call “the Good Intentions Paving Company.”