Verlaine Stoner McDonald - The Red Corner: The Rise & Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana

If you think of the politics of rural America, you probably think of it in terms of conservativism. A mixture of rugged individualistic politics, cynicism about government and conservative political leanings. There's a lot of truth to this. In 2016, 62 percent of the US rural electorate voted for Trump. This reflected the way that Trump's political movement had become the outlet for general discontent at the way small town America had been systematically undermined by successive governments, both Democrat and Republican, and forgotten by an economic system that fails ordinary people in the interest of profits for the rich. In my review of Robert Wuthnow's book The Left Behind, I noted that addressing the concerns of rural working Americans meant developing social movements "whose starting point is that working people, in rural areas and cities, have more in common than their differences."

So on a recent trip to Montana in the US, I was enormously interested to discover, that there is very much a radical tradition in rural America. The radicalism of Montana's urban areas is well known. The insurgent trade union movement of Butte remains a source of pride for working people in that town, and is well documented. But I was particularly excited to learn of Montana's "Red Corner", Sheridan County, which in the early decades of the 20th century, had an extensive radical movement which in the later part of the era, saw Communist candidates being elected to important positions in the County and significant support for left, and communist, politics.

This is a surprising revelation and Verlaine Stoner McDonald's book on the subject The Red Corner, is worth digging out for those who want to know more. McDonald begins with the context. Sheridan County, a remote part of the world even by Montana's standards is buttressed on one edge by Canada and on another by North Dakota. In the late 1800s it was settled by European farmers, many of whom came from Scandinavia, and brought with them left ideas and traditions. McDonald describes the "unforgiving climate", the lawlessness and the difficulties in living on the plains, and argues that this made the population "especially receptive" to the growing "farmers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s":

The movements' message, grounded in the persuasive strategies of other farming and mining organisations in America, would be skilfully manipulated by local political leaders, setting the stage for the astonishing rise of Communism in Sheridan County.

I will return to this comment later. But it is worth dwelling for a moment on the ideas that underpinned the support for such a movement. McDonald explains the,

northeastern Montana farmers' movement, the culture in which it arose, and the types of rhetorical appeals it would use were well grounded in traditional and very widely helf beliefs about the role of farmers in American life. Additionally, the Sheridan County Communists had the advantage of building on a foundation of home-grown populism and labour activism that had been established elsewhere on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century... In the early days of the Republic, American culture was rife with notions about what it meant to farm and to be a farmer, expressed in images that would undergird and enliven the message of the Communist Party in Montana a century and a half later.

These "Agrarian Myth" behind these politics, which celebrated the central role of the farmer to humanity, and specifically the United States, was taken up by a series of farmers' organisations in Montana, and the Plains, "devoted to education, reform, and protest in the rural Midwest and West". There was plenty to protest about and organise around; the cost of living, the price of crops and the realities of farming life on the prairie. The National Grange, one of a number of such organisations, founded in 1867, promoted 

an image of farmers as important and knowledgeable (or at least educable) members of the economic system who were standing up to assert their rights. Grangers also would not hesitate to identify those who would deprive farmers of their rights. In this effort the Grange made occasional use of appeals that would become commonplace in farmer activism, that is, pitting the producers against nonproducers. As banners in an 1873 Grange Independence Day parade asserted: "This organisation is opposed to railroad steals, salary steals, bank steals, and every other form of thieving by which the farmers and laboring classes are robbed of the legitimate fruits of their labour."

It is easy to see how politics like these could evolve into the socialist politics of the 20th century. McDonald notes how the growth of global radical politics in the early years of the new century was mirrored in the United States and Montana. Anti-war, left and socialist politics grew massively in the years before World War One, and mushroomed following the Russian Revolution in 1917. These had their echo in rural Montana where it became focused around the radical farmers' newspaper The Producers News, edited by Charles E. Taylor.

Taylor is a central figure in McDonald's book and this is not the place to retell the whole story. His newspaper became enormously influential, connected as it was to the farmers' movement the Nonpartisan League. The League was accomplished at linking political concerns to mass agitation. Organising meetings, parades and even picnics. It drew in large numbers to its events, and some of its speakers became incredibly well known. Taylor however, developed The Producers News into something more than the mouthpiece of the movement. He filled it with popular columns and editorials, injected plenty of gossip and satire, and was not afraid of mocking and insulting almost everyone else. It was a potent mix and as Taylor's own politics developed, the newspaper carried him with it. As the League morphed into the Farmer-Labour Party, Taylor was twice elected to the Montana senate.

The influence of the left, and the Communists, in Sheridan was extraordinary. As McDonald summarises, at one point 

"Reds" occupied every elected office in the county and had sent a covert Communist to Helena as their state senator for two terms. Local youths could attend camps where they were actively indoctrinated with Communist ideals, and the radicals' newspaper flourished... In [1932], former sheriff Rodney Salisbury was on the ballot in an attempt to become the nation's first Communist governor.

Taylor seems like a fascinating figure, hardworking and exuberant, with a talent for seizing the moment. He was also a socialist, and eventual member of the Communist Party. The US Communist Party had grown, in difficult conditions, out of a complicated merger from a number of different socialist organisations. It was very much a Party that was reliant on its links to the Soviet Union, and while its activists where principled and talented, its limited cadre and the hostile conditions of US politics doomed it. The CPUSA was crude and lacked nuance - it's vision of socialism was far from the emancipatory project that celebrated activism and rebellion from below. This is particularly obvious in its treatment of The Producers News. As the Russian Revolution receded into memory and revolution failed to break through in Western Europe, the leaders of the Soviet Union switched to an isolationist, State Capitalist approach to politics. This was far from the mass radical involvement that characterised Russian socialism in the era of Lenin, and it had its impact in the USA. The Producers News became increasingly a tool to celebrate the Soviet Union and its alleged achievements. Rightwing critics of the News in its rival the Plentywood Herald "acknowledging that farmers in northeastern Montana were enduring difficult times, noted that their suffering was small in comparison with that of Russian workers." 

Increasingly it seems the News was not articulating the anger of its readers, and especially while being edited by official CPUSA members while Taylor was engaged in other projects, becoming a mouthpiece of crude Soviet dogma. It was not a winning combination. The near libelous satire of Taylors' newspaper worked because it could combine local news and gossip, with frustration and anger from below. It connected to the masses, even in the absence of mass movements. The CPs model could not achieve this, and the newspaper went into decline - even when it was converted into the CPs national farmers' newspaper. Along with the decline of the Producers News went the decline of Communist influence in Sheridan County.

This is the extraordinary story that McDonald tells of the rise and fall of Sheridan's Communists. In it, she very much argues that it was the result of a some very specific circumstances. In particular she argues that without leaders like Charles Taylor and the skilled manipulation by left leaders, the movement would never have taken off. I found myself a little unconvinced by these arguments. 

It seemed to me that there was (and is) plenty for farmers in Montana to be angry about, and the left was able to articulate this in a way that was relatively unprecedented in Sheridan County. This shouldn't surprise, after all the question of crop prices, rent, taxes and evictions were screwing many workers and farmers into the ground. Unfortunately what The Red Corner doesn't really give the reader a sense of is the social movements around these issues. McDonald tends to focus on the internecine conflicts between Charles Taylor and his rivals, the arguments between the newspapers that so gripped many Montana readers or the debates within the Communist Party leadership. But there are only hints about the movements against evictions, protests and strikes. It seems to me that there is much more to this story. Radical politics can only take a hold if there is a basis for it, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more given over to the experience of farmers and workers in Sheridan County in the period. 

To give two examples. In 1918, six thousand farmers and their families came to a rally, picnic and festival, in part to hear Jeannette Rankin speak, the first woman to serve in Congress. In 1921 socialist and anti-war activist Kate Richard O'Hare, spoke to "thousands... in a cow pasture under the 'burning hot sun for two hours and ten minutes'." The venue forced on the audience because the assembly all was cancelled. If thousands of people were coming to hear radical parliamentarians and anti-war activists speak, there must have been more of a groundswell radical movement. But we read little of it here.

Verlaine Stoner McDonald's research focuses on "communication" and how activists used communication to connect with voters and the masses. There is no doubt that the role of The Producers News was significant, perhaps exemplary, in this regard. But there is a danger in framing the growth of Communism in Sheridan County, Montana solely through the lens of communication. It means that we focus on the activities of a few individuals, and ignore or downplay the activities of the people at the bottom. It would have been fascinating to learn more about what the angry Sheridan farmers and workers' were actually doing. Nonetheless this is a worthwhile read that gives a real sense of how working people everywhere can become engaged with radical ideas. Trump need not be triumphant again in rural America!

One final point that might only be of interest to fellow Trotskyist readers of this blog. Many of Sheridan's activists did carry on the struggle. A few of them ended up breaking with the Communist Party, and becoming activists in the American Socialist Workers' Party. It seems that the experience of the CPUSA, even in rural Montana, meant that some activists were prepared to carry on the struggle for a genuine socialist politics.

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