Ted Draper: An Appreciation

My plan is to talk about Theodore Draper's accomplishment in framing the writing of the history of American Communism, and I will say something about my own interaction with him.

Much of the first burst of scholarly attention to the CPUSA came in the late 1940s and the 1950s in response to the transformation of the Party in some areas of American life into a pariah and subject to governmental and societal attack.  The first generation of scholars to deal with CPUSA history -- such as one-time Party member Theodore Draper, former Trotskyite Irving Howe, and Social Democrat Daniel Bell -- had lived through bitter struggles against the Communists. As with Draper, despite a paucity of primary sources, they were able to produce still-valuable useful scholarship, in significant part because of the fund of personal knowledge they brought to the subject.

Subsequently the revisionists took issue with Draper, who believed that the first and most important thing to know about the CPUSA was its dependence on the Soviet Union for its vision, its policies, its direction.  Although Draper was not alone in his beliefs, he was probably the object of the most attacks because of his outspoken belief that the CPUSA was not an independent political organization but an appendage of a foreign body.  I do not wish to rehash the arguments and polemics characterizing the debate about Draper's writings, but will deal with why he said what he did and my relations with him.