JEWISH CURRENTS--A History

by David Hacker

If I were to write a headline describing the 40 years of Jewish Currents, it would be the following: "Schappes, Harap, Pevzner and Platt, Moses like, lead a mass movement away from the bondage of Stalinism and isolation from the Jewish community to the promise land of democratic socialism and integration into the mainstream of organized Jewish life as its loyal, if critical, Left wing."

It is the ideological history of Jewish Currents/Jewish Life which makes our publication unique and controversial. So while I could highlight the magazine's treatment of the struggle for the rights of Black people and Black/Jewish relations, annual commemoration issue on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Israel, Yiddish and secular Jewish culture, etc., overriding and influencing the coverage of these topics in the magazine are two main factors. First is the political background of the Jewish Life/Jewish Currents, beginning as a publication loyal to the Communist Party USA and a devoted follower of the Soviet Union, especially emphasizing the believed healthy state of the Jews in the USSR. Second is how the publication changed over the years since 1956 - too fast for some -- too slow for others, into a clearly democratic socialist publication and advocate of Jewish survival.

Today, as I will explain at the conclusion of my report, some young Jewish Leftists, not associated with the CPUSA or sectarian Marxist-Leninist groups, complain that Jewish Currents is too moderate on Israel and it its socialism, and paraphrasing George Wallace they say "There is not a dime's worth of difference between the editorial and political views of Jewish Currents, and that of Irving Howe's Dissent magazine." These critics are correct concerning the public policy positions in Jewish Currents and Dissent. They are both in agreement about 95% of the time since the late 1970s. The same can also be said of Dissent and the Morning Freiheit, with the same criticisms from some Jewish activists. (Let me state before I go on that I do not share this criticism and I believe that the situation in Israel would be much improved if the editorial board of Jewish Currents was the Israeli Cabinet, with Morris as Prime Minister.)

I mention the Morning Freiheit, because the history of Jewish Currents cannot be separated from that of its parent publication. Together, they made the same errors and made the same changes in overcoming their errors. But the important thing is not merely the evolution of these 2 publications. It is the fact that they brought with them the progressive institutions of the Jewish Left which had close ties to the CPUSA: Jewish Cultural Clubs, Emma Lazarus Federation, YKUF Clubs and Reading circles, Progressive Jewish schools, Jewish Music Alliance, Reuben Brainin Clinic Committee, Yiddishe Kultur, Zamlungen and their mass following of many thousands to democratic socialism. While there are still leaders of some of these groups that are close to the CP (I read their greetings in Jewish Affairs.), in the main, this is an achievement that should be celebrated by everyone on the democratic Left. But unfortunately, it is an achievement which has not yet been widely recognized on the democratic or anti-Stalinist Left, although the situation is much improved since the formation of the Democratic Socialists of America from the mergers of DSOC and NAM, with many prominent former Communists becoming members of DSA..

The reason why I mention Jewish Currents in relations to Dissent and Irving Howe is that as Morris pointed out in his critical analyses of Howe's The World of Our Fathers, he "has become unwilling or incapable to recognize and chart the great changes in the Left [the Jewish institutions that were pro CP) in the past 20 years." Here I shall attempt not only to chart that change, but also to explain the reaction of people, like Howe, on the anti-Stalinist Left (which itself is divided from right to left) to these changes, and why they may have been overlooked.

The history of Jewish Life was covered in a Masters Thesis by Edward S. Goldstein. Here I want to relate some brief observations concerning the first 9 and a half years of our publication, which I compare to a tragedy worthy of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus. The editors of Jewish Life were the tragic heroes, who in each issue from November, 1946 thru April 1956 took positions which rationalized a brutal regime and community, all in the cause of building a new socialist society. During those years, this magazine would change its opinion in conformity with the current CPUSA line and Soviet Communist Party position on an issue, sometimes directly contradicting a policy enunciation in a previous edition of Jewish Life.
For the first 2 and a half years of Jewish Life, I would argue that the publication would have appealed to many politically liberal Jews, outside the CPUSA, who were strongly pro-Roosevelt and continue to share after World War II, warm feelings toward the USSR for its role in the war against Nazism and its then current support for the Jews in Palestine. Much of this friendly feeling was due, to the "vibrant Jewish life in the USSR" which still existed after the Second World War. Thus Paul Novick, in the December 1947 issue, describes this life, with the prediction that "these activities are on the upgrade on the evidence of my own eyes and on what I knew about the plans of various cultural institutions, the Jewish theaters, publishing houses, writer's groups, children schools, etc. I also knew about the plans for intensified building of Birobidjan." He also wrote in this article that "there is intensified national consciousness among Soviet Jews." Only a small number seek to assimilate into the general society and lose their Jewish cultural identity. In the same issue, an article by Samuel Barron, "Aspects of progressive American Jewish Culture," asserted that the holocaust made progressive Jews aware "to the fact that we are a people whose right to exist as individuals, is predicated upon our right to exist as a people." In the article, he maintained that only by "expressing progressive content in Jewish form," will "Jews as a people really achieve survival, or contribute to general democratic advance.

The important point here is that Jewish Life in its first 2 and a half years did support Jewish survival, Jewish self-determination in Palestine, first advocating a bi-national state, then supporting the UN vote for partition in November, 1947, and even its backing of the USSR did not separate the magazine from the views of most American Jews In 1948, Soviet backing for a Jewish state in Palestine helped a congressional candidate like Leo Isacson win a special election to the House running as a supporter of Henry Wallace on the American Labor Party ticket in an ethnically 55% Jewish Congressional district in the Bronx. And most of the Jewish supporters of Isacson were not members of the CPUSA.

 The Party Line

However, Jewish Life took these positions only because they were in accord with the current line of the CPUSA and CPSU. When that position drastically changed, first with the famous Pravda article on Israel, Zionism and Soviet Jewry by Ilya Ehrenberg in September of 1948, the dissolving of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in November of that year, and the attack in the Soviet press on January 28, 1949, against so-called "cosmopolitanism," Jewish Life went right along with it. What was said in the Novick and Barron articles were forgotten. Jews in the USSR were simply undergoing natural assimilation into Soviet life and did not any longer need specific Jewish institutions. And the term Jewish survival, in regard to American Jewry, was no longer to be used, according to the new Communist line.

Therefore, in the late forties and early fifties, while the anti-Semitic campaign in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe heated up, we said that it was a myth and Cold War lies. To compound our tragedy, we didn't merely give a passive defense of an event such as the Prague trials of 1952. We devoted much of the January 1953 issue to the long article "The Truth About the Prague Trial" by Louis Harap, reprinted it in pamphlet form announcing "help spread the truth," and Morris, Louis and Sam Pevzner also spoke at a public Jewish Life forum on December 22, 1952, at Webster Hall defending the trials. This inturn provoked a critical column by Murray Kempton, which in turn was then attacked in our magazine.

Our defense of all these events were in jackhammer style: "This is a fact..." "We have shown," etc. All this cumulating to the now infamous April 1953 obituary article by Louis Harap, "Stalin and the Jewish People," which concluded, "as the years pass, the stature of Stalin as one of the Great men of the century will emerge ever more clearly, and his leadership in the liberation of peoples, including the Jewish people from centuries of oppression will take on greater clarity."

ISOLATION AND BLINDNESS

These positions obviously isolated the magazine from the American Jewish community. But we were blind. When Louis Harap testified defiantly before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in June 19, 1953, we were proud of his "resistance to the pro-fascists;" particularly his comment before the Committee that "the fact of the matter is that in the Soviet Union the Jews have a higher degree of freedom and equality then they have, I think, in any other part of the world, and this is a matter of recorded fact." But the real fact was that this testimony outraged American Jewry, for they knew what had really been happening in the USSR. We would attack, quite rightly in most cases, Jewish leaders who worked with HUAC and other investigating agencies against Communism as "playing the editors of Jewish Life who were called the Judenrat for Stalin and the USSR's persecution of Soviet Jews.

Our campaign against McCarthyism and defense of the Rosenbergs suffered drastically not only for the above reasons, but for our less than 100 percent civil liberty position in the U.S. We denounced everyone on the non Communist Left who was critical of the Soviet Union. We denounced not only right wing socialists in the Jewish Labor Committee and the Forward, but also left-wing anti-Stalinists, most notably Trotskyists. In July 1947, Louis Harap wrote "X-Ray on Commentary" charging the American Jewish Committee had allowed Trotskyite elements to take over the magazine. Now, Jewish Life had a tendency of calling every anti-Stalinist Leftist, a Trotskyite, even such a non-Trotskyist organization as the Workers Defense League. And Harap named names in this article, including Irving Howe among his list of the guilty.

The magazine's attitude on this issue was best editorially expressed in the August 1947 issue, headlined "Role of Trotskyites." I shall write this editorial in full because its content explains why democratic Leftists held for a long time a great hostility to our magazine. Also transfer the word "Trotskyites" for "Communists," and tell me what this article sounds like:

"In the July issue of Jewish Life we printed what we consider one of the most important articles in our short life, 'Ex-Ray on Commentary' by Louis Harap. It's importance lies in the fact that it exposes a most dangerous development in Jewish Life. The article reveals how Trotskyism has penetrated into the press that purports to speak for the Jewish people. The virtue of the article rests in the fact that it not only exhibits the Trotskyite influence on Commentary, but in the American Jewish Committee which fathered the periodical. In previous articles in Jewish Life, we had already shown a similar Trotskyite penetration in such organizations as the National Council of Jewish Women and to the Anti Defamation League.

"The essence of Mr. Harap's finding is that a holy alliance has formed between Jewish reaction and the Trotskyites that complements the alliances between reaction generally and the pro-Fascist section of reaction at that -- and the Trotskyites for the destruction of democracy, for the subversion of peace and for the establishment of fascist terrorist dictatorship.

"This is no new adventure for the Trotskyites. Their service to the German fascists and Japanese militarist has long been established. The Moscow trials were only the public exposure. Even Dan Tobin's Teamster's union journal, The International Teamster has on several occasions has had to expose their anti-union and anti-labor role. The government had to put eighteen of them away in prison during the war for sabotage and treason. And they are constantly teaming up with the Hearsts, with the Un-American Committee and other pro-fascists individuals and outfits in a joint attack against American democracy.

"What is the program of the Trotskyites? Their overpowering urge is the destruction of the Soviet Union; the defeat of socialism. To achieve this they will stop at nothing. And to achieve this, they have turned to the only forces who stood to gain from it, the fascists, the imperialists, the monopolists, the most anti-Semitic forces in our country. The Trotskyites are today not part of the Labor movement They are not 'leftists,' or 'sectarians,' or 'left-sectarians.' To call them that is to credit them, no matter how tenuously with some connection to the labor movement. But their very role contradicts any such connection. A stool pigeon, a police spy, a finger man, a provocateur, an enemy agent is not a member of the working class, And these are the precise functions of Trotskyites.

"We must emphasize the menace to the Jewish people in the penetration of these elements into important Jewish organization and periodicals. Their function is to weaken, split and divert. Their purpose is to enervate the militant forces in defense of the Jewish people and of democracy. They are the advance guard of reaction. They must be destroyed."

Now, imagine how someone like Irving Howe would have reacted to such the editorial. It not only defended the Smith Act when it was used against the Trotskyists, but its conclusion seems to imply that people such as Howe are fair game to be eliminated from life as they would be in the Soviet Union. The anti-Stalinist Left (including the Workmen's Circle) remembered articles like this for a long time and the memory did not diminish even after Jewish Currents made substantial change in its editorial policy. It should be noted that the anti-Stalinist Left replied in kind to Stalinist editorials such as the one quoted. In 1949, Max Shachtman wrote in the New International, the article, "A Left Wing of the Labor Movement?" concluding, "None of the old designations - 'right,' 'left,' 'centrist' -- applies to Stalinism. Stalinism is a phenomenon sui generis, unique and without precedent in the working class...Stalinism is a reactionary, totalitarian, anti-bourgeois and anti-proletarian current IN the labor movement but not OF the labor movement. Stalinism is the most virulent poison that has ever coursed through the veins of the working class and its movement. The work of eliminating it makes the first claim on the attention of every militant."

IMPACT OF KHRUSHCHEV'S SECRET SPEECH

So in 1956, with the revelation of Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes and the appearance of the Polish Yiddish newspaper Folk-Shtimme carrying the statement, "Our Pain and Our Consolation," revealing from official Communist source the destruction of the Jewish writers and institutions in the USSR from 1948-1953, the entire world view of our magazine was shown to be false. The magazine and its editors lie discredited with many of its readers.

Now the tragic hero/heroine of the ancient Greek dramas would finally awaken -- near the end of each play -- to the realization of the true nature of the on going "forces" which had been plaguing him/her or his/her country. He/she would then attempt to turn back those forces. But in the end his/her awakening was too late and he/she was overwhelmed by theses forces thereby creating the hero/heroine's tragedy.

It appeared that Jewish Life was following such a path. The Khrushchev report and the Polish article opened the editors eyes. And they officially apologist "for having failed them" in not perceiving the crimes against Jewish culture and cultural leaders under Stalin and the anti-Semitism in the Prague trial. Letters to the editor, starting with the June 1956 issue, was for the first time open to a frank discussion of the Soviet Jewish issue. From that time on, the letters section continued to be an open forum containing views both pro and con concerning the contents of the magazine. During this period a public forum with readers was also held.

But it seemed that it was too late. The magazine lost 3/4 of its readers dropping the figure around 1,800. It looked like the magazine had no choice but to fold, thereby bringing it to a tragic conclusion.

However, Morris U. Schappes said no. Why? In his Dinner speech, in 1977, he said, "To me it seemed we had to strive to undo as much as possible of the evil we had wrought and to help restore the good that we had mistakenly believed had continued long after it had been undermined. Therefore it was necessary to continue publishing, but with a new independent, self critical approach." The editorial board was reorganized with Morris becoming full time editor. He resolved that the magazine would "pursue a course of independence of any outside control, making our own policy and, if necessary, our own mistakes, but not repeating old mistakes by aping others."

But would this approach be supported? A conference of representatives of progressive Jewish organizations said yes, and formed a Management Committee to sustain and promote the magazine within the progressive Jewish movement, with the Editorial Board in full control of editorial policy. Morris began as editor on November 19, 1957. And in Jan. 1958, "under new management' Jewish Currents was "born again." This time explicitly committee to Jewish survival and opposing anti-Semitism wherever it occurs, including the Soviet Union.
Now for some hard-liners, the change went too far. Already, in a letter in the March 1958 issue, a certain L.B. accuses Jewish Currents of becoming anti-socialist and Morris particularly of having views "permeated with anti-socialist and anti-Soviet ideas," and continuing on a course of "steady degeneration into a rabid red-baiter and apologist for imperialism." Again this was in March 1958!

But to anyone not within the progressive Jewish movement, Jewish Currents didn't seem to be much different from Jewish Life. The main change accursed after the May, 1956 issue. The difference in Jewish Currents was merely a change in the name of the publication and a switch in the editorial board. From just reading the magazine, one wouldn't have known the full dimensions of the new format, Second, the magazine did not officially break with the CP. Rather to the democratic Left, except for some dissension on the revival of Jewish cultural institutions in the USSR, until 1967, the magazine continued to follow a pro Soviet course, supporting Soviet foreign policy positions, seeing the world as being divided into an anti-imperialist camp lead by the USSR vs. the imperialist camp led by the U.S.
For example, no one reading the magazine would have realized that a big faction fight was occurring in the CP in 1956-1957, between William Z. Foster, the old lined Stalinist, Eugene Dennis, in the middle, and John Gates, editor of the Daily Worker and Steve Nelson. The Gates-Nelson faction were moving toward a critical stand on the USSR and toward a democratic socialist position. The anti-Stalinist Left was profoundly interested in the outcome of this battle as illustrated by the H.W. Benson pamphlet, The Communist Party at the Crossroads: Toward Democratic Socialism
or Back to Stalinism. Benson maintained that if the Party moved toward democratic socialism, "it can make a notable contribution toward the rebirth of genuine socialism in the United States; it can move together with socialists everywhere and spur the movement on."

Now where did the editors of Jewish Life/Jewish Currents stand in this fight? And after the Gates faction lost and left the CP, Jewish Currents, it appeared to the outside world, stayed with the CP and the Foster and later Gus Hall leadership.

But here is the paradox that an honest historian has to consider. An open break with the CP in 1957-8, would have destroyed our publication's chance of survival at the time. Individuals, such as Gates and Joe Clark, can leave the CP and slowly rebuild their political reputation. But where would Jewish Currents's reading public be found if they openly broke with the CP? Would the three-fourth of readers who had left have resubscribed? As individuals, Schappes, Harap and Pevsner, like Joe Clark, could have been invited to write for publications such as Dissent, in order to slowly rehabilitate their reputations. But who, in the non-Communist Left would listen to them as editors having been so wrong over the years concerning the saturation in the USSR? Would the progressive Jewish institutions as a bloc, have followed them out of the Party in 1957-58?

Therefore, even if the editors had wanted to make an open break with the Party (which I don't think at the time they did), there appeared to be too many obstacles to overcome for the publications to survive without the backing of those institutions around the CPUSA.

Paradoxically, then, Jewish Currents pursued a course of remaining close enough to the CPUSA, in order to ensure the support of those progressive Jewish institutions and their membership who stayed in and around the CPUSA, yet being independent enough from the CP in order to attract new readers who were never involved in the CP. It seemed that these atheist Jews were trying to form a miracle. But it worked.

GROWING ACCEPTANCE

In the next 10 years, 1958-1967, Jewish Currents gradually became accepted by some of organized Jewry, even while we were still being held at arms length by the democratic Left. The two articles from those years which helped rebuild Morris's reputation as a Jewish scholar and critic, "Shylock and Anti-Semitism," and "The Strange World of Hannah Arendt." Other articles that drew attention to Jewish Currents in the general Jewish community was Charles R. Allen Jr. "Nazi War Criminals Among U;" the debate with Raul Hilberg concerning "Jews Tradition and Resistance;" and the many articles concerning Jewish participation in the Civil Rights movement. Rabbi Paul H. Levenson wrote for us the article, "The Image of the Jew in Negro Community." And Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis wrote a letter giving critical support to the publication, noting its changes over the years, but wondered why Jewish Currents was still devoted to the Soviet Union. A sign of Jewish Currents wider acceptance was Morris's participation in the Conference convened in 1964, by the Conference on Jewish Social Studies discussion of "Negro-Jewish Relations in the United States."

However to the democratic Left, members of the Socialist party (all of the contenting factions included), Dissent magazine, and the more leftist anti-Stalinist journal, New Politics, Jewish Currents was still seen as being a Communist publication. It basically supported the foreign policy positions of the Soviet Union. It defined the USSR and the Eastern European states as being Socialist societies. It supported the World Peace Council and the Moscow sponsored World Youth Festivals. The magazine was critical of bias against Israel that occurred various times at the WPC or Youth Festivals, but on other issues, Jewish Currents saw eye to eye with the WPC and WYF. Prominent American Communists such as Simon W. Gerson continued to write for Jewish Currents, although he was identified only as a political journalist and aide to former Manhattan Borough President Stanley M. Isaacs. And Morris, in his diary, attended the CP's May Day rallies and other CP sponsored events. In domestic affairs, Jewish Currents was no longer strident in tone, nor went out of its way to attack ideological opponents. Rather, since 1956, our magazine advocated a policy of realignment of "strengthening those elements in the Democratic Party which are potential parts" of an independent progressive "movements. Labor, the Negro people. liberals of various shades, are basic necessities for such a regrouping. Whether such a new political alignment will ultimately emerge in a new Democratic Party cleansed of its reactionaries and Dixiecrats or in a new third party whose core is the liberal-labor-Negro wing of the present Democratic Party, no one can foretell. the essential thing for those who look forward to a new alignment in our political life is to help consolidate and increase the strength of these forces where they are gathered now, in the Democratic Party." This is exactly the position that in the 1960s and 1970s were advocated by people such as Michael Harrington and Irving Howe. Jewish Currents in domestic affairs, then, was very close to the democratic Left. Foreign policy and attitudes toward the Soviet Union was the factor which continued to set them apart.

JUNE 1967

June 1967 began the decade which brought new dramatic changes to our publication. We and the Morgen Freiheit stood with the rest of American and world Jewry behind Israel in the 6 Day War. In direct opposition to the position of the Soviet Union and the CPUSA. Our editorial in the July-August, 1967 issue began, "Having won a just war, can Israel win a just peace." But the editorial was written in a manner that it seemed to be directed at CP members. Because how did Jewish Currents defend Israel's position? It compared Israel's attack on Egypt with the November 1939 attack on Finland by the Soviet Union. But such a defense of Israel was an outrage to democratic Leftists. Everyone on the Left, outside the CP, saw the Soviet attack on little Finland as outright aggression. By comparing Israel in the 6 Day War to the USSR's war with Finland, was this really a defense of Israel?

However, the sore points in this editorial quickly faded from memory as Jewish Currents continued its critical support of Israel despite the Soviet and CPUSA anti-Israel position. The Middle East question was debated openly in our pages in the letters section and in special readers forums.

There were other issues beside Israel which caused the final irrevocable break with the CP in our third decade. After the 6 Day war, anti-Semitic publications in the guise of anti-Zionism, started appearing regularly in the Soviet Union. We denounced them. The anti-Zionist campaign began in Poland in 1968, which caused most of the 30,000 Jews to emigrate, including many prominent Jewish Communists. We denounced this campaign and covered it in full. We denounced the Soviet intervention into Czechoslovakia. Then there was the New York City School Strike of 1968. We supported decentralization and opposed the strike in our editorials and articles by our expert commentator, Rachel Levy, but we also opposed extremists in the black community, on the other side who were using anti-Semitism in opposition to the UFT. In essence, we opposed extremists on both sides of the dispute.

However, on all the above issues, we were opposed to the official policies of the CPUSA. It seemed that, like the democratic Left, the CP leadership also still considered both Jewish Currents and the Morgn Freiheit to be Communist Party publications. In March of 1969, the National Committee of the CPUSA sent a letter to its clubs attacking Jewish Currents and the Morgn Freiheit as "increasingly abandoning their past, departing from Marxist internationalism," and if not stopped, "will end up in a blind alley of Jewish nationalism. In so doing they are playing into the hands of reaction." We were charged with "obsession with the false issue of black anti-Semitism," supporting Israel's "war of aggression and annexationist policies," and with having "a critical carping attitude toward the Soviet Union, an attitude that leads toward outright anti-Sovietism." And the statement went on to attack our positions on Czechoslovakia and Poland. Therefore, an "open ideological campaign in the ranks of the Party" began against Jewish Currents and the Freiheit.

Our publication and the Freiheit stood its ground. the other progressive Jewish institutions, in the main, stood with us. Yet, we didn't even now openly break with the Party, though Paul Novick was in fact expelled in 1977. Morris's membership was not renewed. Basically, we just went our separate ways. The move toward democratic socialism and integration within the mainstream of organized Jewish life as its Left wing was unstoppable.

We played a very important role after the 6 Day War in reaching out to young Jews of the New Left who were alienated from the general anti-Israel outlook that they found there, We helped such radical Jewish organizations and publications. In Morris's diary, he would give friendly, if critical advice. Ironically, it was because of our open pro-Marxist, and even pro-Leninist positions, that we were able to reach out to many of these young people, whereas Irving Howe and Dissent were looked upon suspiciously by many New Leftists. I consider Jewish Currents to be the parent of an organization such as the New Jewish Agenda. Without Jewish Current, I don't believe there would be such a Jewish Left wing organization today.

Our movement toward an explicitly democratic socialist position can be traced through certain important articles we have published since 1970. "The Jewish Question and the Left - Old and New, Challenge to the New Left" by Morris U. Schappes was an important critique of how the Left looked upon the Jewish question. My only critique of the piece was that it overlooked the contributions of the anti-Stalinist Left on the Jewish issue. A.B. Magil's "Lenin and the Jewish Question," was an anti-Stalinist critique showing the differences between Lenin's policy and the current Soviet position toward Jews.

It was Louis Harap, above all, who rehabilitated himself in the 1970s as a major writer on Stalinism and Zionism. It was Harap, more than anyone else, as editor of Jewish Life, who wrote the most atrocious Stalinist articles in the first 8 years of our publication. Therefore it was his articles in the 70s which rebuild his repudiation as a critical political thinker. And in the process, he has made some new enemies. But this time, we can tell that he is doing a good job by the people who have become his critics.


First there were his many articles, along with Morris and A.B. Magil, on the Israel-Arab situation, too numerous to mention here, and criticisms of bias against Israel in much of the Left. (Though, again, the attitude of the democratic Left on Israel was ignored during the early 70s.) Then in 1974, there was the 5 part series, "The Jewish Bund revisited." Here, Harap, free of the dogmatism of the past, was able to bring a fresh eye to the history of the Bund, making important observations and providing new insights in its conflict with Lenin, for instant. However, when he came to the Bund's socialist or Marxist anti-Communism, he still couldn't adequately deal with it. In effect, Jewish Currents, in the 1970s, held an orthodox Trotskyist position on the Soviet Union and other Communist states. Harap believed that because property was nationalized in the control of the Soviet state, a socialist base existed in the USSR, despite the undemocratic nature of the regime. And this position has been taken by other writer in Jewish Currents. But the Bund, and the democratic socialists since 1940 have responded where the state owns the means of production, the crucial question becomes who owns the state. There is only one way for the people to own the state -- through political democracy and the consequent right to change the policies and personnel of the state. The Soviet bureaucracy was not a caste temporarily ruling in the name of the workers. It was a new class, the first example of a new form of society that was both anti-Capitalist and anti-Socialist.

Only now are such questions being raised in our magazine and the Freiheit. Albert Prago recently wrote a letter wondering if the USSR was a new kind of class society. The fact that such questions are being raised in our ranks, after they were debated on the Left 46 years ago, shows the effect of the isolation of the former Communists around Jewish Currents and the Freiheit from the rest of the Left.

But whatever the differences which still existed, democratic socialist, such as Howe, should have welcomed a friendly dialogue with us, because the magazine had changed and was writing many important articles.

Another major example of this change was Harap's articles on Solzhenitsyn in the editions of November 1974, May 1975 and July/August 1976. Every word in these articles were perfect as Harap separated Solzhenitsyn the political reactionary from the writer's accurate portrayal of the Gulag. Similar to Engel's praise for the French reactionary writer, Balzac, and Lenin's analysis of Tolstoy. Interesting is that Louis cited Soviet dissident Roy A. Medvedev, as a source on the merit of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. Because who wrote the review of the 3 volumes of Gulag in Dissent, Roy A. Medvedev.

Lastly in the third decade was Harap's 3 part series, The Zionist Movement Revisited." After this series, an honest observer would have to conclude that Harap had completely redeemed himself from his Stalinist past.

In our fourth decade, in 1979, we published and reprinted in pamphlet form, 4 major articles on Stalinism. The general analysis of Stalinism by Max Gordon was a very important statement which clearly showed the political changes in Jewish Currents from the past. But I must add that while reading it, I felt that its analysis sounded very familiar. It could really be retitled, "Trotsky's, The Revolution Betrayed Updated." Similar to Trotsky, Gordon saw the Soviet nationalized economy as being socialist. However, other then this reservation, it was a clearly democratic socialist critique of Stalinism.

By 1979, Jewish Currents had completed the transition to democratic socialism. This was illustrated in the Symposium, "Why Socialism," in the July/August 1982 and the January 1983 issues. Many of the people who attend the Editorial Advisory Council meetings responded to the challenge of disillusioned Spanish Civil war veteran, Edward I. Landing concerning the question, "Why Socialism?" Everyone saw socialism and democracy as being interchangeable, and the USSR was seen as being an anti-model. The one Marxist-Leninist hold out, Jack Weinman, was totally out of place with the others and succinctly answered by Itche Goldberg.

1982 was the year we first advertised in the Labor Day issue of Democratic Left, as being an explicitly democratic Left publication. Members of DSOC-DSA started to write for us. And we have since printed greetings from DSA Locals. Ironically, that year, Irving Howe and Dorothy Healey, the former head of the Communist Party in Southern California, appeared together, side by side, in the first DSA recruitment flyer, and are today both Vice-Chairs of the organization.

Today, Jewish Currents, within DSA would stand politically in the center of the organization. Perhaps even Center-Right, which is still to the left of 95% of the rest of the country. In reality, the viewpoints of the anti-Stalinist Left and the Jewish Left coming out of the CPUSA have been, in the main, reconciled. (The anti-Stalinist Leftists, I am referring to here, are those who went with the Michael Harrington faction in the Socialist Party split in 1972, in opposition to the pro Vietnam War majority leadership of the Party, and those activists around the journal, New Politics.) They still might disagree on topics from the past, such as evaluation of a trade union leader such as Ben Gold; what the CIO should have done to the Communists lead unions; etc. But on political strategy for today, they both see eye to eye on working in mainstream organizations such as the Democratic Party and the trade union movement, on coalition politics, and on issues of full employment, disarmament, the Middle East, etc.

Today, in fact, some Leftists in and out of DSA see us as being too moderate in our coverage of Israel. We are not explicitly pro PLO. We have not covered nearly enough for these critics, the undemocratic side of Israel, vis-a-vis the Palestinians, including deportations, closing of newspapers and magazine, etc. We are also seen by some as being soft in our criticism of Israel's strategic relationship with South Africa, and its arm sales and aid to Right wing regimes in Latin America. All in all, however, the editors and close associates of Jewish Currents and the Freiheit can be forgiven if they have a little chuckle, that after a rocky history of 40 years, when we are finally accepted as being the Left wing of the mainstream of organized Jewish life in the U.S., we are charged by some of our critics on the Left with being the Jewish Establishment's police in defining which Jewish Leftists are or aren't acceptable to organized Jewry.

"By 1979, when Max Gordon's important analysis, "Stalin Dissected," appeared in the October issue JEWISH CURRENTS had completed the transition to advocacy of democratic socialism.  This was illustrated in the symposium, "Why Socialism?" in the July-Aug.., 1982 and Jan., 1983 issues.  Everyone saw socialism and democracy as being interchangable, and the USSR was seen as an anti-model.

"This was reflected in our response to the historic events between 1989 and 1991, which saw the fall of the "socialist" regimes in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union.  The magazine conducted a new symposium reexamining the socialist idea, entitles "Why Socialism Now?" for seven stright issues from June, 1990 through Jan., 1991.  The consensus in the discussion was a reaffirmation of our firm denial that these former Communist governments were examples of what we define as true socialist societies.  However, the achievement of a democratic socialist society was seen by some contributors as being more problematic in light of the events in Eastern Europe.

"JEWISH CURRENTS in the last 10 years has continued to be an advocate for close Black-Jewish relations, secular Jewish culture, Holocaust remembrances and peace between Israel and the Palestinians, reflected in our monthly editorials since the Madrid Conference in 1991.  The magazine has found a place and fulfills a role in the American Jewish community.  The guest speaker at our 50th anniversary was Gideon Mark, Consul for Communications and Public Affairs of the Consulate General of Israel in New York.  Previous years' luncheon speakers have included Leonard Fein (1994), Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer (1991), Ruth Messanger (1990), Joseph S. Murphy, Chancellor of the City University of New York (1986), and Congressman Ted Weiss (1985).

"JEWISH CURRENTS has survived decades of political transformation internally and externally as it enters its sixth decade of publications.  It has survived, despite limited funds, while other Jewish publications have come and gone, because of the loyality of its devoted readers.  Today, we are working to ensure our survival into the 21st century by expanding our relations with organizations such as the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations and the Workmen's Circle.  Yes, the Workmen's Circle!  After 67 years, the descendants of the International Workers Order and Workmen's Circle were symbolically reconciled when the venerable editor of our magazine, Morris U. Schappes, had his 90th birthday tribute at the national headquarters of the Workmen's Circle.  Now, that is a true secular miracle!"


Reprinted with permission

Note: September 7, 2004  David has sent me some additional paragraphs which I intend to add.  However, to promote Arrival Day, I am posting it in this version now. 

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