From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 15, 10 April 1950, pp. 1 & 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
There is no doubt that ADA is by far the outstanding organized representative of American liberals. Formed at the beginning of 1947 under the leadership of the most prominent “left-of-center” – political personalities and labor leaders, many of them exiles from the New Deal, it started as an attempt to provide a center for those liberals who would have nothing to do with the Stalinist taint. This it did by demonstratively excluding the CPers and CP fellow travelers from its ranks. But this settled only one problem besetting liberalism.
The kernel of this question is: independence from the Fair Deal. The concrete dilemma is: if the ADA is to be independent from the Fair Deal Democrats, by virtue of what program and ideas is it to achieve such independence?
At this third convention, by an insurgent “revolt” from the floor, against the recommendation of the Political Policy Committee, an explicit tie-up with the Fair Deal was voted down and deleted from the statement. The move has important significance, but mainly because it deepens the dilemma, not because it resolves it.
The passage stricken out stated that “for the achievement of liberal purposes, cooperation with the Fair Deal elements of the Democratic Party affords the best opportunity on the national level at this time.” In its place was inserted:
“ADA reaffirms its political and organizational independence. We will continue to work for the nomination and election of candidates for public office of whatever party, when their records are consistent with the principles of ADA.”
At the same time, opposition to the organization of a third party “as injurious to liberal purposes” was also voted. The center of liberalism is standing foursquare on the moldy policy annunciated by the AFL and Samuel Gompers, way back, of “reward your friends and punish your enemies.”
Right or wrong, that could be a stable policy for a long time for trade unions, which have a reason for existence of their own, apart from political activities. For ADA, it means: continuation of crisis. The verbal declaration of independence testifies only to the desire of the lower and secondary ranks for an independent road. At the same time, under the spell of the “practical politics” arguments of big names, they reject the only possible form it can take: alliance with the labor movement to build the U.S. equivalent of the British Labor Party – a party independent of the pro-business parties, both Democratic and Republican, and squarely based on labor, which is the only vitalizing force inside the ADA itself and the only progressive social force in the country.
That there is no exit from this blind alley is testified to by the fact that none was even suggested. One of the mouthpieces of the more-left-of-center wing of the ADA is the New Leader (any idea that this is some kind of socialist publication finds little verification in its columns but it is very much of a left-ADA fellow traveler). Just previous to the convention a very revealing article in this weekly posed the problem sharply, written by Daniel James.
He continues:
“ADA’s position vis-à-vis its ‘parliamentary fraction’ is downright tragic. Its legislators have all but deserted the organization because, as officeholders, they find it expedient to work through regular [Democratic] party channels where the ADA label is an ‘embarrassment.’ ... While ADA was in large part responsible for the great liberal victories of 1948–49, this year it is not welcome in a number of capitols, state and national, by its own kind ...
“Within ADA chapters each Democratic victory raises anew the question: Why not join and work within the party, where one can be most effective? ... In practice, in states where ADA is stpong its members are a power in the Democratic organization, and ADA is rendered superfluous; in areas where the ADA is weak, it is ignored, or it is infiltrated and used by the regular Democrats. New York, where the Liberal Party provides a counterweight to Democratic magnetism, is an exception.”
A bewildering situation for the liberals: every success is a setback! And most of them do not even know that the situation is age-old in political history for attempts like the ADA’s – and that the “way out” on that basis has never been found, because it does not exist.
This is the organizational form which the dilemma takes. But with painful obviousness it is not at bottom an organizational question – separate party or not. It is programmatic.
The same convention which, in its majority, was so anxious to declare its independence of the Fair Deal also sprained its back lining up with the Truman administration on virtually every important question.
The question of the cold war, war and peace, is no doubt the most overshadowing one, but the ADA convention’s actions on this point, miserable as they were, were from one standpoint not the most revealing. Because one can see how, from the pro-capitalist liberal’s angle, that is the most difficult one for him to orient himself on, the one which most squarely poses the question of fundamental program. The liberal record on imperialist wars and imperialist diplomacy has always been one of liberalism’s shadiest aspects.
But civil liberties? democracy in the concrete, not in platform oratory? This has traditionally been the strongest contribution of liberalism to the forces of progress, given its over-all limitations.
The country is in the midst of an unparalleled kind of witchhunt, unparalleled in its insidiousness and unparalleled in its methods. If it were the gross Palmer raids of the ’20s, the liberals would rise on their haunches and squawk. It is not. It takes the form of the Truman-sponsored loyalty purge outside the law, reaching into every department of American life – and only ineptly aped by such operators as Senator McCarthy. And make no mistake about it, the liberals in their numbers are uneasy.
Uneasiness about the loyalty purge is translated only into a recommendation for a non-partisan commission to investigate the operation of the purge program – to be appointed by the very president who is responsible for it! No “excesses” are to be allowed – Truman is as opposed to “excesses” as the next man, what ever those may be interpreted to be – no “excesses,” let the purge go on as planned. Forthrightness and vigor on this question are reserved for a denunciation of the drive “by individual Republicans in the House and Senate” – McCarthy and his friends – who, of course, are gunning for Truman and the Fair Deal more than they are for “subversives.”
On the cold war, columnist I.F. Stone of the N.Y. Compass has done a journalistic service in revealing facts about the ADA stand which are much more instructive than what is in its resolutions. This is: what is not in its resolutions, or rather what was specifically rejected from its resolutions – amendments proposed not by unknown rank and filers but by its Washington, D.C., chapter and its own headquarters staff.
“We condemn those who would use ERP as a means of preventing necessary social change.”
An amendment by the headquarters staff to “condemn the policy by which Military Government, catering to a minority of European reactionaries, has sought to bring an unreal ‘free enterprise’ to Germany at the cost of alienating democratic groups all over Europe.”
Most ADAers would probably say they are for capitalism, a reformed capitalism, but not for “free enterprise” especially “as interpreted by the violent free-enterprise shouters.” The distinction has a meaning in some concrete issues (“small change”), but, faced with the big overwhelming problems of revamping German capitalism, it falls flat on its face.
At the end of a rope? How can one say that when for the first time liberalism is organized and politically influential? Yet both are true. The paradox can be put alongside two others: growing unemployment in the midst of “prosperity,” and the most insidious kind of witchhunt from the “left” capialists of the Fair Deal. It is no more paradoxical to see liberalism at its height of bewilderment on every question – even civil liberties – at an apogee of apparent weightiness in society.
In convention assembled the liberals could not figure it out. They never will – and remain liberals. We are witnessing a society in decay. It will be reborn under socialist democracy or rot down to its stumps in a monstrosity not a whit preferable to the Stalinist monster which the liberals fear more than they believe even in their own liberalism.
Last updated on 7 January 2024