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The Communist Party of the USA; An Analysis of a Social Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Barrington Moore Jr.
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Extract

In certain sections of the daily press, and even in some scientific writings, one may find expressed fears that the United States faces a period of class struggle and revolutionary violence in which the Communist party will pay a prominent rôle. This is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that the Communist party of the USA has not engaged in revolutionary propaganda for the past eight years, and indeed abandoned the last slight remnant of revolutionary ideology in January, 1944. Nor does a Marxist revolution appear likely to arise from other sources. The only leftist groups that might with some accuracy be termed revolutionary, the two leading Trotskyite factions and the Revolutionary Workers League, the Socialist Labor party, the Proletarian party, and the Industrial Workers of the World, do little more today than engage in obscure polemics with one another. Their very names are unknown except to specialists. The Socialist party and its right wing splinter, the Social Democratic Federation, have long since abandoned revolutionary propaganda and confined themselves to reform within the present social structure. Thus at present no group that shows signs of growth is openly propagandizing for a Marxist revolution, and hence no promising focal point exists for an organized revolutionary movement based on the Marxist theory of the class struggle.

The reasons for the disappearance of Marxist revolutionary ideology, and the probabilities of its future recurrence in the United States, present a scientific problem that has received relatively little non-partisan investigation. As it is impossible to discuss in brief compass all of the factors that might lead to revolutionary disturbances, in this paper the analysis will be limited to the Communist party of the USA, as the most significant proponent of this point of view in recent times.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , February 1945 , pp. 31 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1945

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References

1 Such expressions are found most frequently in the papers controlled by William Randolph Hearst, Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Medili Patterson, and Eleanor Patterson. For a scientific analysis, see Faris, Ellsworth, “Prospects of a World without Intolerance,” American Journal of Sociology, March, 1944, pp. 462–463.Google Scholar While Faris does not refer to the Communist party by name, he manifestly has it in mind.

At a national convention on May 21, 1944, the Communist party of the USA changed its name to the Communist Political Association. The change was suggested in a speech by Earl Browder at Madison Square Garden on January 10, 1944. For convenience, the older and more familiar name is used throughout this paper.

2 See Valtin, Jan, Out of the Night (New York, 1941), pp. 182–183Google Scholar; testimony of Walter G. Krivitsky, October 11, 1939, H. R. Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (Dies Committee), Hearings, Vol. IX, pp. 5726, 5727Google Scholar; Gitlow, Benjamin, I Confess (New York, 1940), pp. 300–305.Google Scholar While the authenticity of these accounts is in dispute, they corroborate each other on the general nature of the controls used by the Soviets.

3 Foster, William Z., Your Questions Answered (1939), pp. 64, 109–110.Google Scholar

4 Speech by Browder, Earl, at Madison Square Garden, January 10, 1944, in Daily Worker, Jan. 11, 1944, p. 4.Google Scholar

5 Daily Worker, Oct. 9, 1944, p. 8.

6 Daily Worker, Oct. 1, 1944, p. 1.

7 Daily Worker, Aug. 24, 1939, pp. 1, 6, and following issues.

8 Editorial in Pravda, Aug. 24, 1939, concerning the Pact, reprinted in the Daily Worker, Aug. 25, 1939, p. 2. The text of the Pact is given on the same page.

9 The Daily Worker reprinted the Pravda article verbatim on the front page of the Jan. 6, 1944, issue.

10 The possibility always remains, however, that such contact might be renewed whenever the Soviets so desired.

11 It is interesting to observe that the Second Front issue was kept alive by changing the definition of a Second Front from an Anglo-American invasion of Europe to a cross-channel invasion after the Allies had invaded Italy. See, as a sample, Daily Worker, Oct. 30, 1942; statement by Dennis, Eugene, The Communist, Feb., 1943, pp. 104, 106Google Scholar; and editorial on landings in Italy in Daily Worker, Sept. 4, 1943, p. 8.

12 New York Times, Feb. 26, 1943, p. 5; Mar. 4, 1943, p. 3; Mar. 7, 1943, p. 33; New Leader, Mar. 6, 1943; Mar. 13, 1943; May 8, 1943; Daily Worker, Mar. 22, 1943; Mar. 27, 1943; Apr. 4, 1943; and numerous other issues; New Republic, Mar. 15, 1943; Nation, Mar. 13, 1943.

13 New York Times, Apr. 17, 1943; Sunday Worker, May 2, 1943.

14 The Communist International itself was dissolved in May, 1943.

15 See Chamberlin, William Henry, The Russian Enigma (New York, 1943), p. 303.Google Scholar

16 See Borkenau, F., The Communist International (London, 1938), pp. 340, 418.Google Scholar

17 Borkenau, op. cit., pp. 407 ff.

18 For a succinct summary of the party's arguments that it is a genuine American group and not an agent of the USSR, see Williamson, John, “Urgent Questions of Party Growth and Organization,” The Communist, Jan., 1944, pp. 65–68.Google Scholar

19 The Daily Worker registered with the State Department as an agent of various foreign news services in April, 1940. See New York Times, Apr. 3, 1940, p. 20. On July 31, 1940, the paper was “sold” to the Freedom of the Press Co., owned by three elderly ladies, one of whom was a member of the D.A.R. (ibid., Aug. 1, 1940, p. 23).

20 Other conditions, such as variations in the international position of the USSR, obviously affect actual and symbolic behavior toward it. As in the case of any other pressure group, it is impossible to distinguish more than very roughly between results that it achieved through its own efforts and those which came about through the operation of other forces.

21 It is, of course, incorrect to regard these as in any sense Communist-line publications, since they frequently carry material critical of the actions of the Communist party of the USA, or even of the Soviet Union, and have often been attacked by the party.

22 See Lyons, Eugene, The Red Decade (New York, 1941), esp. Chaps. XXVI–XXXI.Google Scholar The author, whose interpretations must be used with extreme caution, has a strong bias against the Stalinists.

23 New York Times, Mar. 29, 1944, p. 1.

24 Counting the Democratic votes alone, Dewey would have carried the state by 547,011. The American Labor party polled 484,594 votes (only a small proportion of which were Communist votes), the American Liberal party 320,331 votes. New York Times, Nov. 9, 1944, p. 21.

25 New York Times, Oct. 6, 1944, p. 1.

26 See Hill, Stephen, “CIO-PAC; A Survey,” New Leader, Nov. 4, 1944, p. 7Google Scholar; and report of a speech by Hillman, Sidney in New York Times, Oct. 31, 1944, p. 12.Google Scholar

27 See Daily Worker, May 11, 1943, p. 8; Williamson, John, “The Organizational and Educational Tasks of Our Party,” The Communist, Oct., 1943, p. 924.Google Scholar

28 See Daily Worker, July 6, 1943, p. 3; New York Times, July 7, 1943, p. 1; Norman, William, “The Struggle for National Unity in New Jersey,” The Communist, Oct., 1943, p. 946.Google Scholar

29 The anti-Stalinist left, particularly the Trotskyites and right-wing Socialists, have perhaps been the first to point this out, although they do it in moralistic terms, lamenting the death of revolutionary Marxism outside the USSR, and asserting that it is not a success in that country. If by success one means that a group has stayed in power for a generation and carried out a substantial portion of its original program, there is no doubt that the term can be applied to the followers of Lenin and Stalin.

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