Blacklisting Hollywood's Communists: A Qualified Defense
The "witch hunt" (a rather strange abuse of language - did the medieval
world house a tyrannical witch-state?) against Communists in America in the
late 1940's and 1950's wielded two weapons: the jail and the economic
boycott, or "blacklist." Critics have usually seen these tools as differing
solely in degree. My contention, however, is that this identification is
mistaken. For the government to imprison Communists - or anyone else -
for their beliefs was a great betrayal of the principles of a free society.
What better propaganda could the United States have provided Stalin, than
to adopt his tyrannical methods in order to cope with dissent?
*
A free society does not use the government to punish "thought criminals."
This does
not, however, mean that free people had no acceptable way to express their
disapproval for Stalin's apologists. One route, of course, was to
take up the pen in defense of the victims of Stalinism. A second - and
equally legitimate - course was to exercise one's freedom to not
associate with Communists. Not to befriend them, buy their magazines, or
hire them - and to urge other people to do the same. In short, to blacklist
them. Far from being a violation of anyone's freedom, the blacklist is
merely an exercise of the freedom of association, just as a peaceful
strike is an exercise of the freedom of association.
It has of course been a long-standing argument of Marxists that both prison
and the blacklist - both the threat of violence and the refusal to trade -
constitute coercion. Only their ideology prevents people from seeing
this. Mocking the bourgeois view of freedom, Marx writes that,
"Liberty is, therefore, the right to do everything
which does not harm others... It is a question of the liberty
of man regarded as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself."
Elaborating: "The right of property, is, therefore, the
right to enjoy one's fortunes and dispose of it as he will; without
regard for other men and independently of society... It leads
every man to see in other men, not the realization, but
rather the limitation of his own liberty." (On
the Jewish Question)
Yet turn the issue however you wish, it is impossible
to maintain this position consistently. If a woman refuses to marry a
horribly deformed man, we may sympathize with his plight, but he can hardly
claim that she has violated his rights. Or as I put it in my analysis of
Marx's critique of "bourgeois freedom":
[I]t is difficult
to understand how Marx's concept of freedom is anything more than
a defense of tyranny and oppression. No dissident or non-conformist
can see society as the "realization of his own liberty."
And what can the attack on "the right to do everything which
does not harm others" amount to in practice, except a justification
for coercing people who are not harming others? The problem with
"broad" notions of freedom is that they necessarily
wind up condoning the violation of "narrow" notions
of freedom. Under "bourgeois" notions of religious liberty,
people may practice any religion they wish ("a private whim
or caprice" as Marx calls it); how could this liberty be
broadened, without sanctioning the persecution of some religious
views?
The blacklisting of pro-Communist screenwriters, actors, and so on was
particularly appropriate as an act of cultural self-defense.
I daresay that if Hollywood had been largely pro-Nazi,
World War II would have sparked a massive wave of firing of not only
American Nazi Party members, but anyone vaguely sympathetic to their views.
And what would have been wrong with that?
They still have the right to
express their views, just not on the payroll of people who deplore them.
Of course, many would deny the reasonableness of the
comparison between Communism and Nazism.
Presumably they remain innocent of the universal consensus among historians
that the major Communist rulers sent millions of innocents to their deaths.
What is most absent from recent reflection on the Red Scare of the 1950's
is any sense of the moral depravity of the victims. Yes, Communists have
the right to defend the extermination of the kulaks, just as
Nazis have the right to alternately defend and deny the Holocaust.
This does not turn them into heroes. True, Communists posed little threat
to national security, just as Nazis are unlikely to seize power anytime soon.
This does not mean that someone is paranoid if they ostracize them -
personally, socially, and/or economically - and encourage others to do the
same. Everyone is entitled to your tolerance, but not everyone is entitled
to your respect - or your business.
* Albeit on a far milder scale - about
150 Americans spent time in jail for violation of the Smith Act or contempt
of court for refusal to testify. See Ellen Schrecker, The Age of
McCarthyism. Interestingly, the original Smith Act trials had the
full support of the CPUSA, because it was first applied to a
group of Trotskyists opposed to the U.S. role in World War II.
