Lemisch on Aptheker
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From: “Jesse Lemisch” utopia1@attglobal.net Date: October 4, 2006 9:46:03 AM EDT
About the Herbert Aptheker Sexual Revelations
By Jesse Lemisch
Mr. Lemisch is Professor of History Emeritus, John Jay College of
Criminal
Justice, City University of New York.
My first reaction to the shocking news in Bettina Aptheker’s book
that her father, Herbert, sexually abused her as a child (as
described in Chris Phelps’s article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education), was contained in my October 3 letter to Chris (see the
end of this note).
The first thing to say is that what Herbert did to his daughter
Bettina was just awful, and Bettina has my sympathy. The second thing
is that it was dead wrong for me to use careless language that
suggested that this news pleased Ron Radosh, whose first reaction was
honorable and humane (see below) despite the immense political
distance between him and Herbert.
I continue to wish for discussion as to how the attitudes expressed
in Herbert’s awful acts might have been reflected in books like the
centrally important American Negro Slave Revolts and/or the truly
terrible The Truth about Hungary. I can’t see it, but discussion may
bring out some continuity. I think Chris implies but does not show a
connection.
There is much to be said about the Communist Party and issues of sex
and gender. Women (including my mother) played significant roles in
the Party, and Red Diaper Babies were brought up believing that women
had achieved equality in the USSR - an utter fiction, as I found
experientially in academic visits to Moscow in 1978 and 1991. It’s my
impression that many Second Wave feminists were Red Diaper Babies who
had picked up something important from this ambiguous heritage but
that the Party was not friendly to feminism and the Women’s
Liberation Movement: the everyday life of the Party was hardly as
egalitarian as its expressed ideals, and it clung to the notion that
class trumped gender, and saw discussions of, for instance, orgasm,
as trivial and selfish. And Betty Friedan’s attack on lesbians - the
“lavender menace” - are certainly relevant. Nonetheless, many
Communist women were and are immensely supportive of younger feminists.
There is no doubt that there was a very repressive side to the Party.
Personal things, including illness, were sometimes thought to be self-
indulgent luxury as against the Larger Struggle, e.g, “How can we
speak of our individual mortal illnesses when the President has
resumed the bombing?” (Not from Herbert.) Herbert lived a life
blacklisted and under fire, with horrendous insult from a wide range
of people, including Eugene Genovese and the Liberal Southern
Gentleman C. Vann Woodward. Coming under a little fire myself, about
thirty years ago I asked Herbert, “How do you take it?” He answered
with Communist courage but with utter blindness to the emotional
costs of a life under fire, “You redouble your efforts.” The New Left
had some of this, but of course the Women’s Liberation Movement,
originating in rebellion against organizations like the CP, SNCC and
SDS, had a deeper connection to the emotions and their importance.
And that connection (as well as other important insights), expressed
in one of the most influential political movements of the twentieth
century, made American culture radically better (despite all the
present horrors); who would want to go back to the 50s?
I see I’m not getting to Herbert’s acts. I won’t attempt to
psychoanalyse. And I don’t think that the life of the Party was any
worse than the lives of other Americans. (Certainly the events of the
day remind us that such acts seem to be very much in the American
grain.) But as I suggested in my letter to Chris Phelps, I think some
of the lefts that I have been in have been less than candid with
Americans about uncomfortable truths, and building a radical and just
movement for a better America — and keeping it off the backs of the
rest of the world — requires total candor with Americans,
acknowledgement of faults and errors, admissions of failures as well
as successes.
October 3 Letter to Chris Phelps
Good for you, Chris, and good for Bettina [for speaking these
truths]. This is an awful and amazing story, reading like something
in Doctorow’s Ragtime.
As you know, I have always said that the left should speak
uncomfortable truths, even if they please Ron Radosh [Radosh had sent
Chris’s article to his list under the subject heading “Another side
of Comrade Aptheker,” but with the notation, “Of course, she should
have done this when he was alive, so he could answer. Who knows if
it’s true. But what a shock!”]. This material certainly sheds light
on Aptheker, and by extension on the gap or connection between the
personal and the political in the US CP (of which we have much
evidence). It’s full of irony that this comes out at the time of the
delayed [Representative] Foley revelations.
But. I think you are a little too agnostic in your rhetorical
question, “To what extent should disheartening revelations about a
scholar’s conduct be held against his oeuvre?”
Without positing a major disconnect between the personal and the
public, I can’t see how these revelations of despicable sexual
behavior make American Negro Slave Revolts or the horrifying Truth
about Hungary any more true or false. But I am interested in seeing
what connections people might be able to sketch in. There might be some.
Best.
Jesse