[Reviewer Wald praises this books "grace," for the way its author
"puts into conversation the deeply intertwined histories of what he
calls straight, gay, or otherwise queer people and the radical
anti-capitalist movement."]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE RED AND THE QUEER  
[[link removed]]


 

Alan Wald
September 8, 2023
Against the Current
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Reviewer Wald praises this book's "grace," for the way its author
"puts into conversation the deeply intertwined histories of what he
calls 'straight, gay, or otherwise queer' people and the radical
anti-capitalist movement." _

,

 

_Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the
Left in American Culture_
Aaron Lecklider
University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520395589

Aaron Lecklider’s dazzling and disarming book is nothing less than
the excavation of a crime scene. In sleuth-like fashion, the author
has tracked down overwhelming evidence of a disquieting cover-up of
the sizable presence of sexual dissidents within the mid-twentieth
century Communist Left.

Pithy and provocative, _Love’s Next Meeting_ is the culmination of
Lecklider’s years long deep dive into the question of why sexual
dissidents were attracted to the Old Left even though the Left
officially rejected them.

The scope and exact character of this interaction between the two
pariah identities — Red and Queer — has been long shrouded in
mystery and mythology. All the same, his ensuing analysis is rendered
in vivid prose that interlaces extraordinary archival research,
inventive readings of neglected literary texts, and a panoply of
astute conceptual insights.

Undeniably, homosexuality’s relation to Communism is a tough subject
to address at any time, but especially in this 21st century moment
when a new Far Left’s desired alliance of sexual dissidents and
radicalism has become Ron DeSantis’s worst nightmare.

In Florida and in many parts of the United States, gender
non-conformists are up against not only harassment, vandalism, and
assault, but a growing onslaught of bills banning transition care,
limiting participation in competitive sports, dictating which
bathrooms can and can’t be used, restricting drag shows, and
preventing schools from acknowledging students’ identities.

And even though there may be a boomlet of talk in liberal circles
about Bernie Sanders- style socialism, fearmongering about Marxism
remains sufficiently entrenched from the Cold War so that labeling
someone a “Communist” is the equivalent of spewing a hate epithet
to much of the population.

Even so, there is probably no one better suited than Lecklider to
tackle unapologetically and courageously what MAGA Republicans and
others might see as a toxic combination of outlaw identities.

A cultural historian and professor of American Studies at the
University of Massachusetts in Boston, and the author of an earlier
volume about outsider intellectuals called _Inventing the Egghead_
(2013), Lecklider has written a consistently intelligent and engaging
book that is worthy of its subject.

With grace, wit and no small amount of taboo-skewering, he puts into
conversation the deeply intertwined histories of what he calls
“straight, gay, or otherwise queer” people (6) and the radical
anti-capitalist movement. Optimistically, his achievement offers a
foreglow of a more inclusive future for the study of the Far Left, one
that is more accurate while also upholding the principles of queer
pride, freedom, and acceptance.

Sexual Dissidence and the Left

I’m not entirely certain how one reviews a book that introduces
scores of names of individuals and organizations probably unfamiliar
to the general reader. Moving progressively through at least four
decades, with sections devoted to broad arenas such as labor,
literature, antifascism, and the Cold War, Lecklider gleefully seizes
and spins our political imagination as he repeatedly demonstrates how
allegedly “deviant” sexual identities propel one toward social
justice activism.

The eight chapters of the book are also a considered and sometimes
unexpected commentary on the history of U.S. Communism. Here Lecklider
frequently shines a revelatory light on various phases and policies of
the CP-USA, as well as the party’s membership composition and the
artistic practices it inspired.

To be sure, some of this information is not entirely breaking news.
Since the late 1980s, at a minimum, feminist scholars have discussed
radical women writers, lesbian and straight, such as Josephine Herbst
and Agnes Smedley.

There are also specialists in African American literature who have
treated gay and bisexual pro-Communists such as Claude McKay and
Langston Hughes, and biographers have discussed Harry Hay (a former
Communist turned founder of the homophile movement) and Anna Rochester
(a Communist intellectual who was the life partner of labor researcher
Grace Hutchins). These and other scholars have often aimed at
“Queering the Left,” the goal of which is to denaturalize
conventional gender classifications to show them as socially and
historically fashioned.

Lecklider certainly builds on, and acknowledges, this earlier work,
but his own broader agenda is somewhat different and announced early
in the book:

“It is my hope that careful consideration of the sexual and
political deviance of the Left in American culture will demystify the
attraction of the Left for many sexual dissidents, suggest the
complexity of the relationship between homosexuality and the Left
before sexual liberation [the 1960s], and reframe the politics of
sexuality in moments when repression has been too often made into the
whole story.” (14)

In terms of “reframing,” he articulates an ostensible
contradiction at the heart of this revisionist project, one that I
find to be an effective lens by which to grasp an extremely complex
phenomenon that can’t be captured by a single paradigm.

On the one hand, “The relationship between homosexuality and the
Left was never easy. The vigorous opposition to homosexuality in
American culture was often recapitulated on the Left, and at times
leftists seemed to take a special interest in marginalizing
homosexuals.”

Then, on the other hand, “neither…the Left — or even the
Communist Party — [was] defined entirely by cultural conservatism.
Efforts to politicize homosexuality and envision homosexuals as part
of a radical community disrupt notions of the Left as overly invested
in disciplining gay men and women.” (114)

This book ought to be the last nail in the coffin of
“straightwashing” — obscuring history by making queer people
appear heterosexual. Writing lucidly, and mostly avoiding specialized
jargon, Lecklider is so far ahead of the curve on research and
rethinking that Love’s Next Meeting can be said to establish a
brand-new perspective for investigation.

Beyond Reductive Class Analysis

The volume kicks off with a singular narrative about Edward Melcarth
(1914-72), an artist who was proudly homosexual and a member of the
CP-USA from 1944 to 1948. Yet Lecklider is soon constructing the
service roads to his main argument through a sequence of composite
groupings of large numbers of actors and events.

One complicating factor to keep in mind: Even though Lecklider
prioritizes Communism and homosexuals, other kinds of Marxists
(especially Trotskyists) and sexual non-conformists come into play.
Sometimes both political and sexual identifications are imprecise due
to partial information or uncertain terminology, especially since
there are many kinds of “Communist” identity and the exact
definition of “queer” is variable across time and circumstances.

In his first chapter, Lecklider probes biographies and writings that
reveal lived experiences of individuals. Among the most illuminating
discussions is that of the romantic and political relationship between
poets John Malcolm Brinnin (1916-1998), famous as author of _Dylan
Thomas in America_ (1955), and Kimon Friar (1911-1993), best-known for
his translation of Nicos Kazantzakis’s _The Odyssey: A Modern
Sequel_ (1958).

Both were members of the Young Communist League at the University of
Michigan in the late 1930s, and their personal correspondence, to my
knowledge never previously analyzed, documents their commitment to
living homosexual lives while devoted to socialist commitment.

In Chapter 2, Lecklider shows how sexual politics inflected the Left
beyond reductive class analysis to address issues such as free love,
birth control, obscenity laws, and prostitution. This narrative begins
with an “Anti-Obscenity Ball” hosted by the CP-USA’s magazine
_New Masses_ in 1927, and goes on to examine various cartoons and
columns in the publication, along with a satirical book called
_Whither, Whither, After Sex, What?_ (1930), to which several
Communists contributed.

Following a discussion of figures such as _Modern Quarterly_ editor V.
F. Calverton (George Goetz, 1900-1940), and the race and sex dynamics
of the Scottsboro Case (the Alabama frame-up of Black youth on false
rape charges in 1931), Lecklider concludes: “Though the Left did not
offer a consistently articulated politics around sexuality, neither
was the subject of sex verboten in leftist print culture.” (74)

The section of the book on the treatment of homosexuality in Left
publications commences with the rather astonishing early 1930s
publication _San Francisco Spokesman_ (later, _The Spokesman_). Edited
by John Pittman (1906-1993), a lifelong Communist journalist, this
African American newspaper issued a defense of homosexuality that was
powerful and fiery.

Nevertheless, the prevailing treatment in Left magazines was quite
different, a practice that “routinely produced work that cast
homosexuals as reactionary and caricatured political enemies by
depicting them as homosexuals.” (79) Lecklider shows us a number of
Communist cartoons that are disconcertingly homophobic.

Published writings about homosexuality in prison, penned by Communist
victims of the state such as Benjamin Gitlow (1891-1965), took a
distance from homosexuality while also offering “an opportunity to
explore the social context of deviance.” (92)

Turning to the homosexual presence as perceived in unions and among
sex workers, Lecklider starts by exploring “The connection between
occupational lives and queer identities….” (116) First and
foremost are the maritime industries, which “incubated radical labor
organizations that acknowledged sexual dissidents among their rank and
file.” (118)

This time the argument is illustrated by remarkable cartoons (often by
Communist Pele deLappe, 1916-2007) that sympathetically depict both
“queer solidarity and…male femininity.” (127) Lecklider’s
discussion of sex work once again shows a dual character to the
Left-wing response, acknowledging the economic motivations of those
involved in the trade while characterizing  it as “debased and
exploitative.” (118)

The discussions of “the woman question” in Chapter 5 and the
production of “proletarian literature” (especially by writers of
color) in Chapter 6 take us back to familiar sites for the examination
of radical gender politics. In the former area, Lecklider argues that
the rebel politics of the CP-USA “attracted women who imagined their
sexual dissidence as consistent with, and even essential to,
revolutionary struggle.” (151)

In treating the literary Left, he focuses on what he calls the
“Queer Radicalism” of _Knock on Any Door_ (1947) by Willard Motley
(1909-1965) and the “Proletarian Burlesque” in _The Hanging on
Union Square_ (1935) by H. T. Tsiang (1899-1971). From divergent
perspectives, these novels “revealed how sexual dissidents could
resist the state, threaten capitalism, and offer alternative avenues
for pursuing queer pleasure and intimacy.” (230)

Finally, there are two closing chapters about the impact and legacy of
the Popular Front. The first, subtitled “Queer Antifascism,”
addresses how the anti-fascist movement allowed sexual dissidents to
see themselves as key players in the democratization of the United
States.

The last, subtitled “Deviant Politics in the Cold War,” shows how
both Communism and sexual dissidents were relegated back to the
sidelines after World War II with the help of the homophile movement.
The Mattachine Society (founded in 1950 as a national gay rights
organization), for example, aimed to normalize itself by purging
former Communists and militants in an effort to gain equal rights for
“respectable” citizens.

A brief “Coda” is then attached, reminding the reader of John
Malcolm Brinnin’s 1942 poem “Waiting,” from which Lecklider’s
book borrows a line for its title: “Of love’s next meeting in a
threatened space.” (242)

Lecklider describes his discovery of an envelope among Brinnin’s
private papers at the University of Delaware Library that contained a
feather sent from his lover, Kimon Friar, 85 years earlier.

For Brinnin, the phrase about “love’s next meeting” in
“Waiting” probably epitomized the dream of a shared future among
comrades, sexual desire fused with political liberation. In examining
the still-decomposing feather, which has a “pungent stench,”
Lecklider identifies the now-smelly plumage with the fate of that same
utopian hope:

“Exposed to the air, its stark physicality, its fleshy reminder that
it had once been attached to something that lived and breathed,
reveals a complicated story of faith and loss; promise and betrayal;
closeness and distance; fall and lift.  It is, like the men who
exchanged it, riddled with contradiction.” (297)

Ghost of Homophobia Past

After finishing this book, no one should be able to approach Communism
and the Left with a presupposition of invisibility regarding queer
activists, or the view that pro-Communist literature was limited to
some occasional stereotypical representations of gay life.

At the same time, one is unlikely to forget sickening displays of
prejudice that Lecklider cites, such as dictator Joseph Stalin’s
labeling of the views of Scottish gay Communist Harry Whyte
(1907-1960), who claimed that homosexuals could be good comrades,
those of “an idiot and a degenerate.” (79)

Regretfully, despite impressive sites of homosexual acceptance by
Leftists, as in the maritime industries, CP-USA members were not about
to hit the dance floor of the annual New Masses ball singing “Glad
to be Gay.”

Nonetheless, the effort to cover as much previously uncharted ground
as Lecklider attempts in Love’s Next Meeting presents challenges
that even the most sophisticated scholar can have difficulty in
sorting out.

For the most part, I find _Love’s Next Meeting_ measured and
persuasive, but none of us have the perfect solution when facing a
situation where a massive amount of material must be squeezed into a
constricted space. Too often Lecklider gives us only snippets of
intricate lives, episodes, and political topics that can lend
themselves to misunderstandings or a variety of interpretations.

What happened to the remarkable John Pittman — did he sustain his
fight for homosexual rights and dignity during his decades in the
CP-USA (including a stint in Moscow), or succumb to the prevailing
attitudes?

When and why did Brinnin and Friar leave the Communist movement, and
how did their politics (and relationship) evolve after the 1930s?
Sometimes the meaning of one’s writings or views at a particular
moment, or the character of one’s political commitment and
understanding of one’s own sexuality, becomes clarified in the
context of fuller biographical details.

In the case of H. T. Tsiang, the rather rosy and unproblematic
description of this mega-eccentric’s relations with the CP-USA is
only possible by Lecklider’s omitting reference to the public
denunciation of Tsiang in the editorial section of the _New Masses_
(“Between Ourselves”) on 27 August 1935. At that time, it was
declared that Tsiang was “not much of a writer,” “his career as
a Revolutionary is such as to hinder more than help,” and that he
was “unwanted at radical gatherings.”

Left Alternatives

A clearer perspective on CP-USA cultural practice might be gained by
comparisons with other Marxist tendencies, but the references to
Trotskyism seem to be slipshod.

One example is the original and thoughtful discussion of an
“intersectional critique of race and sexuality that placed Black
homosexuality at its center” (101) in “Just Boys,” a story
published in a 1934 collection by fiction writer James T. Farrell
(1904-79). Lecklider explains that “Farrell’s work did not adhere
as close to an official Communist Party position on race as did
Pittman’s — [because] Farrell was, like Claude McKay, a
Trotskyist.” (101)

Farrell had, of course, read Trotsky — like Mike Gold and other
Communists — but he was pro-Communist when he wrote that story and
for several years to come. Farrell continued to contribute to the _New
Masses_ and _Daily Worker,_ only switching allegiance to the politics
of Trotskyism when the Moscow Trials began in 1936.

In McKay’s case, there is no evidence of Trotskyist affiliation or
activism, or even that much in the way of ideological agreement,
although he had expressed considerable admiration for Trotsky a decade
earlier (as reflected in his 1937 memoir, _A Long Way from Home_) and
eventually became anti-Stalin.

The point here is not the minor one of misdating, since errors of this
type can be found in any large scholarly book. The question implied is
whether and how “Trotskyism” might have provided a different and
perhaps even superior perspective in literature addressing the
race/gender nexus.

Apropos Farrell, this would require a comparison of his writings
before and after his Trotskyist political evolution, a difficult task
in light of his extreme productivity, uncertainty as to when
particular manuscripts were initially composed, and the change in his
subject matter after leaving Chicago for New York.

Another approach to ascertaining an alternative attitude to
homosexuality might be to compare reviews of the same books with queer
subject matter that were published in the Communist and Trotskyist
press. This would enable one to note distinctions between the two
political movements’ approaches to gender.

To take up this latter option, one might note that both the Communist
_New Masses_ (17 June 1947) and Trotskyist _Militant_ (5 June 1948)
reviewed Willard Motley’s _Knock on Any Door_ in a friendly manner,
possibly because Motley collaborated with both movements. The two
reviews were by competent literary experts, James Light, later a
specialist on Nathanael West, and Paul Schapiro [a pseudonym for Paul
Siegel], an eminent Shakespearian scholar.

As it turns out, references to homosexuality are invisible in each of
the publications, and the name of Owen (the protagonist Nick
Romano’s male lover) is never mentioned. Light does make a reference
to Nick Romano’s “jackrolling” (without specifying that the
target of this mugging was gay men), but Schapiro only cites Nick’s
failed marriage, stating that his impotence was the result of visiting
cheap prostitutes.

My guess is that the two political movements were not dramatically far
apart in their conventional thinking and blind spots on this subject,
although one might expect more from the Trotskyists as they did not
have to follow the increasingly reactionary Soviet line on
homosexuals. According to Lecklider “the Communists banned
‘degenerates’ as early as 1938, and later specifically named
‘homosexuality’ as a grounds for disciplinary action.” (270)

Lecklider also identifies Max Eastman (1883-1969) as a Trotskyist,
which is more or less accurate apart from organizational affiliation,
but he then seems confused about the subject of Eastman’s well-known
_Artists in Uniform_ (1934). This is a study of repression of the arts
under Stalin, as made clear by its subtitle, A Study in Literature and
Bureaucracy.

Instead, _Love’s Next Meeting_ treats the book as an attack on
“political writing” (27), a work advocating “manly writing”
and “a tough realism” associated with Communist Mike Gold
(1894-1967) — “that confronted social problems with open eyes and
curled fists” (225). Ultimately, Lecklider declares Eastman “a
champion of proletarian literature” (248), surely a misnomer for
this romanticist author of _Colors of Life: Poems and Songs and
Sonnets_ (1918) and the novel _Venture_ (1927).

Lecklider’s approach of homing in on snippets of biographies and
history with a sharp gaze on gender has the virtue of dispensing
important insights even without telling the whole story. Yet some
things are missed, or at least unclear.

The portrait of Willard Motley is fluent and engrossing, but he
concludes that “Motley’s novel _[Knock on Any Door]_ departs from
some of the proletarian literature that dominated the 1930s by
omitting a Communist revolution or a labor strike.” (208) On the one
hand, I can’t recall any radical fiction of the era depicting a
Communist revolution; on the other, a labor strike is clearly part of
the highly significant climax of _Knock on Any Door._

The last pages alternate between the scenes of Nick Romano’s
execution by the state and those of those of his old reform school
friend Tommy being beaten by antiunion thugs precisely for his attempt
to organize a strike. This juxtaposition actually confirms
Lecklider’s overall argument.

Rethinking the Future

The minor blemishes cited above are handily outweighed by
Lecklider’s success in establishing an overwhelming foundation for a
more inclusive history. Other matters raised by limitations in
Love’s Next Meeting will need to be a component of ongoing
discussions by the present and next generations of scholars.

For instance, Lecklider takes his distance from Stalin’s Soviet
Union several times but not very informatively for non-specialists,
and sometimes he can rely on sarcastic asides.

One instance comes after quoting the 1940 _New Masses_ statement of
Communist writer Ruth McKenney (1911-72) that “women [in the Soviet
Union] have been unconditionally and completely emancipated.”
Lecklider then quips: “To write, perchance to dream….” (154)

What might be more helpful, three decades after 1989, would be a
substantially clearer perspective on what the social formation known
as the USSR actually had been, and why it went so awry. We are told
that the circumstances faced by the Bolsheviks in the decades after
the Revolution were tough, but to what degree were dreams such as
McKenney’s actually preposterous illusions, or understandable errors
of judgment in light of contingent circumstances?

Were the actors in this book living a total lie in this regard, or
were they feeding off an optimism closer to a half-truth? And what
might this genre of political misapprehension tell us about the
ingredients required for a more effective and long-lasting Red-Queer
alliance?

There is also the need for researchers to undertake additional
in-depth and critical interrogations of the kinds of identities and
motives held by many of the individuals presented in this book,
especially since gender expression and self-identity could be
different in each decade.

To take one example, we could use more elaboration than Leckider
provides about the motives of Communists in same-sex relations who
publicly repudiated other queers in vile terms. Anna Rochester, for
instance, came forward to offer discrediting testimony against former
Soviet intelligence agent Whittaker Chambers (1901-61) to the effect
that he was a “homosexual pervert” (43); and CP-USA leader (and
eventual chairwoman) Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964) wrote in her
memoirs that in prison “the disgusting lesbian performances were
unbearable.” (89)

Were these cynical attempts to prove their party loyalty by presenting
the CP-USA line on “degenerates,” or were these two women
genuinely muddled in some sense as to the reality of their own sexual
orientation? Could it be that, like may cisgender people then and even
now, they lacked a clear-eyed understanding of their own erotic needs
and drives?  One suspects a complex web of motives that is not always
provided in _Love’s Next Meeting._

Still, at least we now understand much better how little we have
understood aspects of the history of radicalism. Lecklider’s
compelling journey into yesterday surely holds promising implications
for scholarship to come; if _Love’s Next Meeting_ doesn’t
reinvigorate interest in further research into sexuality and the Left,
nothing will.

Far-reaching as well may be the germaneness of this book for those of
us on the activist Left: A rethinking the past can also assist in
rethinking the future.

* LGBTQ rights
[[link removed]]
* U.S. Radicalism
[[link removed]]
* Communist Party USA
[[link removed]]
* Left wing movements
[[link removed]]
* the Cold War
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]