A Covert Life. Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-communist, and Spymaster

Ted Morgan, (New York: Random House, 1999), 403 pp., $29.95.

Throughout the Cold War, no institution of American life was as wholeheartedly committed to the anticommunist cause as was organized labor. Under the leadership of men like George Meany, David Dubinsky, Albert Shanker and Lane Kirkland, the trade union movement advocated an aggressive policy to counter Soviet expansionism and scorned efforts at East-West detente. To forestall communist gains within the international labor movement, American unions launched an ambitious and costly international program to encourage the spread of democratic unions in postwar Europe and the Third World. While most European labor movements tolerated communist involvement, American unions ruthlessly purged party members from the leadership ranks and expelled communist-led unions from the major labor federations. And when American liberals became critics of an anti-communist foreign policy, organized labor remained the only influential force within the Democratic Party coalition to continue to back a robust defense and an assertive anti-Soviet diplomatic course.

As reward for its unapologetic anti-communism, the AFL-CIO was treated as a pariah by liberals and the Left. Some scholars actually argue that organized labor's membership decline and collective bargaining impotence was caused by the expulsion of communist union activists and support for America's Cold War goals. And revisionist historians have sought to demonize those labor officials who were principally responsible for the movement's "obsession" with the global communist threat.

For many critics, the major object of hate was Jay Lovestone. From the end of World War II until the mid-Seventies, Lovestone was the central figure behind labor's far-flung international affairs operations. His influence reached well beyond the confines of the trade union movement; it may be an exaggeration to describe Lovestone as an architect of American Cold War policy, but it is beyond dispute that his views played a role in stiffening the backbone of wavering officials during the conflict's early years.

Those views were based on the premise that by its very nature the Soviet Union was bent on world domination. Lovestone liked to say that, "I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt." Fortified by supreme confidence in the cold warrior's world-view, Lovestone fought communist influence wherever the opportunity arose, and spent little time agonizing over the tactics or alliances required for victory.

Because of his ultra-secret habits, Lovestone's life became the stuff of myth-making. He preferred to work in the shadows; during his lifetime, little was known about his comings and goings, his place of residence, his friends or his relations with women. Although he had a high regard for his own political judgment, Lovestone was utterly indifferent to public recognition. It mattered little who got the credit as long as the result was another setback for the agents of Soviet power.

It is, I suspect, the clandestine nature of Lovestone's life that intrigued his biographer, Ted Morgan. Morgan is not a Cold War specialist, but rather a traditional biographer, with works on Churchill and Somerset Maugham to his credit. There are times when one wishes Morgan was better acquainted with the history of American labor or the intricacies of Cold War politics. But these are minor quibbles, for in fact A Covert Life is an impressive achievement that succeeds in enlightening us about labor's international operations while providing an engrossing portrait of one of the Cold War's most mysterious personalities.

Lovestone's early history was not dissimilar from other radical Jewish immigrants of the early twentieth century. He was born Jacob Liebstein in 1897 in what is now Lithuania. The son of a devout rabbi, he was raised in semi-poverty in New York. He boxed a bit as a youth, under the nickname "The Blond Jew", a tribute to his non-Jewish features. But his principal passion was radical politics. Lovestone shifted allegiance from one socialist grouping to another until he found a home in the Communist Party (CP). He became the perfect organizational functionary, a tireless worker, spirited debater and relentless faction fighter. He moved steadily up the ranks until he attained the party leadership position in 1928. In the course of his meteoric rise, Lovestone made numerous enemies among party notables whose conspiratorial skills were every bit as good as his own. They convinced the Comintern to initiate an investigation of the American party, and this culminated in what can only be described as a "trial" of Lovestone and his followers in Moscow.

This event must rank as one of the most remarkable episodes in the annals of Soviet communism. A blue-ribbon committee of world communism - its members included Molotov, Kuusinen and Bela Kun - was convened to determine the fate of the American party. Serving as chairman was Stalin himself, flush with success after having purged his leading rivals for Soviet party leadership. Even in pre-show trial days, his words had an ominous ring. "Let me remind you that Zinoviev and Trotsky also at one time played trumps with percentages", he reminded the Lovestone majority, "and you know in what a farce the vainglory of Trotsky and Zinoviev ended . . . . Today, you have a majority. Tomorrow, you will have no majority at all."