Communist historiography comes to light at American Historical Association conference

CHICAGO—For decades, the field of communist historiography has been dominated by the paranoid readings of the psychology of “totalitarian dictators” and anticommunist treatises against the socialist countries of the world. The study of communist history has been tainted by bad-faith actors making wildly unfounded claims about hundreds of millions murdered by communism. Among scholars who care a bit more about academic integrity, communist history has simply been swept under the rug—especially since 1991, when liberal institutions unanimously declared socialism dead and buried for good.

Tony Pecinovsky, president of the long-standing Marxist press International Publishers, calls this concerted effort to ignore communist historiography the “Red Taboo.” In recent years, though, more scholars and members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) themselves have undertaken the task of unearthing this suppressed history.

At the American Historical Association’s yearly conference held this past weekend in Chicago, a panel titled “Reading Communist Subversion in the Black Freedom Struggle” centered on the history of the communist movement in the civil rights struggles of the 20th century. Panelists spoke on W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, the Scottsboro Nine case, and other famous civil rights legal battles led by the Communist Party, as well as Black American women’s peace mobilizations during the Cold War.

Professor Edward Carson, former state organizer of the Massachusetts district of the Communist Party and current teacher at the Webb School in Tennessee, presented on the lesser researched topic of W.E.B. Du Bois as an organizer of Black farmers. Carson draws upon Du Bois’s earlier works—in particular his essay “The Economic Future of the Negro” and his novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece—to dissect Du Bois’s early socialist inclinations.