The Fellow Travelers: Intellectual Friends of Communism

by David Caute

Looks at the influence of intellectuals who, although attracted to Communism, did not join the Communist Party and discusses the development of Communist regimes in China, Cuba, and North Vietnam.

Genres: History, Philosophy, The United States Of America

458 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que mantiene toda su vigencia, aunque ya tenga algunos años (se publicó originalmente en 1979 y se revisó en 1988). Especialmente hoy en día, cuando para acceder a la categoría de "Fellow Traveler" basta con abrir una cuenta en redes sociales y pontificar como si lo que se dijera tuviera algún valor (hasta eso se ha devaluado). Caute describe con dureza, pero con certeza, a esos personajes que predicaban las virtudes del "socialismo en un solo país" (siempre y cuando no fuera el suyo) y que no tenían ningún problema en justificar los mayores crímenes (a pesar de que varios de ellos dejaron testimonio privado de sus dudas).

Al libro como tal le veo dos problemas: el primero, un cierto desorden en la exposición que hace que, en ocasiones, los datos sean redundantes y, en otras, estén dispersos por el texto; y el segundo, que su tesis está tan centrada en los años previos a la Segunda Guerra Mundial que no se ajusta completamente a los personajes posteriores a ella, en los que el discurso favorecía más la implantación del totalitarismo en el país propio (especialmente en el caso de la izquierda post-68), en la que la diferencia entre discurso y política no es tan clara (a Giangiacomo Feltrinelli apenas se le dedica una frase).

En general, es un texto muy interesante, pero creo que necesitaría una revisión actual

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

First things first - I have shelved this book as I have because I don't want to create another category - it could be shelved as intellectual history, history of ideas, history of idiots, history of blind fools, the choices are many. The book is in fact a very good, and balanced, look at all those who uncritically looked at and supported the Soviet Union during its most loathsome excesses. This is a book that, in Mr. Caute's own words, steers clear of passions and moral outrage. It is very much a book of its time (originally published 1973) when the Soviet Union was just the other dominant Cold War power and one that appeared as fixed and unmovable as a mountain. It is as much a document of the thinking of its time as an analysis of an intellectual movement. It is still good but, for me, I find it hard not to be revolted by figures who once kowtowed so willingly to Stalin and were the revered figures of my youth. I speak here of George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs, Sidney and Beatrice.

I was brought up by a mother who had an almost passionate love admiration of Bernard Shaw the iconoclast - my brother was named after him (not an easy thing to accomplish in the 1960's Catholic Church) - and I have always firmly believed and broadcast that an artists work should stand and be judged independent of its author's biography - but I have never been able to read anything by Shaw or attend any of his plays since reading Shaw's jocular remark upon returning from the Soviet Union when it was in the midst of the deliberately manufactured Ukrainian famine that he had seen no sign of famine and had never been so well fed as he was at his Moscow hotel.

Shaw adored controversy and striking a pose particularly one that epater le bourgeoisie and reinforced his 'bad boy' image (even if he was a very aged bad boy). The Webbs, particularly Beatrice were/are (I have no idea of their standing but I am pretty sure their images and names are still in place as founders of the London School of Economics) even worse, they have no compensatory claim to literary merit - their most famous work 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?' is not only unreadable as prose but contains absolutely no truths, only propaganda. The '?' on its first edition was abandoned on later ones (and there were lots of them).

Fortunately my mother had no attachment to the Webbs so none of my sisters were burdened with the name Beatrice - I think even she had been a devotee my mother would have drawn the line at imposing that ghastly name on a baby. My memory of loathing towards the Webbs, and Beatrice in particular, dates to the 1980's when I read excerpts of Beatrice diaries of her visits to the Soviet Union in the 1930's were she was lavishly hosted, which made her admire the Soviets immensely - they recognised her importance. She particularly admired the way that Moscow's lovely parks and open spaces were not full of Soviet workers 'spooning'. It demonstrated that the new 'Soviet Man' was busy in chess clubs or reading Tolstoy. What a smug, patronising bitch.

I fully understand the complexities of the choices of intellectuals and writers in the 1920's and 30's - it easy to make poor choices without the benefit of hindsight but so many of those written about in Caute's book willingly lied to their readers and even more fulsomely to themselves. It is hard not to be passionate about this - after all no one in the 1970's was writing books explaining, justifying or putting into sympathetic context the many men and women who lauded Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany.

That is my problem with this book - context is everything but there was no mystery about the horrors of Stalin's Russia, but it was ignored, excused or justified. Reading the journalists, writers and historians who wrote about the Soviet Union and its new 'Tsar' Stalin and how the Russian peasants only knew and responded to the knott one can't help seeing the supercilious superiority and downright racism of the writers.

In the end this book says more about the way people thought in the 1970s than about anything else. It is not a bad book, it is a dated book and there are far better and newer books to read on this subject.

[Paul O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give me socialism, to paraphrase Augustine, just not here. This is the fellow travelers' condescending? motto. David Caute's book on fellow traveling in Europe and the United States is a pleasure to read. The author's biting wit directed against the travelers, those whom they worship, and those who would persecute them for it makes this quite a fun, though sobering, read. Many of the names, Oh my word there's a lot of them, a cast of hundreds, are forgotten now, like Harry Ward; but many should not be. The frailty, if not folly, of man is the subject of this book, as well as man's daring to hope in circumstances favorable, unfavorable, and absolutely deadly. Caute examination toward the end of the book on the "witch hunts" in the USA contrasts with the English experience during the Cold War. Of course America comes out the worse. Caute offers an interesting explanation: America had very few communists so hysteria was at a pitch unknown to the English and French as communists in these countries made up a much larger percentage of the population. If witches abound, the reasoning goes, you have no need to hunt them.