[ In this book Bettina Aptheker looks deeply into the radical
commitment and contributions of many gay and lesbian members of the
Communist Party (CP and CPUSA). The book provides an opening salvo to
a wider discussion of how, or even if, the Left has responded to the
“new forces and new passions” present in the LGBTQ liberation
movement, and whether this has affected the concept of social
transformation.]
[[link removed]]

REVIEW OF COMMUNISTS IN CLOSETS  
[[link removed]]


 

Martha Sonnenberg
January 23, 2023
New Politics [[link removed]]

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

_ In this book Bettina Aptheker looks deeply into the radical
commitment and contributions of many gay and lesbian members of the
Communist Party (CP and CPUSA). The book provides an opening salvo to
a wider discussion of how, or even if, the Left has responded to the
“new forces and new passions” present in the LGBTQ liberation
movement, and whether this has affected the concept of social
transformation. _

,

 

_Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s_, Bettina
Aptheker

“…_new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society;
but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them
down.”_ Karl Marx (1)

The recent shooting at a LGBTQ bar in Colorado once again brought to
light the hate crimes that the LGBTQ community endures. Homophobia is
certainly not new, but there has been an escalation of these attacks
over the last decade and particularly since Trump gave legitimacy to
hate crimes. And while the most well-known aspects of homophobia come
from both the political mainstream and the radical right, the Left has
its own dark history of homophobia, leading to the harassment and
denigration of many of its members. (2)

In 2008 and 2009, _New Politics_ sponsored a comprehensive symposium
on “Gays and the Left” (3) exploring the troubled and often tragic
aspects of that relationship. Bettina Aptheker contributed to that
symposium with her article, “Keeping the Communist Party Straight,
1940’s-1980’s”, discussing the homophobia specific to the
Communist Party. (4). Aptheker has expanded that discussion in her
newly published _Communist_s_ in Closets: Queering the History
1930s-1990s_ (5)._ _The result of Aptheker’s extensive interviews
and archival research, this book looks deeply into the radical
commitment and contributions of many gay and lesbian members of the
Communist Party (CP and CPUSA). The book provides an opening salvo to
a wider discussion of how, or even _if_, the Left has responded to
the “new forces and new passions” present in the LGBTQ liberation
movement, and whether this has affected the concept of social
transformation.

Aptheker, daughter of the Communist theoretician and historian,
Herbert Aptheker (6), was a member of the CPUSA from 1962-1981. She
was literally born into the CP and grew up in the center of the CP
community. For many years she felt “emotionally congruent” with
her family and friends. That congruency turned into its opposite,
emotional turmoil and fear, as Aptheker came to terms with her own
lesbianism in a Party that forbade membership to homosexuals. Early on
she was unable to acknowledge her sexuality: “I had no words to
articulate who I was”, bringing to mind novelist Thomas Mann’s
statement, “It is possible to be in a plot and not understand it”
(7). It took _time_ for her to understand herself and to acknowledge
the plot she was in, which was the political repressiveness of the
CPUSA’s homophobia.

Aptheker traces the CP’s characterization of homosexuals as
“degenerates” to its 1938 constitution which stated:

“Party members found to be strikebreakers, degenerates, habitual
drunkards, betrayers of Party confidence, provocateurs, advocates of
terrorism and violence as a method of Party procedure, or members
whose actions are determined to be detrimental to the Party and the
working class shall be summarily dismissed from positions of
responsibility, expelled from the Party and exposed before the general
public” (8).

Even after the Stonewall rebellion in 1969, the CP characterized the
gay liberation movement as “racist, petit-bourgeois and
diversionary.” As late as 1978, the Party Central Committee
disavowed gay liberation as a legitimate claim: “We oppose all
efforts to weaken the family by way of attacks upon women and
promotion of ‘alternative’ sexual lifestyles, nor in any way which
encourages or promotes homosexual relationships as an alternative to
sound, healthy, male-female relationships.” (9) It wasn’t until
1991 that the CP ended its ban on gay and lesbian membership—and not
until 2005 when there was a resolution to support LBGTQ rights.

LEARNING FROM LGBTQ

Aptheker’s book is not the first discussion of homophobia on the
Left. Others have stressed the oppression of gays and suppression of
their rights, often portraying homosexuals as the _victims_ of bad
policies. Aptheker’s book differs in that she presents people, not
as victims, but as agents of history. The people profiled in this book
are active and complex beings, thinking and conscious beings,
processing contradictory feelings and actions around their dual
commitment to what they saw as revolutionary politics and their
identity as gay and lesbian people. While Aptheker discusses the harm
that the CP’s homophobia caused—the internalization of homophobia,
the sense of shame, the fear of being found out, the attempts to be
“cured” of their homosexuality, the depression, the sense of
isolation—she never portrays people as passive. On the contrary, she
demonstrates the agency of people like Harry Hay (founder of the
Mattachine Society), Betty Boynton Millard (activist, author
of _Women Against Myth, _a book_ _which preceded Simone De
Beauvoir’s _Second Sex_ by a year), Eleanor Flexner (Author
of _Century of Struggle_), Lorraine Hansberry (playwright author
of _Raisin in the Sun_), as subjects of their individual and
collective histories _despite_ the personal harm they experienced as
a result of the Party’s homophobic policies.

A major insight of this book is Aptheker’s understanding that the
experience of a Communist identity and a gay identity
reflect _intersectional_ politics, and as she points out, not only
intersectional, but an “intrasectional way of thinking.” There has
been much written about intersectional politics regarding race, class,
gender, etc., but Aptheker’s concept of “intrasectional” means
that she explores not just the fact of intersection but what really
happens _inside_ that intersection on a personal and emotional
level. Looking at history through this intrasectional lens, and
through her own political/sexual journey, makes the internal
contradictions felt by gays and lesbians in the CP in particular, and
in the Left in general, visceral and real. Thus, she shows how Harry
Hay joined the CP because he saw it as the “cutting edge of the
international struggle against fascism.” He tried to “cure”
himself of his gayness, and even married. Finally realizing that he
could not make himself anything other than a “degenerate” in the
Party, he resigned from the CP in 1951, only to be formally expelled a
year later ensuring that he could never rejoin the Party. As part of
what he felt was a “culturally oppressed minority”, Hay continued
trying to change the CP policy by writing articles about what he
called the “Dialectics of Homosexual Directions,” showing that gay
and lesbian people, because of their outsider status, had the
potential to develop a consciousness that could enhance radical
understanding of class and racial oppression. Hay was a strong
proponent of the self-activity of the homosexual minority in creating
its own cultural integrity (10). Betty Millard also tried to change
her sexual orientation to fit the Party’s demands. Unable to do so,
she wrote essays on feminism, she joined in the gay culture of
Greenwich Village, realizing that the gays with Communist affiliation
“formed a sort of sub-culture in the Party.” Betty finally left
the Party in 1956 after the Khrushchev revelations about Stalin,
leaving her without political mooring, and in the midst of profound
depression. Aptheker notes that _all_ the people she profiles left
the Party in 1956 or 57, but all continued their commitment to social
justice.

That this book focuses on homophobia within the CP should not lead to
political ‘schadenfreude’ on the part of non-CP leftists. There is
ample history showing that homophobia was alive and well in the
socialist and Trotskyist movements, especially in the 1940’s and
1950’s. H.L. Small, member of the Norman Thomas Socialist Party,
wrote a relatively unknown article, “Socialism and Sex” in 1952,
(11) opposing SP strictures against same sex relationships. The growth
of socialism in the U.S. was, he wrote, “hampered by a lack of
imagination of the leaders of socialist thought.” Lifting the
strictures would make people more aware of socialism as a
“constructive force in the social transformation of America…”.
James P. Cannon, leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP),
discouraged _any_ non-conformity, “…people of this type are not
going to be suitable for approaching the ordinary American worker.”
(12) George Novack, another SWP leader, recommended that a
homosexual member “temporarily resign and get “cured.” David
McReynolds recalls that the label of “homosexual” was never used
against him “except by some of those around Max Shactman” (13).
The general position of the SWP was that “Homosexuality is a
reflection of a system which is in decay” (14).

POLITICS, IDENTITY AND SUBJECTIVE HISTORY

Though Aptheker’s book tells the stories of people who were closeted
as a result of the CP’s policy, it is her own personal journey
toward reconciliation of her lesbianism and her politics that makes
this book unique and of interest to all political people willing to
acknowledge the complex interaction between one’s sense of self and
one’s political identity. Bettina Aptheker’s changing relationship
with the Communist Party and her travels “through the contradictions
of the Communist world”, is the thread that runs throughout this
book.

Aptheker felt pride and purpose as the Party challenged fascism,
racism and poverty. But coming to terms with her sexuality, and
recognition of the Party’s homophobic policies opened her to a more
critical stance regarding the Party; “What had been hidden from me
started to emerge.” “I struggled hard while I was in the Party on
two fronts. The first was hiding my sexuality. The second challenge
arose as I developed my own political voice and understandings and
began to strongly disagree with some of the politics the Party adopted
and some of the actions it took” (15). She opposed the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. She thought about leaving the
party then and questions, with honesty and humility, why she did not
leave at that time: “I thought seriously about leaving the party
then, but I didn’t. Out of loyalty to my family? Pit of fear to be
without a political mooring? Out of panic about my true sexual
identity? Out of sheer cowardice?” (16). She finally left the Party
in 1981. Such personal and political soul-searching reveals, with
compelling authenticity, the complex processes involved in changing
one’s political consciousness.

Aptheker’s book combines two aspects of historiography about the
CPUSA. (17) In focusing on the CP’s homophobic policy, Aptheker uses
an _objective _and political history which sees CPUSA as a
reflection of Soviet policy. In revealing her own CP experiences,
however, as well as those of the “closeted” CP members, she
uses _subjective _history—looking at history from the perspective
of the people who lived it. In this sense her book is a contribution
to a subjective historiography, a bottom-up historiography, which
tells us more about the everyday experiences of the actual CP rank and
file members than political historiography which focuses on CP
leadership, bureaucracy, and policy.

As part of the objective, political history, Aptheker traces the
CP’s homophobic policy to the 1938 decree of the CP constitution
noted above. It is important, however, to put that decree in the
historical context of the Stalinist counter-revolution. Often CP
policies and the legacy of Stalinism are conflated with Marxism with
the assumption that Marxism and Bolshevism were also homophobic (18).
In fact, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution _eliminated _all laws against
homosexuality. Consensual sex was felt to be a private matter, and
courts upheld marriage between homosexuals (19). There was an openly
gay commissar of public affairs, who worked alongside Trotsky in the
negotiation and signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Soviet physicians
visited the German sex reformer, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at his
Institute for Sex Research in Berlin. A psychiatrist, Lev Rozenstein,
held sex education courses and programs aiming to “assist patients
to accept same sex desire.” (20) All of this ended with the
ascendance of Stalin, who re-introduced anti-sodomy laws and
liquidated all the social and political advances of the 1917
revolution. Stalin’s legislation included imprisonment and hard
labor for homosexuals. It was Stalin who characterized homosexuals as
“degenerate”, a position which the CPUSA then perpetuated. (21)

Aptheker says that writing this book was a ‘labor of love”. In
this spirit, her book urges _all_ the Left not to limit our
understanding of the LGBTQ movement to rights and reforms, but rather
to appreciate the “skill, ingenuity, grit, and sometimes
considerable humor, the marshalled courage” that has been manifest
in the LGBTQ movement. She asks us to pay heed to the creativity, the
experiences and the insights that gay liberation offers to the
Left, and the potential for its fusion with other liberation
struggles. She asks that we not separate ourselves from the vibrancy
of the gay radical tradition and that we inform ourselves_ _about
LGBTQ history, work, culture and community. Ultimately Aptheker’s
book suggests that the LGBTQ liberation experience should be an
integral part of how we think about changing the world.

_Martha Sonnenberg, M.D. is a retired Infectious Disease physician and
former CMO at a community hospital in Los Angeles. She currently lives
in Walnut Creek, California._

Notes:

* Marx, Karl, _Capital_, Vol 1, p.835, Charles H. Kerr and Company,
Chicago, 1906
* Both the FBI and the CP used concerns about “security” to
justify their homophobic policies; each feared that homosexuals, if
exposed, would be become informers.
* “Symposium on Gays and the Left (Parts I and II), _New
Politics,_ Summer 2008 and 2009.
* Aptheker’s article drew from a paper she presented for a panel
on “Queering the Left in U.S. History,” at the American Studies
Association National Conference, Oct.13, 2006.
* Aptheker, Bettina, _Communists in Closets: Queering the History,
1930s-1990’s_, Routledge, 2023, New York and London.
* Herbert Aptheker’s book, _American Negro Slave Revolts,_ was
prominently placed on my parents’ bookshelf, even though they left
the CP in 1939.
* Mann, Thomas, _Joseph and His Brothers_, translated by John G.
Woods, Knopf, 1948, quoted in Zornberg, Aviva, _The Beginning of
Desire_, Schoken Press, 1995.
* Aptheker, p 2.
* Aptheker, p. 60.
* Aptheker, pp. 90-93.
* Phelps, Christopher, “On Socialism and Sex: An
Introduction”, _New Politics_, Summer 2008 and Small, H.L.,
“Socialism and Sex”, _New Politics_, Summer 2008.
* Wald, Alan, “Cannonite Bohemians After World War
II”, _Against the Current_, July/August 2112, #159
* McReynolds, David, “Queer Reflections,” _New Politics_,
Summer, 2008.
* Wald, Alan as above.
* Aptheker, p.247.
* Aptheker, p.243
* Barrett, James R., “The History of American Communism and Our
Understanding of Stalinism,” _American Communist History_, Vol. 2,
No.2, 2003, pp 175-182. Barrett discusses the historiography of the
New Anti-Communists, and that of New Left historians.
* Masha Gesson, self-styled expert on Russia, and founder of the
Pink Triangle Campaign, has said the Bolsheviks never had progressive
views on homosexuality, and that the Bolshevik Revolution was worse
than the Tsarist regime, mentioned in Halifax, Noel, “The Bolsheviks
and Sexual Liberation” _International Socialism_, Oct 13, 2017.
* Wolf, Sherry, “The Myth of Marxist Homophobia, in _Sexuality
and Socialism,_ Chapter 3, pp. 73-115, Haymarket Books, Chicago,
2006.
* Guzvica, Stefan, “What Happened When a Gay Communist Wrote to
Stalin,” [link removed], May 5, 2022
* Gay Communists challenged Stalin’s policy to no avail. See
Whyte, Harry, “Letter to Stalin: Can a Homosexual be in the
Communist Party?”, _thecharnelhouse.org_, 2015. Stalin’s response
to Whyte’s letter was “Archive. An idiot and a degenerate.” See
also Hiller, Kurt, “An Early Activist Critique of Stalin’s 1934
Antihomosexual Law: A Chapter of Russian Reaction”, in _MRonline_,
David Thorstad, Jan 5, 1015. Similar homophobic policies, following
the Stalinist model, were implemented in China under Mao and Cuba
under Fidel.

* LGBTQ
[[link removed]]
* Left Politics
[[link removed]]
* Communist Party
[[link removed]]
* Bettina Aptheker
[[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 xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]