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American Communists in the Popular Front Period: Reorganization or Disorganization?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Malcolm Sylvers
Malcolm Sylvers
Affiliation:
Malcolm Sylvers is Associate Professor of United States History at the University of Venice, Dipartimento di Studi Storici, Università degli Studi, I–30124, Venezia, Italy.
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Extract

The disintegration of the American Communist Party in the Cold War years is normally ascribed to the repression mounted by most liberals together with the McCarthyites, followed by the general crisis of the international communist movement in 1956 provoked by de-Stalinization and the invasion of Hungary. The recent new histories of the CPUSA, which deal primarily with the 1930s, have replaced the view of the Party as an essentially passive agent directed by Moscow and filled with powerhungry leaders and politically-innocent members by one which sees it as composed of politically-conscious ordinary Americans who were active elements in a society in which they were rooted. This new perspective, which accepts communism as a legitimate part of the United States experience, for the most part sees CP developments in the thirties as constructive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 1989 , pp. 375 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 For a representative selection of recent work on the decade 1935–45, see: Keeran, Roger, The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Levenstein, Harvey, Communism, Anticommunism, and the CIO (Westport: Greenwood, 1981)Google Scholar; Daniel, Cletus E., Bitter Harvest. A History of California Farmworkers 1870–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Dyson, Lowell K., Red Harvest. The Communist Party and American Farmers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Isserman, Maurice, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Naison, Mark, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Haynes, John Earl, Dubious Alliance. The Making of Minnesota's DFL Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Klehr, Harvey, The Heyday of American Communism. The Depression Decade (New York: Basic, 1984)Google Scholar. The outlook of this last study is different from the others and much more in line with the books of Theodore Draper – The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking, 1957)Google Scholar, American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York: Viking, 1960)Google Scholar which, as part of the Cold War climate, emphasized above all the Comintern link of the CP. While the studies of Keeran and Naison see the CP already in decline in the late 1930s, Isserman is the most enthusiastic about the direction the Party was moving in under Browder. The only full-length study of the post-war period is of the traditional outlook and sees the Party more as a victim than a political protagonist: Shannon, David, The Decline of American Communism. A. History of the Communist Party of the United States since 1945 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959)Google Scholar. See however the recent study by Horne, Gerald, Communist front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988)Google Scholar on the main organization in which the CP was active in the society after its expulsion from the trade union movement. The quantity of material now available on the Communist movement can be appraised in the most recent general bibliography on the subject: Haynes, John Earl, Communism and Anti-Communism in the United States. An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings (New York: Garland, 1987).Google Scholar

2 An attempt at a complete study of these questions would naturally require the use of additional printed and archival material. On Party education see the work of the ex-(and anti-) Communist Frank Meyer, The Moulding of Communists. The Training of the Communist Cadre (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961)Google Scholar; and on organization the following dissertation: Alperin, Robert, “Organization in the CPUSA, 1931–38” (Northwestern University, 1959).Google Scholar Unfortunately the following study appeared too late to be utilized in this article: Kraditor, Aileen S., “Jimmy Higgins,” The Mental World of the American Rank-And-File Communist, 1930–1958 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988).Google Scholar

3 For another utilization of this organizational bulletin see Sylvers, Malcolm, “Party Organiser and American Communist Mentality in the 1930s,” Storia Nordamericana, 2 (1985), 11–38.Google Scholar

4 For Dimitrov's limited but important comments on the situation in the United States see VII Congress of the Communist International. Abridged Stenographic Report of Proceedings (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), 361.Google Scholar

5 Even before the Popular Front CP members were often criticized for their absorption in union and strike activity. Moreover, despite official directives, never more than a fifth of Party members during the 1930s were registered in factory units as opposed to territorial or neighbourhood ones.

6 Party Organizer, 11 1935, 17–21, 21–28Google Scholar; December 1935, 9–16. All notes are to this periodical unless otherwise indicated; italics are in the original. The need for reorganization was already felt by the Party's Eighth Convention held in 1934; see May–June 1934, 16; for problems of the industrial units see: March 1936, 6–13; December 1936, 14–18; and for the neighborhood branches: March 1936, 14–19; May 1936, 7–11; June 1936, 12–21; December 1936, 19–23; July 1937, 9; September 1937, 39–40.

7 October 1936, 15; October 1937, 16; March 1936, 19–20.

8 Williamson, John, “Building a Mass Party. Resolution on Organization,” in Resolutions. Ninth Convention of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (New York, 1936), 54–64.Google Scholar On the need for change together with the affirmation that the factory, however, must remain the centre of CP organization see: Stachel, Jack, “Organizational Problems of the Party” (Abridged Report to the Meeting of the Central Committee, CPUSA, 25–27 05 1935)Google Scholar, The Communist, 07 1935, 630Google Scholar; Party Organizer, 06 1936. 12Google Scholar; May 1938, 7–8; July 1938, 7. An indication of opposition to the changes in course can be seen in the publication of Peters, J., The Communist Party. A Manual on Organisation (New York: International Publishers, 1935)Google Scholar which had the standard view of the preeminence of factory organization and even affirmed that what characterized the Socialist Party was its structuring along “bourgeois election wards and districts.” On Peters – a Hungarian immigrant and alleged leader of a Communist “underground” in the States – see Klehr, , 160–61Google Scholar and Latham, Earl, The Communist Controversy in Washington, from the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 March 1936, 37, 40–43; April 1936, 39–40. Trade union members, but also those in other mass organizations were often criticized for “hiding the face of the Party,” that is, not putting forward CP positions in order to secure their presence and leadership in such organizations. See June 1935, 21–25, and October 1935, 24–29, for the period when the Party was being restructured but the examples can be multiplied.

10 November 1936, 12; February 1937, 2; January 1938, 9; March 1938, 14; January 1937, 28–29.

11 February 1937, 3, 4; October 1937, 5.

12 February 1936, 19–21; August 1937, 26; September 1935; 10–12; October 1936, 16–17.

13 May 1937, 21–24; July 1937, 22–23; September 1937, 14–16.

14 May 1937, 16–18.

15 July 1937, 35–37; March 1938, 39–40. Another article (July 1937, 40) spoke of a “New Members' Tea” held in the afternoon and described as a “new form.” Given the time of the meeting and the drink it was probably a woman's group. Schafer, Robert, “Women and the Communist Party, USA 1930–1940,” Socialist Review, 9 (05–06 1979) 73–118Google Scholar gives a general panorama of the question but does not speak of these specific organizational forms.

16 April 1934, 32; January 1935, 24. Sussman, Warren, “The Thirties,” in Coben, Stanley and Ratner, Lorman, eds., The Development of an American Culture 2nd edn. (New York: St. Martin's, 1983), 247.Google Scholar

17 June 1938, 5. On Harlem fluctuation see the considerations of Naison, 281–84, where he quotes an interview with an ex-leader of the Party there on the failure of the CP to link itself with the religious sentiment of the black population. Yet an article in Party Organiser of June 1938 (17) speaks of the need to incorporate into CP meetings in Harlem “group protest singing against oppression” considered a “cultural form of the struggle of the Negro people.”

18 For one important aspect of this change in CP outlook see Stephanson, Anders, “The CPUSA Conception of the Rooseveltian State, 1933–1939,” Radical History Review, 24 (Fall 1980), 161–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the changing interpretation of US history as an indication of the CP's ideological transformation see Sylvers, Malcolm, “Comunisti statunitensi e coscienza nazionale negli anni ' 30,” in Bonazzi, Tiziano and Vaudagna, Maurizio, eds., Ripensare Roosevelt (Milan: Angeli, 1986), 241–75.Google Scholar

19 August 1937, 3; November 1937, 38.

20 July–August 1936, 43–44.

21 July–August 1936, 16–17.

22 June 1935, 11; March 1934, 2–3; May 1938, 25; September 1936, 29. Separate from internal Party education and not treated in this essay were the “Workers Schools” –present in at least ten cities during the Popular Front – which attempted to reach non-Communist workers and progressive intellectuals.

23 February 1931, 24; July 1935, 36; March 1935, 37, 38; April 1936, 10; March 1937, 24.

24 October 1936, 25; December 1936, 31; June 1936, 41–42; February 1936, 34–35; June 1936, 32; September 1935, 25–32; December 1936, 24–30.

25 June 1936, 41; October 1936, 29; November 1936, 30; February 1938, 11. The author of the October 1936 article was the Frank Meyer referred to in note 2.

26 April 1938, 26–27; February 1938, 5; May 1938, 1–3. A more detailed view of Foster's positions in this period on Party propaganda and organization can be seen in a series of articles he published in The Communist from February to August 1938.

27 January 1938, 7; February 1938, 39; March 1938, 28–29.

28 February 1931, 11; September–October 1931, 28–29. Markoff, A, “The Training of New Cadres and Our School System,” The Communist (08 1932), 733.Google Scholar

29 October 1936, 26–27; February 1936, 3; May 1936, 43; December 1935, 31–32; December 1936, 31, 24; June 1936, 32. From 1936 through 1938 Party Organiser was filled with miscellaneous articles about CP internal education programmes including imaginative “circuit schools” which visited for short periods outlying areas. The February 1938 issue was dedicated to education and there are analyses of the teaching corps and student body for New York and Philadelphia. And yet first person accounts would be extremely useful for an accurate sense of the ideological content, student activity and teaching methods. Of extraordinary interest with regard to Party education is The Smithy of the Revolution, a 99-page pamphlet – included in the Earl Browder Papers in Syracuse University – published in 1938 by and about a National Training School held that year. Aside from a complete course description, the pamphlet includes material produced by the students as part of their work assignment.

30 July–August 1936, 32–33; February 1938, 37; July 1937, 29–32; February 1938, 2; December 1937, 31; May 1937, 12–14; October 1937, 40; February 1938, 11.

31 Stalin, J., Foundations of Leninism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 126–27.Google Scholar Essential was of course the combination of the two elements and the Soviet leader naturally criticized both “empty Russian ‘Revolutionary’ phrasemongering” and “narrow and unprincipled American efficiency.”

32 See the following autobiographies which illustrate the experiences of cadres who came into prominence during the Popular Front period: Gates, John, The Story of an American Communist (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1958)Google Scholar; Charney, George, A Long Journay (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968)Google Scholar; Davis, Benjamin J., Communist Councilman from Harlem: Autobiographical Notes Written in a Federal Penitentiary (New York: International Publishers, 1969)Google Scholar; Nelson, Steve, Barrett, James R. and Ruck, Rob, Steve Nelson American Radical (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Richmond, Al, A Long View From the Left: Memoirs of an American Revolutionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973)Google Scholar; Dennis, Peggy, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925–1975 (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1977).Google Scholar

33 For the general outlook of the CPUSA in this period see Browder, Earl, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace (New York: International Publishers, 1944)Google Scholar. If Browder's policy came under attack from Moscow a year later and he was removed from office, the minutes of Party leadership committees utilized by Klehr, Heyday, indicate that during the thirties he maintained his Comintern support against Foster's criticism. See also Sylvers, Malcolm, “The 1944–45 Upheaval in American Communism: Earl Browder and William Z. Foster on the Post-War Perspectives for the United States,” Internationale Tagung der Historiker der Arbeiterbeivegung. 21. Linzer Konferenz 1985 (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1986), 256–79.Google Scholar

34 October 1937, 39.