Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left

Ronald Radosh was born to proud communist parents. He attended red elementary and high schools (whose curriculum could match any modern-day college campus) and even spent his childhood summers at socialist camp. His life story reads like the perfect description to yield a grown-up replication of Hillary Clinton or Bella Abzug. But something went right along the way.From a very young age, he embodied a devotion to the truth (or at least, like his parents, what he honestly believed was valid), and this veracity eventually lead him astray (or home depending upon one's point of view.) Ironically, the term "fellow travelers" has become cliche in communist circles, and Mr. Radosh uses it generously throughout this work, but he, the ex-communist, is the one who "traveled" away from a dead-end philosophy, while the so-called "travelers" continued to ram into brick walls, getting nowhere at all.The drive to satisfy his inquisitive nature lead to many disappointments with communist ideals, but three incidents seemed to cement his conversion from the failed mindset. Along with a select ruck of fellow travelers he was invited to spend a month in Cuba--an offer he joyously accepted. However, touring the island prison, he painfully learned that the Cuban reality was a far cry from communist lure. Despite communism's promise of complete equality, he encountered a nation where the ruling class lived like kings while the working class lived in hopeless squalor and dissenters and eccentrics were subject to arbitrary institutionalization, torture, and execution. Touring a mental hospital where innocent dissidents routinely underwent lobotomies tore Mr. Radosh's heart. However, his reaction was not shared by Castro's other American toadies; one of whom dismissed the author's concerns with the seriously spoken statement, "We have to understand that there are differences between capitalist lobotomies and socialist lobotomies."A second transmogrifying occurrence, that pays loud testimony to Mr. Radosh's integrity, was his undertaking the writing of what would become the definitive biography of the Rosenbergs. As a teenager, he had protested the spy couple's execution, fully convinced that they were innocent scapegoats murdered by a tyrannical government who had framed them for a false crime. He knew the Rosenberg sons, and in his circle Julius and Ethel were icons of unsurpassed stature. Upon the government's release of all documentation regarding the espionage case, Mr. Radosh determined to provide the martyred Rosenbergs posthumous exoneration. He was cataclysmically dismayed when the evidence conclusively proved that they were indeed guilty as charged. Many people with such strongly held convictions would have abandoned the project rather than publish a book that thoroughly refuted them. It speaks volumes about his character that he concluded his work despite having to change the thesis 180 degrees. Yet this inspiring honesty was not seen admirably by

Ronald Radosh is a first-rate historian who has travelled a well-worn political path from the Marxist left to the heterogeneous coalition devoted to the defence of liberal democratic values and processes. There are some fine autobiographical accounts of that journey - which many of us have also taken - extant, most notably the 1950s collection The God That Failed; Radosh's book is a valuable and often moving modern example of this literature. The early chapters of the book evoke a distant world of Communist youth camps and Jewish radicalism. The author's insights into the nature of the Communists' exploitation of these movements (for example, protesting against the supposed anti-Semitic 'frame-up' of the atomic espionage agents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, while being silent over the ferocious anti-Semitic pogroms practised by the Soviet Union) make scandalous reading, while his account of the naivete of the 1960s counter-culture draws out the rather pathetic nihilism of that movement. But the story really gets going when Radosh depicts his gradual disillusionment with 'the Movement' from the early 1970s, dating from a trip he made to the prison-state of Cuba and continuing through his seminal research demonstrating the guilt of the Rosenbergs. His conclusion at the end of the book - articulating the premise of those who subscribe to Madisonian principles of deliberative democracy and thus who know that democratic politics can have no pre-defined 'end-state' - about the relative merits of western societies relative to the tyrannies that Marxism has always and everywhere established is so true, and so apt an epitaph on the bloody course of much 20th century history, as to be poignant. There are minor quibbles to be had with the book. Radosh pays generous tribute to his editor, but there was no need: the book is peppered with mistakes that, while not serious, are certainly irritating and ought to have been picked up. (On more than one occasion the book spells 'minuscule' wrong; the notorious 1950s game-show cheat portrayed on film by Ralph Fiennes was Charles, not Mark, van Doren.) Overall, though, this is an excellent read.

Radosh is one of those former lefties who, like the prolific David Horowitz, had "second thoughts" about his communist upbringing and the political certainty it inculcated. He is loathed by academics and radical theorists to whom he is a turncoat of the worst order. But for a recovering victim of academic indoctrination this was a revelatory book, one of the best among many. This one names names, all the ones still assigned by professors of history, political science, women's studies, etc. in our major institutions of higher learning. They write their history with a Marxist bias so the US is always guilty, always criminally wrong; they care not about facts but about race, class, and gender. Thirty years of this has successfully fractured America's once proud melting pot. Intolerance has replaced the tolerance for which the country was meant to stand. Radosh gives the reader a view of the old, new, and leftover left from the inside early in the game. It's often very funny but, in the end, a sad commentary on the intellectuall quality of people who we all know as academic stars and political pundits. The key to his main theme is the chapter on the Rosesnbergs; many old lefties knew they were guilty but chose to stick to the lie for the "good of the party." This is the stuff of comtemporary politics--the truth has long been undervalued, deconstructed to the point of being inconsequential.

This book is a must-read for all those who wonder "how did we get this way?" in terms of the college campus re-education centers; the biased media; politics. Dr. Radosh has done for the American public what David Horowitz did in "Radical Son." He shows the up-bringing, indoctrination and activities of those in the Leftist/CPUSA Movement (whoops--they like to be called progressives) in the 60's-70's-80's and today. Radosh has done it in a shorter and very readable book. And, a book, like Horowitzs', which names names and is based on first-hand experiences. This makes it really dangerous to the Left--and to those who have bought into the Left's cant, without ever questioning it. Watch for the angry screeds to come from certain reviewers and publications. Radosh shows what the intellectual journey from hard-core Leftist to Conservative is like--and, the price that he and Horowitz, both stars of the Left in the 60's, paid. In Radosh's case, he was in the Movement longer that Horowitz, but his ephiphany was equally disturbing and sudden. His came about when he set out to write a book purporting to show the Roseberg's innocence--and, found out they were guilty! Of course, to write such a book and break with the parrty line cost him his star status and a host of "friends." He went through bad times, personally and professionally--as did Horowitz. But, he perservered and he stayed the course. Again, this is a MUST-READ for any person--Left, Right or Center!!

This book is for anyone who has ever wished to be a be a fly on the wall, especially when the wall is in the rooms where so many radical academics and activists were sitting. The book chronicles Radosh's amazing journey from red diaper baby to left wing activist to someone who had ultimately had the strength of character to put truth ahead of "the cause". One can only imagine the apoplectic reaction of many of those who find their way into this book. For the rest of us who reside on "planet earth", the book is a breath of fresh air.