Father

It has been sort of funny to me to hear syndics of the conservative right ranting about president Obama being a socialist. Their words seem to me completely without foundation. After all, one of his first acts as president was to bail out the American financial sector. What more does he have to do to show his loyalty to capitalism?

My father is a communist. He earned his phD in Marxist political economy. For the past thirty years he has been on the Economics Commission of the Communist Party. Growing up, I kind of just assumed that everyone had a communist father. It just seemed normal. I have since found out that this is probably not the case.

Anyway, the conservatives seem to be reaching back to a McCarthy era strategy. But what does it mean to be socialist? Is it an economic and social policy that should be condemned?

To learn more about my father and the basic tenets of Communism, I asked a friend of the family, Ellen Perlo, to field some of my questions. She is 93 and a long time member of the Party. Her late husband, Victor, withstood federal court hearings during McCarthy’s time for allegedly being a Soviet spy. The following photographs were taken during our conversation.