Cold War Era and Communism

Re Perspectives on the Cold War, Commentary, Nov. 9: I was not surprised to encounter Ronald Radosh weighing in from the right to rehabilitate the Red scare of the 1950s as a virtuous campaign against domestic radicals smuggling in a Soviet threat in their red underclothes. But Nelson Lichtenstein’s lukewarm defense of Cold War-era liberals was hardly a counterpoint.

It is true, as Lichtenstein notes, that 1950s liberal intellectuals distanced themselves from radicals, fellow travelers and avowed communists. But this came out of cowardice, not patriotism. Radical labor leaders--communists among them--won the eight-hour day, the end of child labor and the massive industrial organizing drives of the 1930s. By contrast, the liberal leaders who isolated and purged them in the years following World War II won large-scale but fragile arrangements with big business and government that crumbled when corporations tired of them.

I fear conservative ideologues ranting about Soviet spies much less than liberal apologists for the Red-baiting of radical leaders.

JOSH KAMENSKY

Los Angeles

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At the beginning of his article, Radosh rightly condemns Sen. Joseph McCarthy for “recklessly mix[ing] the innocent with the guilty.” Four paragraphs later we find the following contorted locution: “The movement the Hollywood left was part of was not composed of simple, well-meaning, anti-fascist idealists.” In other words, they are guilty by association. Like McCarthy, he has a list of “hundreds” of spies, which consists of four names and 995 blank spaces, into which you can place any Reds your heart desires.

The question of why some of the best and most altruistic people in the country lost faith in American democracy and embraced communism is one of the thornier ones of our history. Radosh has a simple answer: Make membership in the Communist Party the test of an individual’s virtue. Like most simple answers, it begs the question.

ROBERT FIORE

Los Angeles