The true confessions of a Philadelphia Communict

From Michael Brus', "Narcissist's Holiday," Fall '99 From Michael Brus', "Narcissist's Holiday," Fall '99Philadelphia is known as a conservative city. Unlike academic Boston, artistic New York or political Washington, Philadelphia has remained singularly focused on commerce and industry, on private enterprise rather than public service. The speaker, Sherman Labovitz, was one of nine Philadelphians arrested on charges of "conspiring to advocate" Communist revolution in 1953. Upon the arrest of the "Philadelphia Nine," as Labovitz and his cohorts were called, the Philadelphia Bar Association, at great risk to its reputation, resolved to defend the radicals. Labovitz and his cohorts were provided with the most respected defense attorney in the city, Thomas McBride. A millionaire heiress named Henriette Dodge helped pay his fees. McBride won the case on appeal on broad First Amendment grounds that emboldened attorneys in other cities to make similar defenses. This victory, the first of its kind, helped turn the tide against Joseph McCarthy, who was censured by the U.S. Senate by the end of the next year. Labovitz's talk grows out of his informative, revealing memoir of McCarthyism's local impact, Being Red in Philadelphia. As the title implies, he is not shy about his Communist past. As an open, "card-carrying" member of the party, Labovitz was easy prey for anti-Communist headhunters. In 1953, he and eight of his local comrades were arrested by federal officials for violating the Smith Act, which forbade advocating revolution. Like most -- but certainly not all -- members of the Communist Party rounded up in the early '50s, Labovitz was not a political revolutionary but a political innocent, unaware of Soviet crimes against humanity and of the very real influence of Moscow on the American Communist Party. Unlike most party members rounded up in the early '50s, Labovitz was acquitted -- in large part because the elite of the City of Brotherly Love rose to his defense. Labovitz attributes this sympathy partly to the rise of a young generation of Democratic blue-bloods who kicked out a Republican machine that had dominated City Hall for much of the century. As Labovitz writes, these reform-minded aristocrats were "so obviously secure in their social position that they could afford to be civil libertarians" when it came to defending radicals. Indeed, prior to Labovitz's arrest, Philadelphia lawyers who had taken the Fifth rather than name names had been disbarred far less often than in other cities. Being Red in Philadelphia is a valuable historical contribution, one that should be read by any serious student of domestic Cold War politics. Still, Labovitz comes across, both in print and in person, as a bit too comfortable -- smug, even -- with his radical background. When he told the Writers' House audience that "there were real Communists running around [in the '50s], and I was one of them," he smirked, clearly reveling in his erstwhile status as what he termed a "Communist functionary." Labovitz quit the party in 1957, disillusioned by the Soviet crackdown in Hungary and the endless internecine wars in the Philadelphia branch of the Communist party over political doctrine. But the picture he paints of the McCarthy period is too stark. Over the last decade, declassified American wiretaps and information from recently opened Soviet archives has proved that McCarthyite paranoia was grounded in reality. For instance, Labovitz cites conservatives' concern with Soviet nuclear development as so much paranoia, when in fact we now know that the first Soviet atomic bomb was copied wholesale from stolen American blueprints. He pooh-poohs the perceived danger of the American Communist party, when we now know that Moscow poured millions of dollars into the party and exerted some measure of control for years. He waxes nostalgic for the 1948 presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, when we now know that a Wallace aid, Harry Dexter White, was almost certainly a Soviet informant. Mario Soares, the former Socialist president of Portugal, once said that conservatives were his rivals, Communists his enemy. I think this is the appropriate frame of reference for any democratically minded political radical. Labovitz, unfortunately, has this axiom backwards. Having written about unjust persecution in Philadelphia is something to be proud of, but having been red in Philadelphia is certainly not.