“THE MOST DANGEROUS
COMMUNIST IN THE UNITED STATES:”
A BIOGRAPHY OF
HERBERT APTHEKER (Amherst and Boston: U. of Mass. Press. 2015)
By GARY MURRELL.
Afterword by Bettina Aptheker
Rev. by Hugh Murray
At the
rigged CP convention in Cleveland in December 1991, Gus Hall was determined to retain
control of the shrunken CPUSA.
Surprisingly, on the second day, the Hall faction permitted Herbert
Aptheker, by then a dissident, to speak for 5 minutes. Murrell, using the speaker’s notes of the
convention, includes some of that speech: “That [the secret financing of the
CPUSA] was outrageous. I had spent much
of my life denying it,…under oath,…and the party leadership knowing that what I
was saying was not true and what the government was saying was true. But we did not know that. We denied that…Gus [Hall] knew it, and
supported it, and Gus was paid for it.
Gus was on Moscow’s payroll…”(p. 333)
It seems that when Aptheker was called as an expert witness in Communist
Party trials, he was not so expert at all.
Murrell
describes Aptheker’s roll in the Smith Act trial of Communist leader Steve
Nelson. On the witness stand Aptheker
discussed Marxism and its approach to armed rebellion, and he was
cross-examined by the prosecution.
Aptheker was asked to elaborate on the Marxist view of armed revolution. (102-104)
This 1951 trial is part of the McCarthy era’s anti-Communism, and
included in the chapter “Are you now or have you ever been?” However, in April 1943 the FBI had bugged
Steve Nelson’s Oakland, Calif., home and overheard the visit there by a member
of the Soviet embassy give Nelson money from the Soviet Union for the CPUSA. The Soviet official also gave Nelson
instructions for the hiring of Communists who would be assigned posts in the
newly created Manhattan Project, whose aim was to create an atomic weapon. This FBI bugging may have provided the agency
with its first knowledge of the Manhattan Project and the American attempt to
build the bomb, and clearly the Soviet interest was in planting agents who
would supply the Soviets with reports on the progress of the atomic bomb. The bug had provided the FBI with most important
information about a conspiracy to commit treason. When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover then
alerted an official high in the Roosevelt Administration about this plot to
steal atomic secrets, that high official tipped off the Soviet Embassy that the
FBI was on to them, essentially urging the Soviets to be more careful in the
future and not be caught! In the words
of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “this was a conspiracy so vast.” Meanwhile, Aptheker defended on the witness
stand a Communist official who took Soviet funds for the American CP in order
to place moles in strategic jobs to make it easier to steal American secrets in
building the bomb for the USSR. Murrell
praises Aptheker for his enormous courage in standing up against Sen.
McCarthy. But on the big issue of that era,
McCarthy was right; Aptheker wrong.
Moreover, about Nelson’s treason, did Gus know about that too? Did the leadership of the CPUSA?
Aptheker
also appeared for the defense at the trial of North Carolina CP leader Junius
Scales.(187) Despite Aptheker’s
testimony, Scales was convicted, served time, and quit the CP. In his autobiography (written with R.
Nickson) Scales concedes that he was never asked, but wondered what he would have done if asked by
the CP leadership to perform a treasonous act.
Aptheker never seems to have raised such serious questions about his own
5 decades of CP membership, in which he accepted and followed the discipline of
the party. This question never rises in
his consciousness. How far might he have
gone? Murrell is certain that Aptheker
was totally dedicated to the Party; for him the Party was “everything.”(332) If ordered, would he have spied? Or what else?
His
daughter’s autobiography gained publicity when she alleged that Herbert had
molested her for a decade, from age 3 to 13; from 1947 to 1957. Far more damning, Bettina included a
paragraph (p. 23 of her autobio) implying that Herbert had gone to Mexico to
find the Mexican who had informed for the FBI and caused the capture of Gus
Hall, then hiding underground in the belief that the US had turned toward
fascism. The clear implication of that
paragraph was that Herbert, a recently discharged major from the US Army, had
gone to Mexico to “find” the snitch and eliminate him. Bettina’s paragraph presents the impression
that the scholar, author, lecturer, theoretician Herbert Aptheker may well have
been even more for the Party! Murrell
does not address Bettina’s paragraph directly; he simply reports that a couple
of comrades had been stranded without funds after Hall was taken by the
FBI. Aptheker was asked to bring money
to them so they could return to the US.(100)
So Murrell’s version is far more innocent – Aptheker is a Party bag man,
not a Party hit man! But, could not the
Party have gotten funds to the 2 comrades in Mexico easier than by sending such
a prominent Communist like Aptheker?
Does this make sense? Smells
fishy.
As early as
1951 Aptheker was on the FBIs Security Index List of 12,000, and Murrell adds
that Aptheker was considered one of the most dangerous – to be arrested in 1
hour if the order were given.(95) If
considered so dangerous, was his home bugged?
Was there anything to indicate a choo-choo train game? Or any sounds of molestation by Herbert of
Bettina? Was there any bugging confirming
why Aptheker went to Mexico? Hard
evidence might resolve the question of molestation far better than speculation
about repressed memory or fantasies horrible or otherwise. And did anything happen to the Mexican who
provided information to the FBI about Gus Hall’s presence in Mexico? If there is no hard evidence to support
Bettina’s allegations, at this point, I now think Aptheker innocent of the
molestation charge.
On a short
trip to NYC in the early 1960s I found the Jefferson Bookshop off of Union
Square and chatted with a young woman clerk – Bettina – who informed me that
her father was lecturing that night about a block away. I went.
Herbert Aptheker so impressed me that I still recall something of that
lecture 53 years ago. His subject was
that day’s New York Times. I had attended Tulane U. in New Orleans,
which had a large student contingent from New York, and they all boasted of the
reporting in The Times. Using that day’s newspaper as a text,
Aptheker opined out the distortions and omissions on page 1. I recall he pointed to a smaller article on
that page about Vietnam; he said that the headline was not the important
story. What was important was in the 2nd
paragraph, revealing the number of American military advisors then in
Vietnam. What was important, it was
higher than the last previous count of American advisors. The American Government was expanding its
military efforts in Vietnam, he warned.
That was the important story.
Aptheker
was a most effective speaker, and he had a sharp mind. Furthermore, he was a man of great
courage. He was a scholar who pioneered
aspects of Black history, challenging the conventional wisdom of his day that
slavery, contending that there were hundreds of slave revolts and conspiracies,
that Blacks were important to the success of the Union in the Civil War,
finding documents to encourage an interest in Black history and protest,
writing and lecturing, editing, and finding a suitable publisher for the works
of W. E.B. Du Bois. Aptheker even ran
for political office, and he established the American Institute for Marxist
Studies, which he hoped might be a popular-front type of institution, providing
information for various shades of the Left.
He did this and more even though blacklisted, and was denied any
university teaching posts from 1946 (when he exited the army until 1969 when he
finally got a part-time post at Bryn Mawr?
He was bitter about being blacklisted, but as Anthony Flood revealed in
a recent article, Aptheker basically blacklisted C. L. R. James from all of his
own writings. James wrote Black Jacobins, about the slave revolts
in Haiti, a topic similar to Aptheker’s own American
Negro Slave Revolts. But understand,
how could Aptheker stoop to mention the book about Haiti? C. L. R. James, the author, was a Trotskyist!
Not only
was Aptheker not provided a teaching post, he was often denied the right to
speak on many campuses. The FBI sought
to prevent and disrupt his lectures, and a young Pat Buchanan also sought to do
the same. Aptheker had his critics in
the CP, including some of the Black comrades who were jealous and resented that
Du Bois had left his papers, etc. to Aptheker, and not to a Black. The ex-Communist Harold Cruse vehemently denounced
Aptheker in his Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual. Murrell reported that
Aptheker only thrice answered the Cruse attack in print.(257) That may be true, but Aptheker, as leader of
AIMS, published my booklet on anti-communism and history writing, in which I
devoted a section to an attack on Cruse’s intense Goebbelist, anti-Jewish
rhetoric and interpretations,
Once in the
early 1970s while Herbert was opening the mail at AIMS, he saw the first page
of a North Korean newspaper. He held it
up so I could see how the “dear leader” of that era was shown, almost as a deity. Aptheker remarked, “There must be something
about the Asian mind that wants a god-like leader.” It was an off-the-cuff remark, and I do not
mention this to be politically correct and accuse him of “racism.” Indeed, a few years earlier in New York’s
China Town I had seen a Chinese film that opened, not with a roaring lion, but
with a large red background, in the center of which was a picture of Mao’s
head, and from all round his head, like rays of the sun, gold flashes
emanated. Nevertheless, what stunned me upon
reading Murrell’s book was Aptheker’s criticism of the CPUSA in the early
1950’s – he complained it was not doing enough to show the true nature of the
life (how wonderful it was) in the USSR!
The early 1950s. Stalin! What even the CPSU would soon denounce as the
cult of the personality! And those cults
were evident in all of eastern Europe.
The “dear leader” syndrome may or may not occur in Asia, but it seems intrinsinkly
linked to Communism when it achieves power.
It was not “the Asian mind,” but the Communist minds that required such
an adored leader.
The
Apthekers were involved personally with Angela Davis and her trials,
figuratively and literally, in California.
At one point, in a hurried session with Angela in her jail cell, he
proposed a possible line of defense – she was a member of the CP, the CP
opposes individual acts of terrorism, therefore Angela Davis must be innocent
of any complicity in the murder of the judge and others in the California
courtroom. Gus Hall’s Party leadership
staunchly opposed this strategy. To me
it was like a syllogism, John is a Christian, Christians accept the 10
Commandments one of which is “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” therefore John cannot be a
murderer. But life is not a syllogism,
and many Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Communists have been found guilty of
murder. Herbert also was more prone to
defend criminal actions by Blacks under the notion that they were an oppressed
people and therefore could not be gangsters. (279) It probably made him unable to recognize the
anti-white racism in crime when both he and his wife were mugged near their
home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Like
Jews who fled for their lives from Hitler dominated Europe, leaving their homes
behind, the Apthekers fled for their lives from the Black ghetto in
Brooklyn. Sociologists, infected by
anti-white racism, naturally blame white racism for whites abandoning central
cities. In reality, many like the
Apthekers had to flee for their lives from Black racist criminals. Ideology blinded Aptheker, and the academedia
complex, on such issues.
Herbert
Aptheker had many admirable qualities, and I did and still do admire him on
many levels. But he had a major
flaw. Even at the end, he seemed not to
have gained wisdom from his treatment in the Party. Murrell notes, had Gus Hall been in power in
the US, Aptheker probably would have been executed for his opposition to Hall.(335) But had Communist Aptheker been in power, how
many would he have found necessary to eliminate?
The flaw in
Herbert Aptheker was his faith, his faith in the Communist Party.(300) It was not simply a god that failed. Failed?
Communism was a god that succeeded in many nations and the result was
the murder of up to 100 million people.
All faiths are not equal. For
example, I now see Islam, with its barbarous sharia law, as a threat to Western
civilization. Communism, in its
ruthless, brutal, and murderous demands for equality has also proved itself an
enemy of Western Civilization.
Aptheker’s CP opened his mind in many areas, but the same CP closed it
shut in many others.
ADDENDUM
While the
mainstream press invariably referred to Herbert Aptheker as the leading “theoretician”
of the Communist Party, there seems to be no valid reason for the media’s
appellation. Murrell quotes Dorothy
Healy that the leadership of the CP viewed the role of intellectuals as simply
to rationalize the Party line, whatever it might be.(143) In effect, their role was no different from
that of the Party troubadours, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Woody Guthrie – to present
and spread the Party line in artistic or academic formats. As Aptheker became ever more prominent in
defending Communists at trials, publishing Black history, ing lecturing to
university gatherings, he became a rock star of the Party. Perhaps not the best known Communist: the
Rosenbergs and other spies made bigger headlines in a negative way. Aptheker, however, presented a positive
picture of the Party. Gus Hall probably
viewed Aptheker like the President views his official spokesman. Unfortunately, for Hall, Aptheker was more
independent than most Presidential spokesmen.
Does a
Presidential spokesman need to know about secret troop deployments here or
there? Clearly not. That information is for the President and his
closest advisors. The media spokesman
has to know only that which will make a more effective presentation of the
President’s policy. Indeed, more knowledge
may make it more difficult for the spokesman to lie for the President
effectively.
In December
1991 Aptheker, outraged, whined, in effect, “Gus Hall, you let me lie to the
public. You knew we were financed by the
Soviets. You lied to me and I then
repeated the lie to everyone.” During
the speech, Murrell informs us that Hall was laughing at Aptheker. One can imagine Hillary Clinton laughing if
Under Secretary Susan Rice whined about appearing on 5 television networks to
lie to the American people by repeating that a video had caused the killing of
Americans in Benghazi. Susan Rice was
expected to do her job, and spin and lies were a part of it.
Why would
the CP leaders tell a public relation spokesman that the CPUSA was subsidized
by the Soviets? With such knowledge,
would that make him a better spokesman for the Party? Why would the CP leaders tell a media
spokesman that the CPUSA had enabled members to engage in espionage? With such knowledge, would that make him a
better Party spokesman? Of course
not. So for very practical reasons, keep
the intellectuals and folk singers out of the loop.
Aptheker
enters the loop only with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of
files. He was the “theoretician”: he
thought he was snfluential in the Party, the Party in which he had such
faith. But the Party saw him as just
another intellectual, another flunky, who must toe the Party line or be hurled
into history’s dustbin.
But
Aptheker might have been aware earlier.
When Aptheker established the American Institute for Marxist Studies
(AIMS), he envisioned it as a popular-front organization, open to various
shades of the Left. Hall soon wanted to
take control and restrict AIMS to a rigid, orthodox Party approach. The tension over the development of the
organization could have taken another path, if Aptheker were willing. Aptheker and 2 others inheritied a million
dollars. If Aptheker had kept his third,
he would have had sufficient funding to maintain an independent AIMS. Instead, he gave the large sum to the Party
leaders. Later, he inherited a smaller
amount of $58,000, which he did not give to Hall, but kept for AIMS. With this small inheritance Aptheker kept
AIMS independent of Hall for some time, but the small inheritance ran out, and Aptheker
had to go to Hall for new funding. Hall,
with his Soviet bankroll, then made AIMS the narrow Party-line institution he
wanted.
There was
something quite pathetic in Aptheker’s speech in December 1991. People lose in politics – that is not
news. But the sudden awareness that the
Party leadership used him for 50 years, yet in the end held him (and all
intellectuals) in contempt. The faith
and love he had given the Party was not reciprocated. In his speech, Aptheker was outraged. Gus Hall just laughed. Pathetic.
