'I'm going over to West Philly,' I'd announce. Mom didn't protest, but her look nailed me. She knew who lived in West Philly and always sensed when the Party was involved. 'Have you finished your homework? Your chores? When will you be home?' When I left for West Philly there was no 'Have a good time,' to break the tension, and I was happy to escape.
Now in our mid and late teens, my crowd had been vigorously courted and recruited by an intense Communist Party organizer in his late 20s. He led study groups which became 'educationals.' Manny had the brilliant mind and the patient throroughness of a good teacher, as well as a reserved demeanor, stony expression, glasses and blond crew cut of a bureaucrat or a square. Mom got Manny's number during his first visit. A quick survey of the literature spread over our diningroom table was all she needed to ban him from our house forever.
'We DO listen to other points of view, Mom,' I protested, but she knew better and turned her face away. After decades of loyal commitment, she, Pop, and Grandma had recently quit in disgust in 1956 when Kruschev exposed Stalin's crimes. Manny never set foot in our house again. Nor did Polly, his wife who, with a generous, easy smile, was firmly second in authority and no slouch in the Theory Department. In their late 20s and still considered 'youth' by the Party, they gave us lots of attention, guided our political education and helped us assume our political responsibilities.
And we ate it up, many of us having been born into high-minded, mostly Jewish families, schooled in social justice and readied for political action by Yiddish activist culture. Week after week, Manny laid out the convincing logic of Marxism, reasoning us through resistance and doubts. Yes, he explained, there had been lapses in the past. The Party hadn't known how bad Stalin really was. At fault was the 'Cult of the Individual,' a condition, he assured us, never to be repeated. No single person would ever have so much concentrated power again. The Party had learned from its mistakes and had corrected them. For example, The Worker newspaper condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and was now questioning USSR policies, unthinkable in my parents' day.
They didn't believe that Party leadership could change, but my comrades and I did. Eager to forgive, and with no experience to forget, we trusted that past failures were best put behind us. A newly inspired and revived Party, we believed, could withstand free discussion within the 'Monolithic Unity' of its 'Democratic Centralist' structure which, I came to realize, meant that we could discuss all we wanted, but Party word was law.
The FBI reported that on, 'June 3, 1956, (blacked out) advised that (I) was absent from school on Monday, February 12, 1956. An excuse signed by her mother, MARTHA DOBKIN, dated February 14, 1956, states, 'Alix was away for the week end and did not get home until last night and so was not able to come to school yesterday'.'
The weekend in question was spent at one in a series of weekend 'intensives' in rustic Brown's Mills. Manny and Polly had access to a family cabin where we camped and studied Marxism. About a dozen of us shared cooking and housekeeping, and together we studied 'Dialectical Materialism,' 'Structure and Superstructure,' 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,' and the like. I brought my guitar for evenings when we raised our voices in working-class hymns, invoking peace and justice in the world, and the brotherhood of man.
International Publishers provided writing by W.E.B. DuBois and William Z. Foster explaining theory and history. We questioned each other, 'Are you a Materialist or an Idealist?' a phony question since only one answer was correct. My favorite was the 'form vs. content' debate. Which is more important, the chicken or the egg? The only universal constant is 'change,' explained 'The Dialectics of Change.' It happened 'quantitative to qualitative,' like water slowly accumulating heat until the instant it becomes steam. We learned that each system contains the seeds of its own destruction, even socialism, but especially capitalism.
I heard the term 'male chauvanism' for the first time when Manny applied it to himself while demonstrating the new practice of 'Criticism and Self-criticism' developed by Chinese comrades to reveal and correct personal faults. Later the form was re-configured into 'consciousness raising' by feminists to prove that 'the personal is political.'
XXAlix@aol.com
