ACLU and Communists

So a few weeks ago, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy had a series of posts (one, two, three, and four) about the ACLU's famous decision to expel Communists from the organization. What struck me in particular about these posts is that they mirror an argument we once had in my family regarding that decision.

Both of my parents had worked at the ACLU, and one day on a long car ride we somehow came around to the topic of the expulsion of Communists from the organization. My mom maintained that it was hypocritical of a civil liberties organization to expel members based on political beliefs - the equivalence of McCarthyism. My dad and I both argued that it was perfectly proper to remove people who didn't, after all, believe in civil liberties.

Volokh's first post makes much the same point as my dad and I did (and it should be noted that Volokh was born in the Soviet Union, so he certainly has more first-hand experience with Communism in the actual, rather than theoretical, form).

However, reading further, I learned a number of things about the ACLU and it's Communist ties that I had not been aware of at the time of our initial argument (and perhaps not my parents, either).

First, the ACLU decision came in 1940, when the Soviet Union (and, by extension, all Communist Parties and their card-carrying members) was allied with Nazi Germany. This was also just a few years removed from the bloodiest purges in Soviet history. In other words, the danger of Communism, so often exaggerated, was very real at the time of this decision.

Second, the ACLU expulsion of Communists also extended to anyone who believed in a "totalitarian" ideology (i.e., Nazis and Klansmen, as well as Communists). So this was not just an internal purge aimed at left-wingers, it was an attempt to make clear that the organization was firmly opposed to totalitarian suppression of civil liberties, no matter what the rationale.

Third, Roger Baldwin, the founder of the ACLU, was himself an admirer of Communism and the Soviet Union, and even went as far as to defend the suppression of civil liberties in the Soviet Union in the name of expanding and nuturing Communism.

I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties.

In other words, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union did not (at least in 1934) believe in the good of civil liberties for their own sake, but only as a means to an end. And that end was the triumph of "workers rule." Only after the Nazi-Soviet alliance did Baldwin turn against the Communists.

Given this, I have to say that not only was the ACLU's decision to expel Communists correct, it probably saved the organization as we know it. Had the ACLU continued to be dominated by Communists, it likely would have been utterly discredited by switching to pro-fascism in 1939 and then anti-fascism in 1941 (as all loyal Communists did). The coming of the Cold War would likely have been the death knell of the organization.

But instead, it decided in 1940 to reaffirm civil liberties as its primary goal (and as an end unto themselves) and has thus been an important defender of the Bill of Rights for the last several decades (despite the slings and arrows of many conservatives, such as the first President Bush).