Promotional Information

Jimmy Higgins was an imaginary composite figure considered the ideal for American rank-and-file Communist Party members to emulate. Using primary sources and her own experiences as a long-term Party member, Kraditor reconstructs the second reality in which the devout rank-and-file member lived.

Table of Contents

Part I: Structure Jimmy Higgins Types The Rationale of Hate Authority, I: Leadership and Self-Image Authority, II: Theory and Scholarship Tasks, Standards, and Self-Criticism Part II: Substance The Nature of Reality, I: Materialism The Nature of Reality, II: Man "The System" and Its Rulers The People The Soviet Union as the American Future Soviet America and the Science of Prophecy Conclusion Genus and Differentia Recommended Reading

About the Author

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

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