Another Petersen extravaganza

"W. Z. Foster: Renegade or Spy?" is an Arnold Petersen special, a veritable guilty pleasure for sect-watchers like myself. Petersen, who was national secretary of the U.S. Socialist Labor Party from 1914 to 1969 (!!), has written a number of pretty curious pamphlets, dutifully devoured and reviewed by yours truly.

This one is no exception.

The super-sectarian SLP frowned at the Communist Party USA, or the "Anarcho-Communists" in Petersen speak (he also loved to call them "burlesque Bolsheviki"). William Z. Foster was the leader of the Communist Party when this brochure was first printed in good ol' Third Period 1932. Naturally, Petersen's quasi-aristocratic contempt is therefore directed at poor Foster, a "deadly microbe assailing the revolutionary organism", an agent provocateur and spy (Petersen never says on whose behalf), and - the worst thing of all - an "Anarchist" with a capital A. By "Anarchist" the cultured Danish-American Petersen, who often quotes Goethe and Shakespeare in his pamphlets, meant something like lumpen barbarian enemy of civilization as we know it, and then some. But perhaps there *are* worse things than being top dog Anarchist, since Petersen also believes that Foster is a potential Napoleon III, Mussolini or Hitler, due to his support for veterans' pensions!

Petersen's people's exhibit A against the microbe (Foster, remember?) is that William Zebulon wasn't a pure-bred socialist during World War I, instead collaborating with "Sammy" Gompers of the AFL, even to the point of buying war bonds. In Red Scare 1919, both Gompers and Foster were summoned before a congressional committee, before which Foster repudiated a revolutionary work ("Syndicalism") he had written years earlier, while "Sammy" told the congressmen that Foster had became a respectable trades unionist. Thus, most of "W Z Foster: Renegade or Spy?" deals with Foster's testimony in Washington, an event which transpired *before* he even became a Communist.

Naturally, Petersen expresses surprise that the great Stalin have made this "adventurer" his sole official representative in the United States. While rejecting the burlesque Bolshevik microbes on his home turf, Petersen still admired both Lenin and Stalin, which may or may not tell us something about his unrealistic worldview and personal psychology. This Petersen pamphlet therefore ends with the usual "proofs" that Lenin admired Daniel De Leon, the chief theoretician of the Socialist Labor Party and Petersen's foremost cultic hero.

But hell, I'm starting to sound like A.P. myself, so I think I have to stop here. Once again, thanx for da entertainment.