AMERICAN BUSINESS
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least wanted to be, are the best soldiers in the fight against com–
munism; and that they will, and must, have a prominent and even
leading part in the conduct of the fight.
John L. Lewis is a better anti-communist today because of
his
period of collaboration with the communists at the beginning of the
CIO. Walter Reuther of the Automobile Workers and Philip Murray
(both once in willing united fronts with the communists), Michael
Quill of the Transport Workers and Joseph Curran of the National
Maritime Union and so many other labor leaders who were once
themselves Party members or close sympathizers, are better, and im–
mensely more effective, anti-communists than Charles E. Wilson of
General Motors or Thomas
J.
Watson of International Business
Machines. When compared to the standard commercial writer (the
businessman of letters), Arthur Koestler's books do not suffer in
excellence or in anti-communist influence from the fact that he was
for many years a Party member. Professors George Counts and Sidney
Hook, both formerly very close to communism, get more as well as
more enlightened results in the present struggle against it than their
unsullied pompous colleagues who bleat so emptily about "American
ideals." And among governmental administrators (both those now in
·and at present out of office: in this case names are best omitted), the
group that has been through communism or once touched by it is not
the least reliable.
To become a communist today, of course, is a very different
thing from becoming a communist in the 'thirties or through the years
of the Second World War. Then Hitler was felt by most men of
good will to be the main enemy. Communism seemed a potential and,
during the War, even an actual ally. A combination of ignorance,
blindness, and utopian idealism could hide what communism was in
fact doing, what the Soviet Union was like in truth, and what the
great Purge Trials meant. Today, not merely is communism much
more completely and publicly exposed (though the exposure can never
be altogether complete), but, in the case of the United States above
all,
the world struggle with communism is already joined. Therefore,
today, it requires a greater ignorance and blindness, a more utterly
confused and sentimental idealism, or treachery, to become a com–
munist. (I refer here to the "intellectualized" classes. Workers in
