THE RIGHT BOOKS

In his introduction to Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903; $29.95), Professor Harvey Klehr gives as one of his reasons for writing this book the fact that many of the extremist organizations he reports on camouflage their views, while on occasion “prominent individuals” confer a patina of respectability on them (as Mrs. Jimmy Carter did with regard to the People’s Temple) either by associating with or praising their activities; the result being that unsuspecting individuals are drawn into their clutches. In the case of many of these groups, the only way in which ordinary citizens could happen upon them would be by falling through a manhole in one of our larger cities. Others of these organizations, however, live very much streetside existences, walking about, respectably dressed, in the full light of day. Beyond wishing to issue a caveat to the unwary, Klehr has it in mind to fill an informational niche. Though histories of radical groups have been written by such respected writers as Theodore Draper, Irving Howe, and Lewis Coser, almost no attention has been devoted to the radical Left of the 1980s—a decade that has not provided “good years for radicals in. the United States or … in the democratic world,” and in which many people have assumed their disappearance from the American scene. Klehr’s message is: They’re still out there.

For example: It will come as a surprise to many readers to learn that “the FBI . . . estimated that [Communist Party] membership was around 4,200 in 1975. Party sources told a reporter from one radical publication in 1983 that membership was at its highest level in years—ten thousand.” Much of this growth was the direct result of an Extraordinary Party Conference held in 1982 (and deliberately modeled on a similar conference held in 1933), in the aftermath of which a thousand new members were recruited. Moreover, “In the last decade the CPUSA has made modest strides in the labor movement. One of its longtime front organizations, the Labor Research Association, has played a key role in this emergence. . . . the LRA has been able in recent years to attract leading trade unionists to its dinners and conferences”—e.g., the banquet it held in December 1982 to honor the Congressional Black Caucus, which was attended by eight hundred people including six congressmen, six New York State legislators, and three city-council members, and at which thirty unions were represented. On the foreign-policy side, the United States Peace Council (founded in 1978 as the American branch of the World Peace Council, “one of the largest and most active of Soviet front groups”) has been at work, most notoriously on behalf of the nuclear-freeze movement. The WPC itself is composed of Communists and non-Communists, and has made places for several Americans on its international directorates; the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is a President of Honor.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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In his introduction to Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903; $29.95), Professor Harvey Klehr gives as one of his reasons for writing this book the fact that many of the extremist organizations he reports on camouflage their views, while on occasion “prominent individuals” confer a patina of respectability on them (as Mrs. Jimmy Carter did with regard to the People’s Temple) either by associating with or praising their activities; the result being that unsuspecting individuals are drawn into their clutches. In the case of many of these groups, the only way in which ordinary citizens could happen upon them would be by falling through a manhole in one of our larger cities. Others of these organizations, however, live very much streetside existences, walking about, respectably dressed, in the full light of day. Beyond wishing to issue a caveat to the unwary, Klehr has it in mind to fill an informational niche. Though histories of radical groups have been written by such respected writers as Theodore Draper, Irving Howe, and Lewis Coser, almost no attention has been devoted to the radical Left of the 1980s—a decade that has not provided “good years for radicals in. the United States or … in the democratic world,” and in which many people have assumed their disappearance from the American scene. Klehr’s message is: They’re still out there.

For example: It will come as a surprise to many readers to learn that “the FBI . . . estimated that [Communist Party] membership was around 4,200 in 1975. Party sources told a reporter from one radical publication in 1983 that membership was at its highest level in years—ten thousand.” Much of this growth was the direct result of an Extraordinary Party Conference held in 1982 (and deliberately modeled on a similar conference held in 1933), in the aftermath of which a thousand new members were recruited. Moreover, “In the last decade the CPUSA has made modest strides in the labor movement. One of its longtime front organizations, the Labor Research Association, has played a key role in this emergence. . . . the LRA has been able in recent years to attract leading trade unionists to its dinners and conferences”—e.g., the banquet it held in December 1982 to honor the Congressional Black Caucus, which was attended by eight hundred people including six congressmen, six New York State legislators, and three city-council members, and at which thirty unions were represented. On the foreign-policy side, the United States Peace Council (founded in 1978 as the American branch of the World Peace Council, “one of the largest and most active of Soviet front groups”) has been at work, most notoriously on behalf of the nuclear-freeze movement. The WPC itself is composed of Communists and non-Communists, and has made places for several Americans on its international directorates; the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is a President of Honor.