Albert Maltz Quotes
When I joined the Communist movement in 1935 it was based upon the belief that mankind's future was to be found there. Certainly, millions who joined it the world over, like myself, didn't join it for profit.
Maltz, Albert. The Citizen Writer in Retrospect. Interview by Joel Gardner, Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 1983.
The reason this is an important quotation is that since the end of WWII, most Americans have used the term “socialism” rather loosely. President Obama for example is often referred to as a socialist by his political enemies. Conservatives refer to Norway, Sweden and Denmark and other European nations as socialist states. But none of them would ever meet the definition of a socialist state of the major socialist state in history. After WWII, the Russians intimidated many of the Eastern European with force of arms and there were some other socialist states for a while but the all abandoned Soviet style Russian socialism, Ironically, the only state that the old Russian Communists would recognize in 2011 was Cuba. However, there are many who call themselves socialists who would never agree that the Soviet Union was remotely a socialist state—they see it as a Fascist dictatorship.
So often in America, citizens and government officials have made alliances or joined organizations under the theory that “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.” It has almost always been a mistake ranging from joining the Communist Party in the 1930s to supporting the dictators or the Middle East, Asia, and South America. In the 1930s Fascism was growing and already on the march and neither America nor England—the leading democracies were not doing anything to combat the threat. America was emerging from the Great Depression, had a string Isolationist movement, and a small but influential group of Fascists and Hitler enthusiasts. Also, no one outside of Russia knew about the Stalin atrocities.
At the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935 the new Popular Front policy was announced. To communist hard-liners and to the far left, the policy was an abandonment of the Marxist revolutionary line.
This was the typical language of the 1940’s and 1950’s at the height of the Red Scare used by the FBI and others to smear their opponents and political enemies. Seldes had published an article very critical of the FBI and its investigations of labor unions and other liberal organizations. See George Seldes, 1940 quotation.
Albert Maltz was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were jailed in 1950 for their 1947 refusal to testify before the US Congress about their alleged involvement with the Communist Party USA. They and many other US entertainment industry figures were subsequently blacklisted, which denied Maltz employment in the industry for many years.
