Talk:Communist front

I'm suggesting that the article List of Comintern affiliate organizations, which presently is in fact a list of alleged CPUSA front groups as of 1948 (as far as I can tell) be merged in to this article. Rafaelgr 20:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I second that proposal, although I not sure if this is the best title for the article (perhaps 'CPUSA fronts', 'List of organizations linked to CPUSA' would be better names). --Soman 07:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The word "alleged" is key here. Some of the groups cited were only suspected of being communist front organizations. Some seem to have been chosen because CP members participated, or they rejected McCarthyism at a pivotal moment. 'List of organizations linked to CPUSA' is just an OK title, so long as the article explains who the did the linking and for what purpose for each and every organization. DJ Silverfish 00:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

In fact I don't think anyone here could explain the situation with all of these; I believe the list was just copied out of a HUAC report or something of that nature. Rafaelgr 20:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The term Communist front has distinct meaning and requires it's own article. Merecat 21:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the poster Merecat. That end, I've changed the internal list on this page to read "Alleged CPUSA front organizations, circa 1944". The inclusion of Communist Political Association dates the list to 1944 - 1945, when the party reconstituted itself as a non-party political action committee under the direction of Earl Browder. This was reversed by 1946. The article as a whole needs more US-specific historical context, since it is mostly concerned with the late 1940's and the Progressive Party, anyway.

DJ Silverfish 14:42, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

The Progressive Party was not a communist front. Its candidate was simply endorsed by the CPUSA. There are no sources for that bit listed, and it should be deleted. Redflagflying 10:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

MISSING: American Youth for Democracy (AYD); this is what the YCL turned itself into Cognoscente18 (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

issues

This article is so bad its embarrassing. I have tagged it with all the issues that I could see and will be listing the whys now. and possibly fixing some of them.--Cerejota (talk) 01:18, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

1. It relies largely or entirely upon a single source. - Not only is a single source in use, Richard Felix Staar, "Foreign policies of the Soviet Union", but this is a partisan book, published by a partisan institution.
2. Its neutrality is disputed. - Crealy based on a single, partisan source, makes it non-neutral. Furthermore, the list of organizations included here is unsourced and seem more like attempts to smear rather than an encyclopedic survey.
3. Its factual accuracy is disputed. - The term is an epithet used by political rivals, and its instances a documented phenomenon by neutral researchers are lacking. It should be trivial to find sources backing this.
4. It may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. - Since the article seems to be written in the perspective that one definition of the term, in a single source, is correct,

1. Its neutrality or factuality may be compromised by weasel words. - The lack of generalized neutrality is further exacerbated by the use of terms like "totalitarian" or " transmogrified" in ways that break NPOV presentation.
2. Its introduction provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject - The term is an epithet envogue during the McCarthy era, and while some organizations were indeed organizations controlled by communist parties, many organizations that were not communist controlled, or even were anti-communist were called by this label, both by mainstream and fringe sources. Howeve rit is presented to the reader as a technical term, rather than a political epithet born out of an specific context.
3. The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints.
4. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. - Needs not only to expand the source used, but provide a wide range of views on the subject, from different view points. This is a controversial term, and needs to be treated as such. --Cerejota (talk) 01:57, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Or perhaps an AfD would be in order? --Soman (talk) 01:22, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I would agree to a redirect and merge to a relevant article, such as McCarthyism or some such, but it is clear this term, if deleted and not salted, will bounce back into existence (as it is indeed a notable term) and I would rather ensure it is a quality contribution than have it be recreated by a partisan and having to AfD again. Another possibility is to move to Communist front (epithet) but there is no reason to disamb, so ther ecould be a good-faith effort not to that. That said, I wouldn't oppose an AfD and !v delete as it stands, because beyond notability there is precious little here to salvage as an encyclopedia article.--Cerejota (talk) 02:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"Communist front" is a standard term in the RS and the scholarly literature, and the problems that Cerejota complains about have been largely fixed. Rjensen (talk) 02:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"Communist front" is a controversial term used by partisans to discredit organizations that might or might not have relationships with communist organizations. Its use in literature is not an acceptance of a validity of the term, but a study of its use.

Article issues largely remain, thinga like "totalitarian Marxist" are extreme violations of NPOV, the article largely follows one view on this concept etc etc etc. Even the addition of sources have not diminish the reliance in a single source for structure and argument. Notably, criticism of the use of the term is largely absent. --Cerejota (talk) 14:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Carejota seems to believe the Stalinists were not totalitarian or perhaps not Marxist or something--he's very vague as to what his problem might be. Does he think the Communist front organizations did not exist, or perhaps they should be called something else?Rjensen (talk) 14:26, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Cerejota is the name. What you or I believe about this topic is entirely irrelevant. What is relevant is that the use of the term "totalitarian" in relationship with any political movement is an expression of a partisan point of view and hence violates the principle of WP:NPOV. The non-existence of sources and points of views that refute this analysis is a violation of NPOV as per WP:UNDUE. Those things, unlike our opinions, do matter.--Cerejota (talk) 20:24, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Certoja that this is a far from perfect article, but it is not as bad as porrayed and certainly not worthy of deletion. Other sources are used in the article, e.g. Lynn Mally, "Inside a Communist Front: A Post-Cold War Analysis of the New Theatre League," American Communist History, June 2007, Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp 65-95. Others should and could easily be added, and most of the problems could be corrected. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I have not argued for deletion, and explicitly said so in this very talk page. Since I do not have access to these sources, my only recourse is tagging.--Cerejota (talk) 20:25, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

we don't tag out of personal ignorance. The sources are mostly online at books.google.com Rjensen (talk) 21:39, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

We do tag out of personal ignorance if no effort to relieve this ignorance is made: WP:BURDEN--Cerejota (talk) 22:07, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I gave you the place to research most of the sources: books.google.com if you refuse to relieve your ignorance please don't inflict it on users. If you don't know any RS on the topic, please move along. Rjensen (talk) 01:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd say my problems with this article is mainly with the delimitation and tone. If are going to have an article on mass organizations, then the text would need some serious re-working. The notion of 'fronts', with the conspirationalist (not sure that's a proper English word, but can't find a better at the moment, is tilted and highly paternalistic. It tries to assume that anyone associated with the communist movement would be duped by alien agents, it seeks to negate the possibility that people would embrace Marxism by their own free will. If we take an approach to communist mass work more globally (outside the scope of 1950s USA), we find that in most cases members and sympathizers of pro-communist mass organizations are: 1) well aware of the partisan links of the organization and 2) has sympathy towards the party organization.

Mass organizations should be understood in the following context: A Communist Party is, per definition, a vanguard party. To be a member of the party, you have to have a certain level of ideological formation and be willing to commit time and effort to party work. Many people, who might be sympathizers of the party, are not able/willing to assume this task. Thus the party creates mass organizations, usually along sectors (youth, students, trade unions, women, peasants, cultural associations, etc.), to which membership is open for anyone willing to join. The maximum programme of the mass organization coincides with minimum programme of the party.

That said, mass organizations are not a uniquely communist phenomenon. Could we find any source, that is not a Cold War diatribe, that actually explores this subject? The present listing has little encyclopediatic value. --Soman (talk) 03:13, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

the opening lede quotes Schrecker: "Schrecker says that on the contrary, "most of these people knowingly collaborated with the party, believing it to be the most effective ally they could find." Of course it's not a matter of time--it was a matter of control. The Party exerted very firm control over its members and that intense intrusive control was hard for many to accept. The demand for "Passionate Commitments" is very well made in Gerald Zahavi, "Passionate Commitments: Race, Sex, and Communism at Schenectady General Electric, 1932-1954," Journal of American History, Sep 1996, Vol. 83 Issue 2, pp 514-548 in JSTOR In a nutshell, you have to love the Stasi-like surveillance to remain a party member, and at the least sign of deviation you were expelled. Rjensen (talk) 03:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

No. If you write a lede for 'Jewish Bolshevism', basing 85% on quotes from Goebbels and Gestapo archives and then add 'the scholar X disagrees with this' in the end, then you're still not acheiving NPOV. In fact the negation of Schrecker only pushes the POV synth further, as it projects the McCarthyist as the mainstream view and the less conspiracy-theorist view as the dissident. --Soman (talk) 03:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Please read WP:LEDE. I have removed non-compliant material. Also I am begining to see a WP:QUOTEFARM tendency, The article is about the term "communist front", not its usage or examples of people using it. This goes hand in hand with WP:OR and WP:SYNTH: we must use sources to support statements made in the encyclopedic voice that are a result of the source's research. Examples of simple usage, without counter-examples are unacceptable. --Cerejota (talk) 05:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I have opened a merger discussion because I tried to edit this article to a neutral state, and came up with very little that doesn't overlap with it. So a merger would both keep the term, and a section in that article, subject to WP:UNDUE limits.--Cerejota (talk) 05:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

• Mass organization redirects to "Communist party," which is epically dumb. "Communist front" and "Mass organization" are close to the same meaning, one being a right wing pejorative and the other a left wing self-description. There is a flavor of difference beyond that, an element of intended deception. Some CP mass organizations were comparatively open in terms of their association to the relevant Communist Party; others were not. Both terms should point to the same article, which will be a tough one to write with balance. It is absolutely beyond question, to my mind, that the article title should be "Mass organization" rather than "Communist front" on the basis of NPOV. The latter absolutely has a pejorative context, while the former is a self-description. This seems a pretty easy call. There's a comment above that "Communist front" is a term that is used in the literature. That's true. So is "Mass organization" (I was working from a book on the early CP of Vietnam this morning published in 1982 by Cornell University Press that used the term, for example). It will be a writing challenge getting things written neutrally, but there are battleground articles all over the place at WP and this doesn't seem like anywhere near the biggest. Reason needs to prevail. Carrite (talk) 06:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

With regard to the inanity of the redirect of "Mass organization" to "Communist party" — the whole point of Mass organizations/Communist fronts was that they were NOT the party and burdened by the discipline of the party. They were intended as a mechanism to build broader participation outside the party to advance policy objectives of the Communist Party, and secondarily to help the party identify and attract motivated and sympathetic people to its cause. It's a subject for an article in and of itself, completely separate from an article discussing "Communist party." Carrite (talk) 06:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been parsing the history of the "Communist Party" page. It seems that Soman inadvertently hijacked the article back in Dec. 2006 when he ported over some of the "CP" material to History of Communism, adding material on Mass Organizations in its stead. The article has been the subject of innumerable edits and much conflict since, but it's more or less the same piece. i think it needs to be blown back into some approximation of its early 2006 state, which wasn't all bad, and the "Mass organization" material combined with "Communist front" material as a new "Mass organization" page. My view anyway. Carrite (talk) 06:42, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I've left my view at the Communist party talkpage, but wanted to add that if this article remains it needs to remove the US stuff from the lede and have a global lede and the US stuff in the US section. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:29, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking more at the article, and done some edits to try to start to address some of these issues. I think this will make the basis of a better article if it stays here, or make the material stronger if it is merged elsewhere. ObvlBobFromBrockley (talk) 13:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)iously still needs more work.

Merger = bad idea. The issue of Communist fronts has a large literature quite apart from the large literature on the Communist party. That is, the RS do not merge the topics and so Wikipedia should not do so. A merger assumes that all Communists fronts are somehow part of the CP--but that was not true. Often a handful of Communists quietly took over an organization at the top. Rjensen (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

rename

Please do not rename until the merger issue is resolved, unless it is via a RM.--Cerejota (talk) 06:46, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Lists

An official list from a government source is exactly the sort of information Wikipedia is good at. Deleting it is blatant POV on the part of one editor. Rjensen (talk) 18:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Please focus on the content, not the editor. This assertion is completely incorrect: we are not a random collection of information, we are an encyclopedia. A list article of notable organizations might have encyclopedic value, but a list of non-notable or irrelevant organizations is not only not encyclopedic, it approaches copy-vio.--Cerejota (talk) 02:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The article is about specific organizations. An official government list of these organizations is NOT some random collection of information. As for copy-vio, we are dealing with non-copyright info published by the US government. The readers needs to know what exactly we are talking about here.And it is certainly notable that the government compiled and published such lists, as many RS like Schrecker have noted. Rjensen (talk) 05:51, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree fully that it is certainly notable that the government compiled and published such lists. But that is not what you are doing, you are listing them, not saying that the government compiled such lists. Do you get that? Please see WP:L.--Cerejota (talk) 11:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

we are saying the government compiled this famous list and here it is. Rjensen (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Nicaragua

The attempt to expand the article by quotefarming and synthing every possible mention of 'communist front' on google just makes the article less and less understandable and coherent. Could someone explain the newly-introduced passage on Nicaragua? Was the entire Nicaraguan nation a 'communist front' or what? Are the international instutions mentioned inter-governmental bodies (such as COMECON, etc..) or the international bodies that mass organization belonged to (WFDY, WFTU, etc.)? To my knowledge Nicaraguan organizations were well represented in the latter case well prior to 1983. --Soman (talk) 03:21, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

the passage is based on the RS provided. which RS Soman is using is unknown so it's hard to comment. Wiki policy is to broaden articles so they do not merely have an American focus. Rjensen (talk) 04:10, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipolicy also says that large lists belong in list articles or wikisource, yet you insist in inserting them here.--Cerejota (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Naming names

One editor seems to believe the Attorney General list of alleged Communist fronts, 1948, which is covered in this article and in numerous RS, is not an important part of the story. He has been able to provide no reason for his strange personal POV, and instead erases fully sourced information that would be of value to readers of this comprehensive encyclopedia. Rjensen (talk) 16:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Overhaul

This article is a total mess, and most of the material deviates from the core subject. Rather than dealing with communist front organizations in the proper sense, it becomes a reference farm to push the notion that communism equals the Kremlin.

Communist parties, coming from the Leninist tradition, are cadre parties to which membership is restricted. Thus, most CPs relied on building open mass organizations to create a broader interface. The role of mass organizations in the Comintern period is a bit complex, as the policy on mass organizations shifted back and forth. But from the Popular Front period onwards the creation of sector-based mass organization is a common feature of most major CPs.

At the end of WWII new international sector-based coordinating bodies were created, in which communist-linked organizations cohabited with non-communist organizations. This development coincided with the establishment of new regimes in Eastern Europe, increase of popularity of communist parties in the West and decolonization in the South. As the Cold War began, student organizations and trade unions etc became torn in geopolitical conflict between US and Soviet Union. All of this occured in an environment were intelligence agencies on both sides were active. To reduce the international bodies in which many communist front organizations participated to KGB apparatus is just as wrong as reducing ICFTU to a CIA front organization. Sure, the ICFTU was a largely a product of the Cold War and US intelligence ops worked to establish pro-Western trade unions around the world, but regardless of the political motivations that midwifed it would be way too simplistic to describe the ICFTU as merely a CIA front.

The persistent and erroneous argument made in this article is the notion that being a 'communist front' equates relationship or economic dependence with the Soviet Union. This is highly misleading, for a start not all Communist Parties (and their associated mass organizations) held the post-Stalin Soviet Union in high esteem. Many communist front organizations were in fact vehemetly anti-Soviet. Nor is it correct to say that communist front organizations would be economically dependent on a CP, in many cases the relationship was inverse (with the mass organizations providing economic support to the CP).

In theory, it would be possible to have a descent and factual article on the Leninist position on mass organizations and its practical application in different periods and contexts. But such an article won't be able to develop as long as POV-pushers insist on jamming the article with conspiracy arguments. --Soman (talk) 08:56, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Soman is wrong. It is not true that communist fronts are a post ww2 innovation (they date from 1920s) and it is false that "the notion that being a 'communist front' equates relationship or economic dependence with the Soviet Union." -- economics (I suppose he means cash subsidies) played a minor role. Ideology was far more important. The statement "Many communist front organizations were in fact vehemetly anti-Soviet." refers of course to the Chinese Communist fronts after the bitter breat between USSR and China in late 1950s. Rjensen (talk) 09:25, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

You're not reading my comment properly, I did make reference to Comintern era above. Anyway, I'm glad you agree that ideology as the core element. --Soman (talk) 09:36, 15 October 2017 (UTC)