Jimmy Higgins: The Mental World of the American Rank-And-File Communist, 1930-1958

(Hardback)

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This study fills a conspicuous gap in the secondary literature on the Communist Party by examining the mental world of the wholly committed rank-and-file Party member. Jimmy Higgins was an imaginary composite considered the ideal for members to emulate; the attitudes and beliefs held by Jimmy Higgins-type members have not been adequately studied until now. As Kraditor demonstrates these members differed in important ways from the Party leaders and cadre, and also from the vast majority of members who belonged to the Party for only a few years. Basing her analysis on a detailed textual examination of thousands of pages of Party publications and on her own experience as a long-term Party member, Kraditor reconstructs the second reality in which the devout rank-and-file member lived.

Reviews

Kraditor (emerita, Boston University) was a Communist party member from 1947 to 1958, but is now a conservative. In this book, she explores the mind-set of ordinary party members by uncovering the latent structure' of their self-perpetuating, interlocking commitments.' She uses a fictional character, Jimmy Higgins, as her point of departure to explore the structure of members' minds and the substance of their belief system. In the first section of the book, Kraditor discusses how party members could believe in obviously false premises; her answer is ideological self-delusion created by an authoritarian party. In the second section, she describes the members' view of the nature of the world, of man, the system, ' and of the US. She concludes that Communists lived in a special universe, ' were a species' within an ideological genus, ' and occupied a stopping place' on the road away from the real world.-Choice
"Kraditor (emerita, Boston University) was a Communist party member from 1947 to 1958, but is now a conservative. In this book, she explores the mind-set of ordinary party members by uncovering the latent structure' of their self-perpetuating, interlocking commitments.' She uses a fictional character, Jimmy Higgins, as her point of departure to explore the structure of members' minds and the substance of their belief system. In the first section of the book, Kraditor discusses how party members could believe in obviously false premises; her answer is ideological self-delusion created by an authoritarian party. In the second section, she describes the members' view of the nature of the world, of man, the system, ' and of the US. She concludes that Communists lived in a special universe, ' were a species' within an ideological genus, ' and occupied a stopping place' on the road away from the real world."-Choice

Author Bio

AILEEN S. KRADITOR is Professor Emerita of History at Boston University.