I watched PPM perform in Tokyo in the 90s and met them back stage. Great show but they were still pushing the communist agenda to the crowd.
Yes.
They were very good musicians, and their harmonies raised the level of the songs they sang.
It made their message much more palatable then if they wore dirty worker-boots, Mao jackets,and Lenin Caps with red Stars on them.
This made them MORE insidious than if they had presented communism in all its ugliness.
(Back to Seeger stealing songs and copyrighting them for himself: many of the songs he stole were written by Black Folks. POOR Black Folks. POOR Black Folks who were in PRISON. Or Dead Folks. Or Illiterate Folks. Disenfranchised Folks. Folks who couldn’t fight back, and Folks for whom he claimed to speak and for whose “causes” he claimed to champion!)