Cross-posted from The Nation
Florida Congressman Allen West was wrong
when he suggested that there were dozens of communists in the current
Congress. Misled by crank websites, the out-there Republican from
Florida said Tuesday, "I believe there's about 78 to 81 members of the
Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party" They actually
don't hide it. It's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus."
It would be generous, indeed, to suggest that West is confused.
The Congress is not currently a haven for followers of Karl Marx.
And there are none to be found in the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has over the years included a few friends of democratic socialism -- which
espouses an economic and social justice vision every bit as far removed
from the Stalinist excesses that West seems to be decrying as the
current Republican Party's views are from those of its radical founders.
The democratic socialist connections and tendencies that exist are no secret. The CPC was once led by US Senator Bernie Sanders, who has always identified as a socialist, and it is includes as a long-time member former House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, who (like former US Senator Ted Kennedy and the Reverend Jesse Jackson before him) has worked with groups such as Democratic Socialists of America to advance proposals for single-payer "Medicare for All" healthcare reforms.
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But the vast majority of CPC members are run-of-the-mill progressive
Democrats, very much in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon
Johnson when it comes to domestic policy and to their support for civil
rights and economic fairness.
As for Marxists, they're in short supply in this current Congress.
But West might take a measure of comfort in knowing that he is not
entirely wrong about the fact that the Congress has included readers of
Marx, ideological allies of the Communist Party and members who were
elected in alliance with the Socialist Party.
For the most part, these radicals have operated under a single
banner. But it is not that of the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- and
certainly not that of the Democratic Party.
The banner around which radicals have historically gathered in official Washington has been that of the Republican Party.
Founded at Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854 by utopian socialists and militant abolitionists,
the early Republican Party included many German-American immigrants who
had come to the United States after the wave of European revolutions that
stirred in 1848 fell short of its radical goals. Among the first
Republicans were allies and associates of Karl Marx, such as Joseph Weydemeyer, who would eventually serve as as a Civil War colonel.
Abraham Lincoln, who like so many of the leading Republicans of his day read Marx and Engles in the pages of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune
(where they served for many years as European correspondents), spoke
often about the superiority of labor to capital and was highly critical
of concentrated wealth. Among Lincoln's White House aides was Charles Dana, Marx's editor.
And the sixteenth president accepted the congratulations of Marx and
his fellow London Communists after Lincoln's 1864 re-election.
The radical Republicans of the late nineteenth century and the
progressive Republicans of the early twentieth century often worked
closely with Socialist Party stalwarts. Indeed, when Robert M. La Follette, a life-long Republican, sought the presidency in 1924, he did so with the backing of the Socialist Party.
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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
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