Introduction: a socialist magazine in the American century - 'Monthly Review'

Monthly Review, May, 1999 by Christopher Phelps

Consider just a few events of 1949. Regents at the University of Washington voted in January to dismiss three professors for alleged Communist backgrounds (with Sweezy testifying as an expert on Marxism before the faculty committee). At the University of California, regents voted in June to impose loyalty oaths on the Cal faculty. A Smith Act trial held from January to October resulted in the imprisonment of eleven Communist Party leaders for conspiring to "teach and advocate" the violent overthrow of the government. Popular opinion reached the level of mass hysteria as Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, entered court on charges of perjury as he contested charges of passing classified documents to Whittaker Chambers, an ex-Communist. Outside of Peekskill, up the Hudson River from New York City, those returning from a Paul Robeson concert in September 1949 were bloodied by a miles-long mob chanting "Jew bastard," "dirty nigger," and "Moscow lover." No wonder that many Monthly Review contributors adopted such bylines as "A University Professor of Social Science." In the September 1949 issue, every single contributor preferred to remain anonymous.

The repression took full McCarthyist shape after the summer of 1949, when revolution shook China and the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb. In a 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy sought to blame Communist infiltration of the Roosevelt and Truman State Departments for the "loss" of China. A heresy hunt ensued, fed by the deepening Cold War, the expansive designs of U.S. empire, business's desire to roll back the gains of labor and the New Deal, and conventional major party rivalry.(24)

The design and virtual effect of the anticommunist crescendo was to eliminate the influence of the American left in every corner of society - labor unions, government, publishing, film, television, and education - by tainting radical dissent with the odor of "subversion." All radicals were forced to fear for their livelihoods. The sweeping character of redbaiting and its symbolic rites is illustrated by the attacks visited upon the editors of Monthly Review, neither of whom had ever belonged to the Communist Party.

In 1953, Leo Huberman was called before McCarthy's Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations, where he was interrogated about his books, many of which the State Department had bought for its reference libraries. Rather than invoke the Constitutional right not to incriminate himself, as many witnesses had, Huberman stated that he had never been a Communist and refused to answer all other questions on Constitutional grounds of free speech. His stance won him praise from the British New Statesman and Nation:

This has rarely, if ever happened before. The Senators threaten contempt citations against witnesses who plead the Fifth Amendment; they were not prepared for attacks on themselves for undermining the First by exceeding their legal powers. Here lies the strength and the importance of Leo Huberman's position. Neither a government employee nor dependent upon universities or other private employers, a frank statement could not prejudice his employment. Though it takes courage to make a public avowal of free speech for heretics, especially Marxists, he felt that someone had to make a start.(25)