How Did We Get From 'Then' To 'Now'?

[PoliticalChic]

10. Many fell for the lies advanced by the Bolsheviks, about a worker’s paradise, so any worker must identify with the party that stood for the same things the Bolsheviks stood for.



Dos Passos writes:

“ I had to train myself and it’s not easy. The only thing I learned from him was early rising. Then I got in with a bunch of reds and had to go to Russia to see how it was working and came back all ready to fall for the New Deal.

‘A boy I grew up with,’ she went on pronouncing the words carefully, ‘who also helped Dad with his research when we were in school became a labor organizer and a Communist … he pretty near carried me along with him.’

“He was a labor organizer, he explained. Immediately he launched on the story of his life. For fifteen or twenty years they’d had a local here in the mills, half a hundred frightened guys expecting to be fired every time they held a meeting and now the boys were pouring in by the thousands. ‘It’s manna from heaven,’ he said. ‘In the old days I’d sneak into town like a peddler an’ like as not the Klan would get wind of me an’ ride in their robes down Main Street so’s I’d have to take a powder pronto an’ now I drive a Pontiac an’ they cash my checks at the bank an’ the night clerk at the hotel says, ‘How about a small suite Mr. Wilks?’ an’ the ladies from the Community Chest put a flower in my lapel an’ ask for a contribution … It’s manna from heaven.’

If you want to organize American labor you’ve got to work with the Communists. They are the only people who are really serious. They are a nuisance in some ways but they can be trusted to put in the work and to take the raps.’ ‘You don’t have to hold a Party card.’





Do you need proof that things have changed for workers in America? Take a look as the numbers for union membership.

Why union membership is declining dramatically - Marketplace
Why union membership is declining dramatically - Marketplace

Union membership has declined dramatically over the past several decades in the United States, from a high of about one-third of workers in the postwar era to just 6% today. The bulk of those ...



Unfortunately, schools and media have continued to press of communism over capitalism.

 

[danielpalos]

A few simple Commandments from God is all that was ever required.

 

[PoliticalChic]

11. Here’s a clue that the dialog in “The Grand Design” takes place prior to June of 1941: it mentions the alliance, the pact between the Soviets and the Nazis.

‘The politburo figures the same thing … The pact will give them a chance to stay out and when the Nazis have worn themselves out fighting the world the revolutionary moment will come in Europe the way it did in 1918 … The only thing wrong with this picture is that Hitler’s winning hands down and the workers are leaving the Party in droves. We sold ’em so thoroughly on antifascism that now they’re oversold … Half the time I think I should go along with the workers and half the time I think I ought to stay with the Party.’ ‘If you had taken my advice you wouldn’t have joined the Party in the first place.’ ‘I didn’t for a long time.’


The Bolsheviks had lots of sympathizers on the Left in America.
An indication of the subservience of the American communists to a foreign government can be seen during WWII. At the behest of the Commintern, as the archives reveals, the American Peace Mobilization committee was formed in April of ’41. It’s function was to support the Soviet line, bring progressives aboard, protest against the lend-lease program to aid Britain…they paraded in front of the White House, chanting “FDR is a fascist, …he’s starting a war!’ They managed to dupe the easiest group to dupe: progressive pastors. The NYTimes article at the time said “Clergyman Group Opposes War Aid!’



In mid-protest, on June 22, 1941, they became pro-war! The Germans had broken their agreement with the Soviets, and invaded Russia! Suddenly the group was for lend-lease, and FDR wasn’t a fascist…and they changed their name to American People’s Mobilization.

Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa) also known as the German invasion of the Soviet Union was the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and some of its Axis allies, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II.
Combatants: Soviet Union, Nazi Germany
Date: Sunday, 22 June 1941
Operation Barbarossa - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Operation_Barbarossa

Now Progressives, Leftists, Democrats were all for war, to protect the Marxist motherland.


Since Reagan defeated the motherland of communism, it has survived as a globalist entity. Its American branch is known as the Democrat Party.

 

[danielpalos]

If only, women could be more equal and better helpmeets in modern times.

 

[PoliticalChic]

12. It can be seen how Americans of the era were torn between the world situation, the Nazis and the Soviets and the influence each had.



‘It is wonderful,’ Paul went on patiently and severely. ‘It’s the only thing that can implement all this blather about the century of the common man the speeches of Walker Watson and the rest of them are so full of. Anyway, to make a long story short, what I want to ask you about it this: We’ve been having leaks in the office. The investigators have pretty well caught up with the Nazis but they are babes in arms when it comes to Reds. The leaks can in my opinion only come from the communistic brethren … You know that horsefaced girl, Millard’s secretary he brought up from the southeast with him, well they are givng her a tremendous ride.’ ‘You are not suggesting that I …’ she began angrily. Her voice was shrill. She felt her face reddening. ‘She’s over at my house right now. We used to live together.’ ‘Now Georgia just hold your horses.’ His troubled eyes looked full in hers. ‘I’m asking your advice. I think you sympathize with them in a certain way like many generous minded people but I don’t think you would help them to make a nuisance of themselves … I know a good deal about the Russkis but I don’t know much about the brethren in this country at least not since way way back when one of my best friends went that way. But from what I do know about the Russkis I know they can no more get out of the conspiratorial habit than fly to the moon. Wherever you have a Russian purchasing commission or a Russian controlled political party you’ll have espionage and counterespionage and countercounter espionage ad in- finitum till they get so tangled up all they know how to do is shoot everybody they can lay their hands on …”



The revelations about the Holocaust ended any sway the Nazis had…..but Roosevelt’s firm feelings about the Communists influence our country to this day.

And the current Democrat Party has its aims aligned with those of the Communist Party USA.

 

[PoliticalChic]

13. Dos Passos became, as so very many communists did, a virulent anti-communist. They saw its true nature.
Unlike Democrat voters.

The following critique of Dos Passos is from a Marxist website, ruing how they lost one of their heroes.



“… Dos Passos’ novel is far different from the warmed-up rehash of Father Coughlin’s talks that Cowley implies it to be. The “Grand Design” of the title is not a sinister conspiracy but the dream of a re-made America of the reformists in the Roosevelt administration which ironically turned out quite otherwise. At the end of the book Paul Graves, a sincere liberal in the secondary ranks of the administration, resigns when he hears his chiefs talking about the war from “the level of the leaders” instead of from the close-up view of the ordinary people, who can only see such immediate, personal things as the hours and wages of their employment. These were the same men who had talked glibly about solving social problems over sumptuous dinners in their homes, as they were waited on by their Negro butlers.

In a long article in the January 19, 1948 issue of Life, in which he announced his newly found belief in capitalism, he presents the customary hash of contemporary renegacy: that the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union “demonstrates” that socialism must lead to servitude and that only under a capitalism where the state plays a limited role is it possible for man to be free. In the final sentence, which Luce must have willingly allowed Dos Passos in return for the attack upon Marxism in the rest of the article, he added that this “pure” capitalism requires an economy of small enterprises.

Dos Passos’ depiction of the wartime collaboration of the Stalinists and the Roosevelt administration also suffers from his political near-sightedness and is only further distorted by the spectacles of Stalinophobia through which he peers. He portrays the Stalinists as subtle, scheming Machiavellians, taking cruel advantage of the innocence and gullibility of liberals – and so, no doubt, the Stalinists liked to think of themselves. The result of their super-Machiavellianism, however, has been that, after having done the dirty work of American imperialism, selling the wartime speed-up in the trade unions, exacting no-strike pledges, putting the finger on militants, they are being rewarded for their lackeyism by being ground under its boot as part of the preparations for a war against the Soviet Union.

Dos Passos’ Stalinophobia which has blinded him politically. The monstrous degeneration of the Russian Revolution together with the series df defeats suffered by the world proletariat, into which it has been led by the degenerated Stalinist bureaucracy, has made him lose his belief in socialism. In this Dos Passos is like many of the radical literary intellectuals of his generation who were attracted by the revolutionary current, among whom he was perhaps the most talented.”
Paul Schapiro: Dos Passos Deserts a Grand Design (May 1949)





14. The Grand Design - John Dos Passos

www.johndospassos.com/writings/the-grand-design/

Dos Passos's literary response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, The Grand Design critiques the gargantuan growth of bureaucracy in Washington during the Great Depression and World War II. The satiric novel conveys the author's frustration with federal overreach and hollow rhetoric that sells it to the people.