Committee on UnAmerican Activities and Trotsky

[The Author]

Exchange of Cables between J.B. Matthews, Chief Investigator of the House Special Committee on Unamerican Activities in Washington, DC and Leon Trotsky in Mexico City, October 12, 1939. On October 12, 1939, the chief investigator of the Dies Committee in Washington, DC extended an invitation to Leon Trotsky to give testimony before HUAC in Austin, Texas, “a city designed with a view to your personal convenience.”


http://www.marxists.org/admin/new-archives/2006-july.htm

The letter in question is here,

http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/govern...ews-trotsky.pdf (http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/government/ushouse/1939/1012-matthews-trotsky.pdf)

Thoughts?

[Louis Pio]

What thoughts???? Trotsky appearing before the Dewey commission? Gotta use all the tools u got in a situation like that.

[The Author]

The Dies Committee is not the same organization as the Dewey Commission.

From wikipedia,


The House Committee on Un-American Activities grew from a special investigating committee established in May 1938, chaired by Martin Dies and co-chaired by Samuel Dickstein, himself named in the Venona project as a Soviet agent. In pre-war years and during World War II it was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity. As to investigations into the activities of the "Klan," the Committee actually did little. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member John E. Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution." Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project.

The Dies Committee also carried out a brief investigation into the wartime internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The investigation primarily concerned security at the camps, youth gangs alledgedly operating in the camps, food supply questions, and releases of internees. With the exception of Rep. Eberharter the members of the committee seemed to support internment.

In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to answer the charge that the project was overrun with communists. Flanagan was called to testify for only a part of one day, while a clerk from the project was called in for two entire days. It was during this investigation that one of the committee members famously asked Flanagan whether the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was a member of the Communist Party.

In 1939 the committee investigated leaders of the American Youth Congress, a Comintern affiliate organization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-Amer...ities_Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee)


And for those who don't know, the House Un-American Activities Committee was the precursor to Joseph McCarthy and the "Red Scare" and "blacklists" of the 1950s in the US.

What I would like to know is, what is a "revolutionary" doing trying to collaborate with a U.S. government agency that was well-known for going after other communists and leftists?

[Louis Pio]

Would have done the same, you can always use the bourgios for political purposes in a situation like that. Don't compromise people but get the politics out. The only reason I could see for not doing it is if your suffer from some strange "principilism" on the question.

[The Author]

There are better ways to advance your political position to the masses than through a government agency that goes after leftists.

I mean, since when does helping the "Inquisition" help to serve the working class? I'd really like to know.

EDIT: And my earlier question on why Trotsky was trying to collaborate information with a U.S. government agency to expose other leftists has still not been answered.

[Alleline]

The letter says is that he's invited to answer accusations brought against him by Foster and Browder. There's nothing that would indicate him trying to expose American communists (what damning information could he have given, anyway?).

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] Aug 12 2006, 04:10 PM
There's nothing that would indicate him trying to expose American communists (what damning information could he have given, anyway?).


The committee desires to have a complete record on the history of Stalinism

Also, this website offers a very interesting comment,

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/5820


The McCarthy committee of the 50s was known as the Dies committee in the 30s, and in 1939 held public hearings on “Communism and Fascism in the USA”. When it invited Trotsky to give testimony, he immediately accepted the invitation, to the chagrin of some of his American comrades, concerned at the bad odour which surrounded the Dies committee on the left and among liberals.

There can be no doubt that Trotsky intended to use this high-profile committee as a platform for his politics in general. Equally there can be no doubt that one of the things Trotsky intended to do there was expose the machinations of the GPU in the CPUSA and through the CP, in American society.

In principle Trotsky saw nothing wrong with using such bourgeois-democratic state agencies as the Dies committee in the unequal struggle which the Trotskyists and others (for example, anarchists) had to wage against the GPU and the GPU-ised CPs.

This is not a matter that can be misunderstood. Trotsky wrote many articles between 1937 and his death in August 1940 to expose the GPU. The last article he finished (17 August 1940) was The Comintern And The GPU, a long study in which, among other things, he tried publicly to identify the GPU representatives in the leadership of the CP USA. He named what names he had.

Now, then. If the Trotskyites were so interested in building support and trying to lead a revolutionary organization against their "enemies," they could have called upon the masses to expose what they termed "Stalinism," and not rely on the channels of the U.S. government. Ditto for the Anarchists. To use a bourgeois government organization that had been formed to go after anyone who attacked the bourgeois state of the US government, just to advance your own personal position is to betray the principles of revolution. Lenin and the true Bolsheviks never went to the Czarist secret police to eliminate the Mensheviks, they used popular support, the working class.

[Louis Pio]

Hmm you seem extremely desperate, I mean you post a couple of links and then you think it's proof of some "grand scheme" of yours. Pardon me but let's discuss politics instead of childish crap.

And seriously your last paragraph is just extremely stupid, as you might as well know (at least I hope so) the one thing don't exclude the other.

[Severian]

To complete the factual record: the Dies Committee revoked Trotsky's invitation.

In other words, they realized his appearance would serve his goals....and not theirs.

Trotsky's later comment on this: "But the average worker, not infected with the prejudices of -the labor aristocracy, would joyfully welcome every bold revolutionary word thrown in the very face of the class enemy. And the more reactionary the institution which serves as the arena for the combat, all the more complete is the satisfaction of the worker. This has been proved by historical experience. Dies himself, becoming frightened and jumping back in time, demonstrated how false your position was. It is always better to compel the enemy to retreat than to hide oneself without a battle."
link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1942-dm/ch03.htm)

[The Author]

...in December [1939] Rivera and Trotsky both offered to testify before the U.S. Congress's Dies Committee on Un-American Activities, arguing that the policy of the Mexican Communist Party was hostile to Mexico and therefore to the interests of the American continent.

From Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, by Patrick Marnham, page 288.


In 1939, after the murder of his son, Trotsky took every opportunity to reveal what he knew about Stalin's dictatorship and the role of the NKVD in murders abroad and to answer Stalinist charges. One opportunity came for a major propaganda opening. The House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, or the Dies Committee (named for its chairman, Martin Dies), invited Trotsky to testify. He received a call from the committee's research director, J.B. Matthews, and then a telegram asking him to come to the United States for the hearing.

From The Venona Secrets: Exposing America's Cold War Traitors, by Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel, page 335.


Originally posted by [email protected] Aug 13 2006, 02:28 AM
And seriously your last paragraph is just extremely stupid

"Stupid" in what way? I think I raise a very good point. Why should working-class organizations side with the bourgeois police apparatus in attacking what they deem "counterrevolutionaries"? And by the way, Trotsky's comments are to be taken with a grain of salt as he was an intellectual phrase-mongerer, as history had shown, who was out of touch with the masses he claimed to represent. Because clearly, if Trotsky were to appear before the Committee, the working class wouldn't welcome his "bold revolutionary words," they would see this move as an act of treachery, treachery for trying to assist the very agency revolutionaries have done their hardest to fight.

[Louis Pio]

Of course it's stupid. How was he siding with the bourgious police apparatus? Following your logic it would be siding with the bourgios every time any leftwing person uses the media to get the politics out. And for Trotsky at that time the communist parties were closed because of the ernoumous slander campaign. And the reformist parties also since their leadership saw him for what he was - a revolutionary marxist internationalist. So using what he could was the correct approach.
But well let's be pure in our ivory tower, that will certainly help alot...

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2006, 11:25 AM
From Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, by Patrick Marnham, page 288.
.....
From The Venona Secrets: Exposing America's Cold War Traitors, by Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel, page 335.
If this wasn't a complete misrepresentation of Trotsky's politics, you could quote Trotsky, rather than these hatchet jobs by his political opponents.

If he was, in fact, siding with the bourgeois police apparatus...where did he endorse its repression of Stalinists? If he was a snitch, which Stalinists did he snitch out?

You can't give any examples, because there weren't any.

He opposed the Dies Committee and other bourgeois repression. He offered to appear before it in order to spit in its face, as he explains in the paragraph I just quoted.

In contrast, the Stalinists did support bourgeois repression of Trotskyists. For example, when the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party were prosecuted under the Smith Act for "advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence", the Communist Party USA supported the prosecution.

A few years later, of course, the CPUSA leaders were prosecuted under the Smith Act. The Socialist Workers Party vocally opposed this proseuction.

[Poum_1936]

Lenin and the true Bolsheviks never went to the Czarist secret police to eliminate the Mensheviks

Awful comparison.

The Bolsheviks and Menesheviks were not at each others throats, well, not physicaly. While Stalin & Co. were well known for their physical use to silence any Trotskyist and any opposition in general.