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'The Communist Party of the United States and the Communist International, 1919-1929'
This PhD thesis was successfully completed at the University of London in 2003. A copy has also been deposited at the Tamiment Library, New York University.
This thesis examines the relationship between the communist movement in the United States and the Communist International (Comintern) from the movement's origins in the period after the First World War to the consolidation of a stable leadership in 1929. It is based on materials in the former Comintern archives in Moscow, communist publications, and archives of important labour leaders in the United States.
The early American communist movement, born out of a left-wing split from the American Socialist Party in 1919, was divided into several hostile organisations that understood very little about American politics, culture or society. In the party's formative years, the Communist International repeatedly intervened in the work of the American party. Far from hindering the party's understanding and appreciation of American conditions, this intervention helped transform the party from a marginal sect of isolated immigrants in the 1920s, to an important (if still small) part of American politics in the 1930s, especially amongst immigrants, blacks and organised labour. This intervention stemmed from the desire of the early Comintern, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, to create an international revolutionary communist movement. However, in the mid-1920s, as the leadership and ideology of the Russian Communist Party changed, the character of Comintern intervention also changed. Under the rubric of building 'socialism in one country', the Comintern now intervened more and more to create a stable, pro-Stalin leadership.
The first portion of this thesis, comprising the first four chapters, illustrates how between 1919 and 1923 Comintern intervention was necessary to politically and organisationally construct a party. The introductory first chapter examines the continuing debate about the relationship of the Communist Party to the Comintern, especially the two main schools of contemporary historiography. On the one hand, Theodore Draper (whose pioneering studies set the bar for future work on the subject) and others since have argued that the party was essentially a creature of the Comintern; on the other hand, 'revisionists' have emphasised the indigenous aspects of the communist movement. A central aspect of my argument is that both these schools are inadequate, and, in fact, it was the influence of the Comintern that forced the early party to understand American society.
The second chapter analyses the development of the party out of a left-wing faction in the Socialist Party. Although the Russian Revolution was popular amongst many socialist militants, not all immediately wanted to form a new party, and even those who did remained divided between several, mutually hostile small sects. The Comintern helped achieve unity amongst the competing groups by forcing them to form one communist party. This is the most clear example of how, without the Comintern's influence, American communism would have been still-born.
The third chapter examines how the Comintern forced the party to take advantage of the opportunities for legal work. Whilst the US has had its share of bloody anti-labour repression, including the wartime persecution of radicals that decimated the socialist movement and the post-war 'Red Scare' that temporarily forced the party into illegality, the Comintern leadership recognised that the as a general rule, American communists could organise openly, unlike their comrades in more repressive countries. This was especially true after the Red Scare repression abated. However, many early communists in the US, like their counterparts whom Lenin polemicised against in Left Wing Communism, made illegal work a point of political principle and considered legal organising opportunist. The Comintern, which wanted to maximise the effectiveness of their American followers, waged a struggle with the leadership of the party to emerge from the underground without having any illusions in the benevolent nature of American capitalism. In this sense, the Comintern leadership helped their American comrades better understand American reality.
The fourth and fifth chapters examine the early party's interventions into the labour movement. Most historians have emphasised the party's labour work in the 1930s whilst ignoring the pervious decade. These chapters argue that, in fact, in the early-1920s, in part because of the prestige of the Bolshevik Revolution, the party had a real influence in the labour movement. Here, again, the Comintern was important: besides their aura from the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks made their American comrades intervene into the labour movement, despite the hostility of the anti-communist American Federation of Labor (AFL) leadership, instead of dismissing it as reactionary. Early communists in the labour movement, including Earl Browder, James P Cannon, and William F Dunne, helped direct the party's labour work, both vis-à-vis the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and, later, in the much larger, if conservative-led, AFL. In fact, the party recruited a number of left-wing syndicalists, including some from the IWW such as William 'Big Bill' Haywood, and, perhaps more spectacularly, the leading AFL radical, William Z Foster. By the mid-1920s, thanks to the Comintern's intervention and Cannon and Foster's leadership, the party was able to become a real, if small, factor in the labour movement. The next chapter examines the party's disastrous work in the mid- and late-1920s, when, amidst an anti-radical backlash, the communists became isolated and lost much of their previous support. This chapter examines the (rather confused) communist participation in the political and electoral campaings of organised labour, including the Farmer-Labor movement and the subsequent campaign of Robert La Follette. Second, the chapter examines the party's activities in specific industries.
However, by the mid-1920s, the nature of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International was changing, reflecting the bureaucratisation and conservatism of Soviet Russia under Stalin and his allies. The effects of this transition are explored in the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters. The sixth chapter examines the 'double-edged sword' of 'bolshevisation'. It argues that while bolshevisation is correctly seen by historians as stalinisation, especially through the elimination of factions and putting the party on record as opposing the opposition in Russia, in the United States at the time, many leading American communists did not view it as such. This was because, from their viewpoint, the organisation of the party left much to be desired. The party had inherited from the left-wing of American socialism a structure based on immigrant federations, which had essentially a monopoly on work amongst immigrant milieus. Many of the language federations saw themselves almost as autonomous organisations that happened to be allied with the English-language party instead of under the latter's control. This was especially true for the Finnish Federation: in 1922, the federation published three daily newspapers, and in 1925, some 6500 of the total party membership of 16300 were Finns. Furthermore, the party had, since its inception, been wracked by internecine factionalism that seemed to threaten the party's very existence - in general, the grouping led by James P Cannon and William Z Foster versus that led by C E Ruthenberg, James Pepper and Jay Lovestone.
The 'monolithic' party that bolshevism appeared to offer seemed, to many early communists, a necessary step in forging a revolutionary communist party. The Comintern, based on its general authority from the Bolshevik Revolution and its specific history in assisting their American comrades, was increasingly able to determine more and more of the party's internal questions. However, by this point, Comintern intervention, far from 'bolshevising' the party, reinforced the party's problems. In the coming period, the party, bereft of needed guidance, drifted rudderless. Thus at sea, it was subject to both the tides of Comintern policies and the winds of American politics in the anti-radical 1920s. For its part, the 'bolshevised' Comintern, increasingly under the sway of Stalin, began to intervene more and more heavily into the party, disfiguring its politics more and more as the factional battles became less political and more brutal. The seventh chapter examines this factional welter and the Comintern's interventions. During this period, internecine factionalism, increasingly devoid of a political basis, tore the party asunder, and sapped its ability to intervene in society. The Comintern continued to intervene, but largely to play one faction off against another.
The eighth chapter analyses the conclusion of this factionalism. In the aftermath of the 1928 Sixth Comintern Congress, the party leadership purged first its left, trotskyist wing, led by Cannon, and within the year, the right, proto-bukharinite, wing, led by Lovestone (who had until recently been the head of the party). The Comintern then installed a pliant leadership, under the leadership of Earl Browder that finally ended factionalism and carried the now stalinised party into the 1930s. Cannon, along with a handful of supporters, went on to organise the American trotskyist movement, which, in the late 1930s, became the Socialist Workers Party. Lovestone's group floundered for several years, until its founder-leader decided to give up the ghost and eventually became a key player in the world of CIA involvement in the labour movement. Under Browder's leadership, the party had come full circle. By the 1930s, despite its impressive growth during the Great Depression, the party was firmly under the political control of the stalinist Comintern.
The final chapter analyses the changing communist perspective on the 'Negro Question', from ignoring black rights to championing the right of Southern blacks to independence. This chapter argues that of black oppression has been central to American capitalism, and that the labour and socialist movements have needed to address this question in order to advance. However, it explains, the working-class movement historically has either ignored black Americans, or, even worse, been racist itself. The chapter examines how the early socialist movement maintained, at its best, a 'colour blind' attitude of ignoring the systematic oppression of black people, and how this attitude was carried over in the left wing of the Socialist Party and, later, into the early communist movement. Nonetheless, the Bolshevik Revolution energised many blacks living in the US, especially those from a Caribbean background who were attracted to bolshevism for its anti-colonial character. The chapter examines the development of the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a Harlem-based organisation of West Indians, which eventually joined the Communist Party. Then, the chapter analyses the struggle waged by former ABB cadre and other black communists to get the party leadership to take up the fight against black oppression - a struggle that found resonance in Lenin and Trotsky's Comintern leadership. The example of the 'Negro Question' provides the clearest example of how the intervention of the Comintern made the American communists more 'American', and forced them to address one of the most important issues facing the American labour movement. This laid the basis for communists in the United States becoming known as staunch fighters against racism, as seen in the Scottsboro defence case and the struggles in the 1930s. Here, the Comintern, acting on pressure from pioneer black communists, played an absolutely crucial, and positive, role in the development of the party. The final portion of the chapter analyses the origins and contradictory nature of the 'black belt' theory of the existence of a separate southern Black Nation.
