450
PARTISAN REVIEW
Would R eed eve r have become di sillu sioned ? We don't know.
The film leaves the ques ti on una nswered , as it wa in fact. But
ne ither does it provide the es theti c di sta nce or hi storical ev idence to
let the a udience judge - as a Greek Choru s mi ght have done. R eed's
careful biogra pher , R obert R osen tone , in commenting on a previ–
ous biogra phy by Gra nville Hicks (written when Hicks was still a
Communi st), rema rks tha t it "ove remphas izes the political ide of a
ma n who was not prima ril y a political crea ture." Theodore Draper,
the mos t careful student o f the Communist pa rty, says tha t the
ev ide nce is inconclu ive, but indicates wha t common sense could
have made clea r :
"If
there i no sugges ti on o f a break with the
C omintern in R eed's las t writings, the re is more than enough basis
fo r a break sooner o r la ter if R eed had persi ted in hi s militant
resista nce ."
Because the film lacks a knowl edgeable Greek Choru s, one of
the mos t fascina ting threads in tha t history is neve r followed
throu gh - the subseque nt hi story of Louis Fra ina. In the film ,
Fra ina is shown as R eed's competito r fo r leadership of the American
Communi st pa rty a nd fo r a pproval by the C omintern . And that is
a ll. Yet Fra ina subsequentl y became the Cominte rn representa tive
in M exico, broke with the Pa rty in 1922 not for ideological reasons
but because of a fa ilure of nerve, quietl y returned to the United
Sta tes, where, under the name of Lewi s C orey, he became a leading
theoreti cian of Marxism (though not a member of the Pa rty) and , in
the la te 1930s, an oppone nt of the Pa rty. H e was also the first
political economi st to write of, a nd sketch the idea of, a "mixed
economy," in a brillia nt book published in 1942 , entitl ed
The
Unfinished T ask.
Corey ta ught a t Anti och for te n years a nd then,
wa nting to return to political acti vity, became the educational
director of the A.F . of
L.
Meat C utters, a union headed by a
"Soc ialist" named Pa trick Gorman whose most conspicuous
socialism was a bu t of Eugene Debs a nd three volumes o f
Capital
tha t he kept on a shelf in hi s orna te Chicago offi ce. In 1952 , during
the McCarthy period , Corey was suddenl y ordered deported by the
government on the ground tha t he had entered the country illegally ,
and because of hi s ac tivity, tes tified to by the fo rmer C ommunist
leader Benjamin Gitl ow , in the Communi st pa rty in 1920. The
valia nt Socia list Pa tri ck Gorma n fired Corey from his job. Six
months later , in 1953, Corey di ed of a ce rebra l hemo rrhage, a t the
age of fifty-nine. Two months la ter , the governmen t's dec ision to
give Corey a valid vi sa to leave the country and return to become a
citizen arrived at hi s house ! And some years later , Michael
Harrington's Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee gave
Patrick Gorman a testimonial dinner honoring him for his
