The Essence and the Tactics

Except for Gus Hall, Henry Winston, and “people like them,” just about everybody should welcome the appearance of this scholarly, perceptive and timely description of what front organizations are up to these days. Hall and all won’t like it because Atkinson provides an apodictic analysis of the tactic that is the current favorite of the CPUSA. Both the 1966 Draft Program and speakers at the recent Congress of the CPUSA have called for “the democratic organization of the people on a myriad of issues, in a variety of forms, and on a scale never attained before.” This is a clear plea for the revival and revivification of the popular front, the united front, and the plain old front.

Anyone who understands the organization and motivation behind the various front tactics is not likely to be taken in again—as many were in the Thirties when the rallying cry was the fight against Hitler and fascism. This is the problem Atkinson considers. He discusses, as an example of front tactics, the organization, operation, and ultimate Communist control of the World Federation of Teachers’ Unions (FISE). The lessons to be learned are not startlingly new. By some rule of politics, however, these lessons—like freedom and existence—must be learned anew each day.

WJ

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Walter Darnell Jacobs

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Except for Gus Hall, Henry Winston, and “people like them,” just about everybody should welcome the appearance of this scholarly, perceptive and timely description of what front organizations are up to these days. Hall and all won’t like it because Atkinson provides an apodictic analysis of the tactic that is the current favorite of the CPUSA. Both the 1966 Draft Program and speakers at the recent Congress of the CPUSA have called for “the democratic organization of the people on a myriad of issues, in a variety of forms, and on a scale never attained before.” This is a clear plea for the revival and revivification of the popular front, the united front, and the plain old front.

Anyone who understands the organization and motivation behind the various front tactics is not likely to be taken in again—as many were in the Thirties when the rallying cry was the fight against Hitler and fascism. This is the problem Atkinson considers. He discusses, as an example of front tactics, the organization, operation, and ultimate Communist control of the World Federation of Teachers’ Unions (FISE). The lessons to be learned are not startlingly new. By some rule of politics, however, these lessons—like freedom and existence—must be learned anew each day.