A Conservative's Look At The Left: A brief History of Agnes Smedley

This is the first entry in which I hope will be a long series on the people of the left, a fascinating if often a "wrong-headed" group. I hope you will come back often to take a look at the series, argue with my evidence if you wish, but take a realistic and honest look at the denizens of the left, the Stalinists to the true liberal/progressive, because that may increase understanding and with understanding comes cooperation where cooperation is desirable be you from the left, center or right.

A caveat: This is not to say that anyone on the left is part of a unified bloc. There are democratic leftist who utterly reject the stalinists, and there were/are democratic rightleaning folk who reject utterly the fascistic right. As my friend Marc Cooper (who I have previously identified as the Last Honest Progressive In America- here) states in a private email to me:

"There is no more of a unified left than there is a unified right. Agnes Smedley and other totalitarian stalinists are soundly rejected by entire sections of a more democratic left. just as you would reject all those nice free-market conservatives who served in General Pinochet's cabinet or the conservatives who were fellow travelers with Mussolini (and Hitler for that matter).

"I think, instead, there are people who have a genuine committment to democractic society and others who do not. I think it wrong to assume that either Left or Right has any more or less of either category... there is nothing inherently more or less democratic about either stance. Both the free market and sociaism share profoundly humanitarian and misanthropic acolytes. The world is rife with authoritarians and totalitarians of both stripes."

From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics by Iain McKean and Alistair McMillan:

"What it is to be 'left(-wing)' varies so much over space or time, that a definition is very difficult, but the following issue orientations would normally be involved: egalitarianism, support for the (organized) working class, support for nationalization of industry, hostility to marks of hierarchy, opposition to nationalistic foreign or defense policy. 'Left' is used to distinguish positions within parties as well as among them. A left-wing socialist is one who takes extreme positions on (some of) the items on this list. Left-wing communism (described by *Lenin in a pamphlet of 1920 as 'an infantile disorder') may well be cynically defined as all forms of communism not supported by the prevailing leadership of the Communist Party. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, left-wing deviation meant encouraging revolution among the people without caring sufficiently about the leading role of the Party; right-wing deviation meant too much support for *NEP and the market."

Agnes Smedley, described in Nova Online was

"...a triple agent who worked for the Soviets, the Chinese Communists, and the Indian nationalists, was one of the most prolific female spies of the 20th century. Unlike most agents of the day, who were reasonably erudite, Smedley lacked a formal education and came from a poor, undistinguished family."

She began life in 1892 (some have it 1890) in Mo., the daughter of a laborer and homemaker. Her father deserted the family when she was 14 and her mother died of a ruptured appendix when she was about 17. She was forced to take care of her siblings, rather than continue working as a teacher in New Mexico where she had moved after passing New Mexico's teacher examination (in those days, a college degree was not necessary to become a teacher.)

Smedley married in 1912 and followed her husband to San Diego, Ca. where she entered a teachers college. Smedley was fired following joining of the Socialist Party of America. Deciding that divorce was in her better interests, she and her husband divorced and she moved to New York where she became involved in East Indian radicalism and the movement to force the English from India.

Smedley spent a brief time in jail following an arrest for distributing birth control pamphlets and had been indicted for fraud having mis-represented some Indian Nationalists as bona-fide representatives of an Indian "government in exile mission."

Smedley was held briefly, returned to New York where she began agitating again in the more radical fringes finally signing up as a stewardess on a Polish freighter. Arriving in Gdansk, she jumped ship, went to Berlin and soon joined up with Virendranath Chatto-padhyaya, an Indian nationalist and international Communist agitator. This and more can be obtained from Dr. Dennis Casey of the Air Intelligence Command in San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base.

Smedley had a long history of radical leftist intrigues in China. during the pre-war years in China, she worked as an advisor for General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, a position in which she was able to help Mao Zedong by arguing for the sending of weapons from the American Arsenal to the Communists. Stilwell concurred in that he felt those weapons would be used against the communists. The Weekly Standard also has a good article on Smedley titled "An American Abroad
Agnes Smedley and the world of communism" by Harvey Klehr noting, among other things:

"But now Ruth Price's The Lives of Agnes Smedley--a biography based on astonishingly thorough research in newly available Chinese, Russian, British, and American archives--demonstrates just how wide a swath Smedley cut through the radical movements of several continents and how deeply she was enmeshed in Soviet espionage activities.

Price succeeds in bringing to life an irritable, self-contradictory radical who managed to annoy and infuriate almost everyone with whom she worked. A product of a gritty working-class family, she retained for her entire life a steely contempt for middle-class radicals. A militant feminist, she endured years of abuse from her lover. An unrepentant individualist, she tried unsuccessfully to join several Communist parties. An eager recruit for the Soviet intelligence services, she blithely ignored their orders."

While in China, she became an associates of Richard Sorge, a Russian Spy who though originally based in China, was relocated to Japan where he spied for Russia. Smedley assisted in that effort, until Sorge was caught by the Japanese and hanged as a spy.

Following the war, Smedley was denounced as a communist spy by none other than General Douglas MacArthur. Returning to the US, she was "outed" as a person of interest to the FBI by the Chicago Tribune. A charge Smedley denied and the FBI did not take up for a number of years. When she was about ready to be subpoenaed by HUAC she left for England where she died in 1953 (some have it in 1950.) Her Ashes were sent to China for burial.

Several facts about Smedley are important. One, she was absolutely an Anti-Stalinist according to some, thouroughly stalinist according to others and indeed she knowingly helped Sorge, a Russian Spy. Two, she was caught up in the effort to lambaste Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy after HUAC "denounced" a number of probably innocent Hollywood types. Smedley organized and participated in the denouncing of HUAC and in the support of those individuals "outed" by HUAC. This is not to say that the folk from Hollywood were not communists, but the way the United States beat communism was in the marketplace of ideas and in the value of a capitalistic system.

Smedley was a spy, in fact, we now know that she was at various times a spy for Russia, China and the Nationalists in India. As the promo for Ruth Price's "The Lives of Agnes Smedley" notes:

"Her friends included such figures as Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, Emma Goldman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Zedong, and many others. Perhaps most important, Price uncovers an astonishing truth: Smedley, long thought to be the unfair target of a Cold War smear campaign, was indeed guilty of the espionage charges leveled against her by General Douglas MacArthur and others. Smedley worked to foment armed revolution in India and gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union, seeing it as a bulwark against fascism. Price argues that Smedley acted out of a passionate idealism and that she exhibited a courage and compassion worthy of a renewed, if more complicated, admiration today."

So, was she a heroine of "passionate idealism? Probably. Did she exhibit a courage and compassion worthy of a renewed admiration today? Probably not, given the abject horrors the communists pounded humanity with. Was she an interesting character? You bet! Given a better understanding of the left and its permutations (the radical left to it's mirror image radical right) we are much more likely to know when to listen, and when to guard our wallets and our safety.

Posted by GM Roper at February 6, 2005 02:28 PM | TrackBack