The Communist Party of America—1925–1945
1925—1945
MARCH
“Speech on Bolshevization of the American Party to the Organizational Conference of the Communist International, Moscow, March 18, 1925,” by William Z. FosterBeginning March 15, 1925, a conference was held in Moscow, chaired by Osip Piatnitsky, dedicated to the restructuring of Communist Parties around the world on the basis of “factory nuclei”“so-called “Bolshevization.” William Z. Foster, representative of the Workers Party of America, was elected to the 10 member Presidium of this gathering (the candidates nominated en bloc by Piatnitsky and elected unanimously). On March 18, Foster addressed the gathering on the reorganizational situation in the Workers Party of America. Restructuring of the WPA on the basis of factory nuclei was only initiated at the time of the 5th World Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1924, Foster said, noting that the fragmented nature of the American Party—split into 17 language federations—hampered the ready adoption of this scheme. Instead there was a general state of passive resistance, institutional inertia for the preservation of the current system, in which the center dealt with local organizations only through the intermediary of the Central Bureaus of the various Language Federations. Foster stated that of some 19,000 members of the WPA only 2200 were members of English-language groups, although he added that about half of the Federationists knew English well enough to engage in party work.
“On Boshevization and a Labor Party: Speech to the 5th Plenum of the Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International, Moscow—March 30, 1925,” by James P. Cannon Speech by Workers Party of America delegate to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of the ECCI (March 21-April 6, 1925) during the period of discussion about the political situation in the various countries and the next tasks of the Comintern in the restructuring of the constitent communist parties upon a basis of workplace party nuclei (so-called “Bolshevization”). With regard to Bolshevization, Cannon cites the lack of a tradition of revolutionary mass action by the working class, weak trade union organizations and the associated neglect of party work in the unions, and a fragmented party organization of just 20,000—of whom only 2,000 were enrolled in English-speaking organizations. “The Language Federation form of organization is absolutely incompatible with a Bolshevist organization,” Cannon emphatically states, adding that “We must have a centralized form of organization or we will never have a Bolshevist Party.” With respect to establishment of a Labor Party in America, Cannon states that “the organized American workers are not yet class-conscious enough to develop a labor party on a mass basis.” The situation was entirely different in the United States than in Great Britain, Cannon argued, citing the strength of the British union movement and long historical standing of the British Labour Party. In contrast, all attempts to create a Labor Party in America in the preceeding two years had been “disastrous failures.” “It would be premature to form a labor party now, and even dangerous, for we would quickly become isolated from [the] growing mass labor movement,” Cannon declares.
SEPTEMBER
“Lenin and Trotsky: A Comment on Max Eastman’s Book Since Lenin Died,” by N. Krupskaya. [September 1925] This article by the widow of V.I. Ul’ianov (Lenin) was written for publication in the American Communist press in response to the 1925 publication of Since Lenin Died, by Max Eastman. Krupskaya is harsh in her criticism of Eastman, characterizing his book as a “collection of petty gossip” and noting that Eastman “invents various fictions” by falsely characterizing Lenin’s letters to the XIII Party Congress as a “testament” and further alleging these documents were “concealed.” Krupskaya also alleges her personal correspondence with Trotsky was misrepresented in Eastman’s book, that Trotsky from Krupskaya’s correspondence “could not draw...the conclusion that Lenin regarded him as his successor, or regarded him as understanding his views better than anybody else,” as Eastman alleged. Rather, Krupskaya says that Lenin merely “considered Trotsky a talented worker faithful in the interests of the revolution and to the working class”“among others. Krupskaya also notes that she had stood in opposition to Trotsky in the current struggle in the Russian Communist Party and written against his Lessons of October in the pages of Pravda.
OCTOBER
“From Propaganda Society to Communist Party: Pages from Party History, 1919-1925,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. This 1925 article by the Executive Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party reviews the history of the American Communist Party from its origins. This material first appeared in the pages of the party’s theoretical magazine, The Workers Monthly, in October of 1925 under the title “From the Third Through the Fourth Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America” and was subsequently issued as a pamphlet by the same name.
1926
“The Workers’ (Communist) Party: What It Is and Why Workers Should Join It,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. Text of a small propaganda pamphlet encouraging wage-workers to join the Workers’ (Communist) Party. According to Ruthenberg, the W(C)PA comprised the political organization necessary to “give leadership” to the workers’ struggle against capitalism and to “direct it along the road that will carry the workers forward to the Workers’ and Farmers’ Government and victory for the new social order.” To advance this task, the W(C)PA would support the daily struggles of the workers and farmers for relief, work to amalgamate craft unions into industrial unions, work to organized the unorganized industrial workers into unions, work for the establishment of and affiliation with a Labor Party, work for Negro organization and the struggle of black Americans for “complete social equality,” and fight against American imperialism abroad.
FEBRUARY
“A Communist Trial in Pittsburgh,” by A. Jakira [Feb. 1926] Eyewitness account of the trial in Pittsburgh of Edward Horacek, a draftsman and member of the Machinists Union who was arrested and tried for his activities as a member of the Workers Party of America. Horacek was taken as a part of the April 27 and 28, 1923 raids by federal agents, state policemen, and county detectives on the Pittsburgh headquarters of the Workers Party and was the first of 9 defendants to go to trial. Jakira tells the familiar tale of a zealous prosecution with its lying witnesses before a stacked jury and a biased judge. The jury convicted Horacek for having back in 1923 distributed the printed program of the WPA (a registered political party in the state of Pennsylvania) and for having been invoiced for 50 copies of The Liberator, a WPA artistic-political magazine “sold on newsstands and bookstores in practically every city of this country.” No articles from The Liberator had been introduced into evidence during the trial to demonstrate that the publication was seditious, nor was any over act by Horacek alleged—Horacek was simply found guilty of 2 of the 8 charges made against him for his membership in the WPA and for distributing its literature. The conviction meant a potential sentence of 20 years in prison, writes Jakira. Includes a pen-and-ink caricature of Henry J. Lennon, chief of the Pittsburgh anti-red unit, chief prosecution witness in the trial who was accused by Jakira of having perjured himself on the stand.
1927
“John Reed and the Real Thing,” by Michael Gold [Nov. 1927] This article came from the issue of the Communist Party’s artistic and literary monthly commemorating t he 10th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution—a tribute by Mike Gold to his friend Jack Reed. The article is written against the views of Walter Lippmann and other “pale, rootless intellectuals” who smugly claimed that Jack Reed was a romantic, a playboy, and a superficial adventurer. Gold replies “The Revolution is the romance of tens of millions of men and women in the world today. This is something many American intellectuals never understand about Jack Reed. If he had remained romantic about the underworld, or about meaningless adventure-wandering, or about women or poem-making, they would have continued admiring him. But Jack Reed fell in love with the Revolution, and gave it all his generous heart’s blood.” Gold further sees Reed as pivotal in destroying the historic prejudice against intellectuals held by the American far left, noting that for the IWW “the word ‘intellectual’ became a synonym for the word ‘bastard,’ and in the American Communist movement there is some of this feeling.” However Reed “identified himself so completely with the working class; he undertook every danger for the revolution; he forgot his Harvard education, his genius, his popularity, his gifted body and mind so completely that no one else remembered them any more,” thus proving for all time that the line between intellectuals and workers was not impassable. Gold concludes that the “war to end wars” supported by Lippmann and his associates—those who denigrate Reed and the Russian Revolution—was false, a mere “prelude to a more rapacious capitalist imperialism and a greater imperialist war,” but that John Reed had given his life for the “real thing.”
“Questions and Answers to American Trade Unionists: Stalin’s Interview with the First American Trade Union Delegation to Soviet Russia,” by I. Stalin; Introduction by Jay Lovestone. [discussion of Sept. 9, 1927] Full text of a pamphlet published by the Communist Party, providing stenographic quotations of a very extensive dialog between Iosif Stalin and a number of American trade unionists and academics in the Soviet Union on a fact-finding tour. Stalin answers a dozen questions posed by the visiting delegates, sidestepping only a query about his concrete differences with Trotsky, before turning the tables and asking a series of questions of the Americans about conditions in their own country. One passage by Stalin the perceived role of the Comintern in the daily life of national parties is of particular interest: “The assertion that the American Communists work under ‘orders from Moscow’ is absolutely untrue. There are no such Communists in the world who would agree to work ‘under orders’ from outside against their own convictions and will and contrary to the requirements of the situation. Even if there were such Communists they would not be worth a cent. Communists bravely fight against a host of enemies. The value of a Communist, among other things, lies in that he is able to defend his convictions. Therefore, it is strange to speak of American Communists as not having their own convictions and capable only of working according to ‘orders’ from outside. The only part of the labor leaders’ assertion that has any truth in it at all is that the American Communists are affiliated to an international Communist organization and from time to time consult with the Central body of this organization on one question or another.... Some people believe that the members of the Communist International in Moscow do nothing else but sit and write instructions to all countries. As there are more than 60 countries affiliated to the Comintern, one can imagine the position of the members of the Comintern who never sleep or eat, in fact do nothing but sit day and night and write instructions to all countries.”
“Expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev: Statement of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers (Communist) Party of America.” [Nov. 20, 1927] Two words that absolutely do not exist in the literature of American Communism for the 1919-1923 period are “Leninism” and “Trotskyism.” Both of these terms are ideological constructs which emerged as a byproduct of the faction fight that erupted after the death of Lenin in January 1924, when a number of leading politicians in the Russian Communist Party (Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev, Trotsky) attempted to systematize Lenin’s basic ideas as an “-ism,” to portray themselves as the best and most consistent adherents of this new “-ism,” and to anathematize their leading opponents as antithetical to this “-ism.” That said, this document is interesting as an example of how quickly the Jay Lovestone-led Workers (Communist) Party of America issued a public statement approving the expulsion from the Russian Communist Party of Lev Trotsky and Grigorii Zinoviev following the debacle of their Revolution Day public demonstration against the Central Committee of the VKP(b), headed by Iosif Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin. “The Trotsky-Zinoviev opposition has long ago overstepped the bounds of the permissible in a Communist, Leninist Party. The actions of the opposition have long ago reached the point of actually encouraging the enemies of the working class. Now the opposition has come to the stage where it is organizing a new party, joining hands with non-working class elements, enemies of the Soviet Union, becoming the rallying center for capitalist opposition to the Soviet power generally,” the resolution declares. The resolution adds that “Trotskyism is not Leninism. It is the negation of the Leninist revolutionary theory and practice, which alone guided the toiling masses of Russia to success and victory.” Trotskyism is characterized by the CEC resolution as “ultra-revolutionary phrases masking petty bourgeois opportunist tendencies.” The resolution proclaims that “the Central Executive Committee of the Workers (Communist) Party pledges itself to increase its efforts to educate its membership and the American working class as to the line of Leninism and the issues involved in the controversy in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Without a bit of irony the ultra-factional American CEC adds: “Hail the unity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist International, leader of the world’s working class. Long live Leninism, the path to victory!”
DECEMBER
“Stalin, ‘The Voice of the Party,’ Breaks Trotsky: The Rubberstamp Secretary vs. The Fiery Idealist: Sidelights on the Russian Revolution,” by Anna Louise Strong [circa Dec. 15, 1925] In this article from the English Left Wing press, American Communist Anna Louise Strong explains the political situation evolving in the Russian Communist Party. Whereas previous to the death of the former, Lenin and Trotsky had dominated the Russian scene, now it was Trotsky and Stalin who loomed large. And of these two: “Stalin is undisputed ‘boss’ today. He rules through his commanding position as General Secretary of the dominant party, and from that post influences the appointment chairmen of the Council of People’s Commissars and the heads of politics and industry. He sees practically no foreigners and none of the high non-Communist administrative officers of Government: his work is to keep the party machine organized and efficiently functioning.” The Opposition around Trotsky is characterized as “small but able,” composed largely of “the men who were abroad in Europe during the Tsarist days of persecution -- they learned Western languages, Western industrial technique, Western revolutionary movements.” Strong adds that these “They comprise all the good orators of the Communist Party. Meetings have become dull since the Opposition was suppressed." Strong intriguingly observes that “Trotsky is a personality: he inspires millions. Stalin is only a perfect Secretary. Yet Stalin wins and Trotsky loses. Trotsky loses because his personality is always in evidence; Stalin wins because he succeeds in making himself forgotten. He is thought of not as a man but as the ‘Voice of the Party.’ Personal allegiances are at a discount among the Communists. Aside from their reverence for Lenin, who is no longer a man but a symbol, they wish to follow, not any individual, but the collective will of the organization. Stalin succeeds by becoming identified with that collective will. A man who can do that is, of course, a great politician."
1928
“Ruthenberg as Fighter and Leader,” by Jay Lovestone. This hagiographic biography of the deceased Executive Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party of America was originally written by his successor to introduce a collection of speeches published by International Publishers. Although thoroughly uncritical, this article nevertheless provides a useful summary of the political career of Ruthenberg, including an impressive list of political offices for which he was a candidate during the period 1910 to 1919 (Mayor, State Treasurer, Congressman, US Senator). Nary a word is mentioned about Ruthenberg’s social origins, education, factional orientations over time, nor any hint given of any tactical difficulties faced or political errors made by Ruthenberg over the course of his political career. Instead, Ruthenberg, rendered a faultless icon, is depicted as “The Founder of the Communist Party” and lauded for “Leninist faith in the masses” dating back to 1911.
“American Negro Problems,” by John Pepper. Full text of a pamphlet published by Workers Library Publishers in 1928. The Hungarian revolutionary Josef Pogany [“John Pepper’} outlines the situation facing the Communist Party with regards to black liberation: “The Communist Party cannot be a real Bolshevik Party without being also the Party of the liberation of the Negro race from all white oppression,” he notes. Pepper states that class differentiation has increased within the black population, with a black bourgeoisie emerging at the same time the situation of rural blacks was steadily worsening. The Communist Party would advance the cause of “full racial, social, and political equality for the Negro people,” dealing with the farming masses of the “Black Belt” as “the potential basis for a national liberation movement of the Negroes and as the basis for the realization of its right of self-determination of a Negro state.” Emphasis was to be placed on attracting black workers and agricultural laborers to membership in the Communist Party, says Pepper.
“Our Appeal Against Expulsion from the Communist Party,” by James P. Cannon. [Dec. 17, 1928] Text of a speech delivered Dec. 17, 1928 at a plenum of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers (Communist) Party. James Cannon, Max Shachtman, and Martin Abern were expelled from the party on Oct. 25, 1928 for “Trotskyism,” but chose to avail themselves of their right of appeal to the next meeting of the CEC. The nearly 200 in attendance heard a three hour presentation of the case against Cannon, Shachtman, and Abern, before Cannon was given the floor to present this hour-long defense. Cannon admitted the trio’s adherence to the “views of the Russian Opposition” but promised “to discontinue all extraordinary methods the moment our party rights are restored and we are permitted to defend our views in the party press and at party meetings.” Cannon charged that “the Pepper-Lovestone leadership” were embarked “on the course of bureaucratic disruption.” Cannon asserted a trend, particularly strong in the New York district, towards the dilution of the party with “all kinds of dubious, petty-bourgeois careerists and half-baked intellectual elements”“a trend directly related to the “wholesale expulsion of proletarian fighters,”
“Underground and Above: A Memoir of American Communism in the 1920s,” by Max Bedacht. A chapter from the unpublished memoir of Max Bedacht (1883-1972), completed in 1967 from the manuscript at the Tamiment Library at New York University—published here through their courtesy and with our thanks. Bedacht’s account details the factional struggle that swept the party from the unification of the UCP with the old CPA in 1921 through the expulsion of Jay Lovestone and his associates in 1929. Particularly valuable for its confirmation that the ill-fated Bridgman, Michigan convention of 1922 was held at the same exact site as the problem-free Joint Unity Convention that founded the United Communist Party in 1920—and for recollections about the factional struggle that took place at the 4th Congress of the Comintern in Nov.-Dec. 1922, in which Bedacht carried the banner of the “Liquidator” faction in opposition to the adherents of the underground party, the “Geese.” Includes copious explanatory footnotes.
1929
NOVEMBER
“Lovestone, Wolfe & Co. Stand Naked in the Marketplace: Unsigned Editorial in The Daily Worker, Nov. 30, 1929.” by A heated and rather nasty front page editorial from the pages of the CPUSA’s daily. Bukharin’s capitulation and admission of having made “dangerous errors” in the USSR “has left the latest recruits to the ranks of the enemies of the working class and of the Communist Party of the United States—Lovestone, Wolfe & Co.—stark naked with their renegade sores exposed in the marketplace where capitalism purchases its servants,” the Editorial declares. The “counterrevolutionary hope” of a split in the CPSU around Bukharin is said to have “gone glimmering. That the actions of Comrade Bukharin, with the opportunist, pessimist platform upon which he then stood, could bring a split in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was never more than a desperate wish on the part of the enemies of Communism and the working class who found temporary refuge in the ranks of our world Party.” The editorial quotes Lovestone’s charges that the present leaders of the Comintern were “political ignoramuses” marked by “unprincipledness” and responds in kind with specific charges: “Lovestone speaking of ‘unprincipledness!’ This is surely a sight for gods and men! The young gentleman who began his career as a police probation officer, who, true to his training in this broad field of anti-working class activity, added fresh laurels by appearing as a state’s witness against a comrade in 1920, who found his way into our Party by methods best known to himself but of which others are not entirely ignorant—the petty bourgeois careerist who systematically corrupted the younger and weaker elements of our Party and who only 8 months ago called Salome-like for the head of Bukharin in the vain belief that he could thereby save his own.” Lovestone and his political associates Bert Wolfe and Ben Gitlow are called “petty bourgeois gentlemen” and “counterrevolutionists.” “Fortunately for the American working class our Party was strong enough to expose and drive these treacherous elements from its ranks,” the editorial trumpets.
DECEMBER
“Lovestone Ends His ‘Isolation,’” by Earl Browder [Dec. 23. 1929] Article from the Communist Party’s daily press attempting to denigrate expelled party leader Jay Lovestone as a participant in an international alliance of Right Wing elements. Browder makes much of a $100 donation received by Lovestone from “Mexican comrades” as “blood-money” from “a choice collection of scoundrels” and renegades who were ultimately “supported and financed by Wall Street.” All this serves as precursor to the main event, Browder’s dusting off of the 1920 Winitsky Trial affair, in which Lovestone testified under subpeona from the prosecution, only to be accused of party treason. Browder asserts that Lovestone “received immunity from prosecution by agreeing to testify; his testimony was referred to by the judge in charging the jury as the basis for a verdict of guilt against Winitsky. About that time there were several splits in the underground party, and in the confusion Lovestone escaped from having to answer to the Party for his conduct.” Browder notes that the affair was, years later, brought before the International Control Committee of the Comintern, which “after reviewing the case, declared that Lovestone had been guilty of conduct impermissible in a Communist”—but which closed the case without sanctions, in light of so much time having passed and Lovestone having been accepted into the top leadership. “Under normal circumstances the case would have been closed even now. But Lovestone has shown by his present renegacy, by his slanderous attacks upon the Party and Comintern, and by his open collaboration with the enemies of the revolutionary working class, that his testimony for the state in 1920 was not an accident,” Browder states.
1930
FEBRUARY
“The Facts Speak for Themselves,” by Harry Winitsky [Feb. 15, 1930] The charges made by the CPUSA that recently expelled leader Jay Lovestone had acted improperly as a state’s witness in the Harry Winitsky trial of 1920 are refuted in this article by Winitsky himself, published in the pages of The Revolutionary Age, official organ of the “CPUSA-Majority Group.” Winitsky states that while at the time of the trial he had believed that Lovestone should have refused to testify under compulsion and instead should have chosen to go to jail for contempt of court, instead “Lovestone as a disciplined member of the Party accepted the instructions of Ruthenberg, then the Secretary of the Party, and testified.” Winitsky takes aim at Earl Browder’s editorial of Dec. 23, 1929, against Lovestone and declares “Browder in his article lies when he states that Lovestone agreed to testify against me when he was offered immunity from prosecution.” Browder’s further statement that Lovestone’s testimony “was referred to by the judge in charging the jury as the basis for a verdict of guilty against Winitsky” is called by Winitsky “a deliberate lie, a contemptible trick used by Browder to cover the truth.” In reality, Winitsky states that “I had no illusions as to my fate when I went to trial” and that Lovestone had merely regurgitated facts already in evidence in the proceeding. “I frankly told the Communist International in my statement of the case that I was convicted by the court even before my trial had started and that Lovestone’s testimony had nothing to do with my conviction,” Winitsky states. Winitsky proceeds to tell the sordid tale of the ongoing effort of the Foster-Cannon-Bittelman-Lore faction to dust off the 1920 trial for factional gain, as part of an effort to discredit the man believed to be the “brains” of the opposing Ruthenberg faction. Winitsky was induced against his better judgment to prefer charges against Lovestone to the Communist International—an action for which he was ashamed and subsequently apologized to Lovestone. Winitsky’s account of this effort to make hay of the trial offers a fascinating glimpse of the bitter and utterly unprincipled factional warfare of the middle-1920s.
APRIL
“Resolution on Language Work: Adopted by the March 31-April 4, 1930, Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPUSA.” At the end of March, the Central Committee of the CPUSA gathered in New York to prepare a “Thesis on the Economic and Political Situation and the Tasks of the Party” and to draft resolutions for the forthcoming 7th Convention of the Party, which opened June 20. This document is one of the seven resolutions adopted, outlining (in rather stilted language) the failings of various language fractions and the non-english party press and detailing the organizational-command structure within non-party language groups. An interesting detailing of the party’s foreign language work during a period when “federationism” was regarded as retrograde.
“’As Pure and Transparent as Crystal,’” by Leon Trotsky [April 26, 1930] Trotsky’s speculative commentary, first published in the April 26, 1930 issue of The Militant, the organ of the Communist League (Opposition), on Stalin’s decision to publish his “Speeches on the American Communist Party” in the VKP(b) theoretical journal Bolshevik and as a pamphlet in America with a print run of 100,000. Trotsky sees Stalin as attempting to undercut William Z. Foster’s claim to the leadership of the American party with these publications.
JUNE
"Shortcomings of Party Fractions in Language Work." [June 1930] Official published statement on the activities of the non-English members of the Communist Party, USA. Even at this late date somewhat more than half of the party’s membership seems to have been participants in one of the CPUSA’s 16 “Language Bureaus.” The largest of these remained the Finnish, accounting for a reported 1800 members— more than double the membership of the next largest Language Bureau, the Yiddish-language Jewish Bureau. This article in The Party Builder is critical of the members of the various Language Bureaus for joining small auxiliary organizations already controlled by the Party rather than by attempting to expand the party’s power through participation in larger organizations controlled by “the class enemy.” The leadership of the language groups are singled out for criticism for their “looseness,” unable in some cases to provide exact numbers of party members participating in outside language groups. A frequent failure of the language group members to participate in general party campaigns is also noted. The “main decisive work” of these members is in the regular party units, readers are reminded.
"Right Danger and Radicalization,” by Alfred Wagenknecht [June 21, 1930] Formerly the Executive Secretary of the Communist Labor Party and United Communist Party and the head of the Friends of Soviet Russia, by 1930 Alfred Wagenknecht had been largely shunted aside from a position of top leadership in the Communist Party. This article from the Daily Worker is written from the perspective of a rank-and-filer and discusses the party’s all-out propaganda campaign among its members against the so-called “Right Danger” in Wagenknecht’s own party group. Wagenknecht seems positively inclined to the CPUSA’s left turn: “The Party suffers from indigestion because Party members are not at factory gates,” he declares. Wagenknecht advocates for greater direct contact with the working class: “We must drill comrades in how to do factory-gate work. We must teach them to make slogan speeches. We must insist that they talk to the workers and get contacts. We must develop revolutionary imagination, spirit; form experienced shock troops for the larger factories; concentrate adequate comrades until results are obtained; study the factory and the workers so as to circumvent obstacles and difficulties with the police and bosses; know exactly when the workers go to work, come from work, have their lunch period; find out all about working conditions in the factory, number of departments, how to get leaflets and Daily Workers inside the shop.”
1937
UNDETERMINED MONTH
“Stalin’s Speeches on the American Communist Party,” by I. Stalin. Full text of a pamphlet published by the CPUSA early in 1931, containing three of Stalin’s speeches on the American factional situation, delivered before the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Stalin is harshly critical of the lack of discipline and unprincipled factionalism of both of the Lovestone majority faction and the Foster-Bittelman minority faction. CPUSA Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone drew particularly heavy fire, with Stalin noting that “In factional scandalmongering, in factional intrigue, Comrade Lovestone is indisputably an adroit and talented factional wirepuller. No one can deny him that. But factional leadership must not be confused with Party leadership. A Party leader is one thing, a factional leader is something quite different. Not every factional leader has the gift of being a Party leader. I doubt very much that at this stage Comrade Lovestone can be a Party leader.” As part of Stalin’s proposed solution, Lovestone and Bittelman were to be held in Moscow and reassigned to Comintern work elsewhere—a decision which precipitated the split of Lovestone and his closest circle. Includes an unsigned preface emphasizing Stalin’s correctness and dismissing allegations made by the Left Opposition movement that publication of the document marked a first step towards Foster’s removal from the ranks of party leaders.
MARCH
“Revive Bridgman Case, Try to Jail Communist Workers.” (Daily Worker) [March 26, 1931] In March of 1931, the all-but-forgotten 1922 Bridgman raid was suddenly vaulted back into the news, the long-delayed case apparently seen by the American state security apparatus as a means of decapitating the troublesome Communist Party USA. Some 27 indicted “conspirators” remained in jeopardy for their purported crime—accused of having met with their fellows at a summer camp on the shores of Lake Michigan as part of a convention of the underground Communist Party of America. Those imperiled by possible 10 year prison terms for this alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism law included William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Max Bedacht, William F. Dunne, Ella Reeves Bloor, Robert Minor, and Rose Pastor Stokes. To make matters worse for the indicted Communists, the judge in the case reversed the ruling he made in 1923 and combined the cases of the entire group, making it easy for a single mass political trial to be conducted. The CP’s legal aid arm, the International Labor Defense, called upon American workers to “immediately rally in militant fashion to save these leaders from a long term in prison.... Organize defense meetings, mass demonstrations, and fight for the immediate freeing of our militant membership.”
“The First Convention of the International Workers’ Order, Inc.” by R. Saltzman [May 30, 1931] One of the Communist Party’s most successful affiliated “mass organizations” was the International Workers’ Order, formed by the separation of Left Wing branches from the Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish fraternal and benefit society with a Socialist orientation. This pre-convention report by IWO head R. Saltzman gives a brief outline of the IWO’s origins and activity during its first 11 months between its effective launch on July 1, 1930 and the end of May 1931. Saltzman notes that some 225 branches of the IWO in 31 states had been organized, with 12,000 members—slightly short of the target of 15,000 set for the year. Over $22,700 in sick benefits had been paid out by the organization during this period, with $51,600 remaining in reserve. In addition to sick benefits, the IWO had taken over the formation of childrens’ schools from the Non-Partisan Workers’ Childrens’ Schools organization, leading to the establishment of 80 schools giving “a working class revolutionary education” to some 6,000 children. Further, the IWO had “actively taken part in the mass struggles,” including endorsement of a national health insurance bill, participation in May Day rallies, and participation in the election campaign “lead by the Communist Party.” “The first convention of the International Workers’ Order will accept the general correct line, in the light of constructive self-criticism, abolish the drawbacks in our work, reveal the weak points, and strengthen our position for a united Class Order in the fraternal movement in this country,” Saltzman declares.
“Letter from Tom Mooney in San Quentin Prison to Joseph Stalin in Moscow, Oct. 17, 1932.” “This letter was promoted on the cover of the November 1932 issue of The Labor Defender, the official organ of the CP’s legal defense organization, International Labor Defense. While the greetings to Stalin on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia are largely pro forma, the document is interesting both as a snapshot of Mooney’s personal politics (“All Hail to the Russian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. I’m for it hook, line and sinker, without equivocation or reservation.”) as well as to the way that a Cult of Personality was beginning to emerge among the Communist faithful even at this early date (the person of Stalin beginning to be regarded as a human embodiment of the Russia revolution). Mooney expresses his belief that had it not been for the demonstration on his behalf of Petrograd workers on April 25, 1917, he would have been executed. “Manifesto and Program of the American League Against War and Fascism.: Adopted at the First U.S. Congress Against War, New York City, Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 1933.” Founding declaration fo the Communist Party’s 1930s mass organization dedicated to anti-militarism and defense of the USSR. In the face of increasing war danger and the development of fascism abroad and fascist tendencies at home, the American League Against War and Fascism advocated “mass resistance” uniting workers, impoverished farmers, oppressed blacks, women, and youth in a “nationwide agitation and organization against war preparations and war.” The group pledged to “support the peace policies of the Soviet Union for total and universal disarmament” and to oppose the machinations of imperialism abroad as well as “developments leading to Fascism” at home. “C.P. Proposes Joint Actions on Daily Issues: Statement of the Central Committe, CPUSA to the National Executive Committee, Socialist Party, June 19, 1934,” In the aftermath of HItler’s attainment of power in Germany and in mortal fear of the perceived “fascist” tendencies of the new Roosevelt administration, the Communist Party made an appeal for a “United Front of Action” with the Socialist Party, delivered as a letter to the SP’s 1934 National Convention in Detroit. This commuique was not answered, motivating the CP to make the concrete pitch more publicly—publishing the text in the June 26 edition of the Daily Worker. Noting that the majority of the newly-elected NEC of the Socialist Party had previously announced themselves in favor of united front action with the Communists but had been blocked by “Hillquit, Oneal, Waldman & Co.,” the SP leadership was directly challenged: “Today, the National Executive Committee, which claims that its policies represent a repudiation of that group, and which poses as a leftward group, can no longer offer the old excuse for an inability to establish the united front with the Communist Party on issues which concern the most immediate and vital interests of all the toilers.” “Beginnings of Revolutionary Political Action in the USA,” by Vern Smith [Oct. 1933] A pamphlet-length historical survey of the development of the American radical movement from 19th Century utopianism to the formation of the Socialist Party of America, as published in the pages of the theoretical journal of the CPUSA. While tendentious treatments of controversial topics do creep into the work, as might be expected, the article remains useful as a brief summary of the main course of left wing political development throughout the last part of the 19th Century and first part of the 20th. Smith emphasizes the continuity between the American sections of the First International and the formation of the Socialist Labor Party, from which sprang the Socialist Party of America; from which in turn sprang the American Communist movement. Of particular interest is the rather heroic portrayal of the Chicago Anarchist movement of the 1880s—depicted as fundamentally sound revolutionists who were pushed into the position of becoming “more and more extreme in the course of their reaction against the sickening legalism of the SLP.” Also interesting is the accusation that the Socialist Labor Party took a position of national chauvinism during the Spanish-American War of 1898, ignoring the transparently obvious imperialist basis of the conflict and explicitly regurgitating the official slogan that this was a war to “Free the oppressed Cubans!” “The Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial,” by Alexander Bittelman [Sept. 1936] From August 19-24, 1936, was held in Moscow the first of three sensational public “show trials” featuring prominent former members of the Soviet elite accused of complicity in counterrevolutionary conspiracies to commit murder and overthrow the Soviet state. Chief defendants in the first trial, the so-called “Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center,” were G.E. Zinoviev and L.B. Kamenev—former members of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. All 16 defendants in this case were tried, sentenced to death, and executed in short order. This article, published as part of the lead essay of the September 1936 issue of the CPUSA’s theoretical journal, The Communist, was an initial to orientate party members to the situation in the USSR. Bittelman accuses Trotsky of being a “petty-bourgeois ‘revolutionist’” and likens his alleged criminal complicity in the plot to assassinate Soviet Communist leaders to the effort of the Socialist Revolutionaries to assassinate Bolshevik leaders (including Lenin) during the Russian Civil War. “In this ‘transformation’ of Trotskyism there is nothing especially new. It is no news that certain ideologists of petty-bourgeois ‘revolutionism’ have turned fascist. Mussolini is an outstanding case,” Bittelman notes. Trotsky’s critique of the Soviet constitution is likened to that of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and the implication of this purported convergence is stated with certitude in the wake of the trial by Bittelman, who declares that “Trotskyism is fascist terrorism.” “John Wilhelmovich Pepper-Pogány: Arrest and Execution Information.” [executed Feb. 8, 1938] Basic arrest and execution details, including a prison photo, of John Pepper (née Jozsef Pogány), Hungarian revolutionary and leading figure in the Communist Party of America during the decade of the 1920s. This record, published in a book by the Memorial Society in Russia in 2000, clearly indicates that the Hungarian Communist retained his American pseudonym for the rest of his life. At the time of his arrest on July 29, 1937, Pepper was living in Moscow and was the head of the publicity department of the People’s Commissariat of the Food Industry. Pepper was sentenced to be shot on Feb. 8,1938 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on charges of participation in a counter-revolutionary organization and was executed that same day. Pepper was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium on May 30, 1956, the record indicates. Those with fast internet may prefer the high-resolution version of this file (1.8 megs). “The Moscow Trials,” by Norman Thomas [March 1938] Article by the leader of the Socialist Party attempting to make sense of the Great Show Trials in Moscow—the third of which, featuring Bukharin in the dock, was held March 2-13, 1938. “These confessions, true, false, or partly true and partly false, are for us who have believed in socialism as the hope of the world the occasion of bitter tears and deep humiliation,” states Thomas, who notes similar patently false confessions happened during the period of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchcraft trials. “I assume that in a regime which makes possible no legal or democratic opposition even within the Communist Party to the decisions of the bureaucracy there have been plots. This was probably especially true in the dark days of 1932-1933....The important thing is that there is no interpretation of these trials which does not bring shame upon the regime,” writes Thomas. He adds that “Lenin was a great enough man to master the amoral tactics which he consciously used with some regard for proportion and achievement. None of his successors has that ability. Insofar as Lenin, yes, and Trotsky, were responsible for this exaltation of secular Jesuitism as a kind of working class virtue, they must share in the guilt of its complete degeneration under Stalin.... [Stalin’s] supreme failure has been an exaltation of a regime which makes suspicion of one’s closest comrades inevitable and plots and counterplots the only vehicle of effective political activity.” Thomas calls the USSR “a totalitarian state under a monolithic party” and presciently notes the likelihood of a change of party line with some chance of “an alliance or understanding with Hitler.”
“Where is Juliet Stuart Poyntz?” by Carlo Tresca [March 1938] Article by the well known syndicalist labor organizer Carlo Tresca in the pages of V.F. Calverton’s Modern Monthly, charging foul play by the Soviet secret police in the mysterious May 1937 disappearance of the “personal friend of mine for twenty years,” Juliet Stuart Poyntz. Poyntz (who in 1925 was formally rebuked for “Loreism”—the American stalking horse for “Trotskyism”) retired from public political work in 1934, Tresca states. Thereupon, “she became a GPU agent,” being seen in Moscow in the company of know secret police employee George Mink as late as 1936. According to Tresca’s testimony here: “In May 1937, I met her on the street and at that time she told me that she had become disgusted with the Soviet regime and the Communist Party in this country. Her attitude was known to the Stalinists. They had reason to fear her because she might break with them and disclose secret matter. About a year ago, Miss Poyntz took a room, in the American Women’s Association headquarters. She was seen by friends as late as June 4 or 5, 1937. She has never been seen since.” Tresca alludes to the complicity of “agent of the GPU” Shauchno Epstein in the Poyntz disappearance and states “I am convinced that an effort was made to recall or kidnap Miss Poyntz to Moscow, and that, if it wasn’t found necessary to kill her during the efforts, she was, in fact, taken to Moscow.” Carlo Tresca was assassinated in the United States in 1943, purportedly by agents of the Mussolini regime. “To All Active Supporters of Democracy and Peace.” [Aug. 14, 1939]An open letter signed by “400 leading Americans” published on the eve of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact stating that “The Fascists and their allies are well aware that democracy will win if its supporters are united” and that efforts were being made to sow suspicion “between to Soviet Union and other nations interested in maintaining peace.” Domestic “reactionaries” were similarly attempting to “split the democratic front” by “turning anti-fascist feeling against the Soviet Union” by encouraging “the fantastic falsehood that the USSR and the totalitarian states are basically alike,” according to the document. A list of achievements of the USSR aimed “to make it clear that Soviet and Fascist policies are diametrically opposed” was provided. “The Meaning of the Non-Aggression Pact.” [Sept. 1939]On August 23, 1939, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany suddenly signed a 10 year treaty of mutual non-aggression, promising to refrain from violence against one another and to refuse to aid any third party engaged in an attack of the other. A secret provision of the treaty provided for the territorial division of Poland by Germany and the USSR. This unsigned editorial in the September 1939 issue of Soviet Russia Today was a first attempt by the American Communist Party to acclimate the readers of this mass, “non-party” publication to the new political situation. Stalin is quoted extensively in making the argument that the pact was necessary by the unwillingness of the “dominant powers” of Britain and France to “go beyond words and declarations” and uniting with the USSR to stop Nazi aggression. Included is the text of the public portion of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact. “Lenin and Stalin as Mass Leaders,” by William Z. Foster [Dec. 1939] This literary genuflection by The Great Foster was part of a special 60th Birthday issue in honor of The Great Stalin in the theoretical monthly of the CPUSA. Foster waxes lengthily and passionately on the “unmatched ability” of the “masters of Marxian theory, Lenin and Stalin.” Lenin was “bold, resourceful and flexible in his political strategy,” writes Foster, while Stalin, “’the best pupil of Lenin,’ also displays a high genius of political strategy.” Foster notes that “a strategic move of great importance was Stalin’s bold purge of spies and wreckers from Soviet life, which gave fascism its biggest defeat, upsetting Chamberlain’s and Hitler’s plan of a united attack on the Soviet Union.” Foster also hails “Leninism-Stalinism" (observe rare use of this term) as “the theoretical basis of the international policy of the people’s front.” Foster hails the “veritable miracles of mass activation and struggle" achieved by the superhuman duo. “Wiseacres” ridiculed especially the plan to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Foster notes, “but the Communist Party, headed by Stalin, was undeterred by this pessimism, by the sabotage of Trotskyites and other wreckers" and it “proceeded to a tremendous mobilization and activization of the whole Soviet people.” Foster declares that the CPUSA could successfully teach the masses that “this is an imperialist war, in mobilizing them to struggle for peace and to keep America out of the war,” to organize them to defend their civil rights and enlighten them in the principles of socialism “only if it learns and practices the profound lessons that Lenin and Stalin have to teach us in Marxian theory, political strategy, mass organization, and mass activization."
“Minutes of the Convention of the Communist Party, New York, May 20, 1944.” mmediately prior to the convention founding the “Communist Political Association” there was a short pro forma convention of the Communist Party USA (technically the organization’s 12th) held to officially dissolve the CPUSA to make room for establishment of the CPA. After singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” the assembled 220 delegates and 173 alternates heard opening remarks by National Chairman William Z. Foster who set the stage for General Secretary Earl Browder, who made the formal motion for dissolution of the CPUSA. The convention approved Browder’s motion unanimously before voting to adjourn. This document contains the full text of the official published minutes of this short gathering. “Constitution of the Communist Political Association: Adopted by the Constitutional Convention, May 20-22, 1944.””The basic document of organizational law for the Communist Party during its brief interlude as the “Communist Poltical Association.” The completely new organizational structure called for in this document began at the local level with geographic “clubs,” democratically electing officers annually as part of democratically elected state organizations. Governing the party would be a set of national officers, headed by (all democratically elected) a “President” and with an indeterminate number of “Vice-Presidents,” a Secretary, a Treasurer, and an indeterminately sized “National Committee”“which in turn was to democratically elect a “National Board” of indeterminate size. This National Organization was to have the power to establish regional District organizations, headed by (democratically elected) District Committees. The constitution stated “Every member is obligated to fight with all his strength against any and every effort, whether it comes from abroad or from within, to impose upon the American people the arbitrary will of any sellfish minority group or party or clique or conspiracy, or to interfere with the unqualified right of the majority to direct the destinies of our country.” For all such pious protestations of its adherence to democratic norms, in practice the 1944 Constitutional Convention elected the Nominating Committee’s entire slate of 40 proposed members and 20 proposed alternates as a National Committee as well as a slate of officers without contest or dissent. “On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States,” by Jacques Duclos. [April 1945] One of the seminal documents in the history of the American Communist movement. In 1944, head of the CPUSA Earl Browder launched the party on a “new course,” disavowing the “political party” model for the organization and replacing it with a “Communist Political Association. This change was formally ratified by the 12th National Conference of the CPUSA, held in May 1944. This article by French CP leader Jacques Duclos appeared in the April 1945 issue of the French party’s theoretical magazine and was quickly recognized by American Communists as a signal from Moscow as to the inappropriateness of the “new course” undertaken in 1944. When Browder refused to change course again, a factional struggle ensued, resulting in short order in Browder’s removal from power and expulsion from the party. Despite the document’s length and detail, Duclos’ unleashes only one particularly harsh paragraph: “Despite declarations regarding recognition of the principles of Marxism, one is witnessing a notorious revision of Marxism on the part of Browder and his supporters, a revision which is expressed in the concept of a long-term class peace in the United States, of the possibility of the suppression of the class struggle in the postwar period and of establishment of harmony between labor and capital.” “Letter to Theodore Draper in New York City from Max Bedacht in Frenchtown, NJ, Dec. 13, 1954.” This letter to historian Ted Draper from Communist Labor Party founding member Max Bedacht serves as a reminder of the limitations inherent in oral history and memoirs produced decades after the fact vs. careful examination of archival documents and the contemporary press. Despite having the benefit of whatever limited materials were available to him in his personal library in answering a number of Draper’s queries, and despite having time to compose his answers in writing, the participant Bedacht is unable to reconstruct a correct timeline of major events (divergences from the archival record being cataloged here in a very extensive set of footnotes). This is intended as no reflection on Bedacht’s honesty or competence—he was both honest and competent—but rather a much more important illustration of the inevitable deficiencies of ex-post facto memoir accounts, be they written or verbal. Historians should bear in mind always that participant memoir accounts (particularly those provided many years after the fact) are in no way the “last word” on various questions of history. Indeed, the contrary is true: distant recollections are but the first word, from which point examination of archival material and the contemporary press might be more profitably made to “settle” the various questions of history which emerge. Of particular interest to historians of the early American Communist Party is Bedacht’s account here of the origin of the name of Abram Jakira’s underground-oriented “Goose Caucus” of 1922: “We had given them the name of geese because they had only a few talking leaders. And when one of them flapped his wings and quacked, they all flopped and all quacked in exact imitation.” “Letter to Theodore Draper in New York City from Max Bedacht in Frenchtown, NJ, Jan. 20, 1955.” In this letter to historian Ted Draper, Communist Party leader Max Bedacht provides interesting impressionistic answers to a number of Draper’s questions about the early American Communist movement. Bedacht offers an intelligent critique of Left Wing thinking in the party split of 1919: “I think I am justified in saying that all of us—at least subconsciously—believed that world events had relieved us and our revolutionary organizations of the tedious and patience-consuming job of weaning the American working masses away from their bourgeois illusions. Since such a belief is wrong under any conditions, the propaganda of the Left based upon it became mere radical-sounding phrases with little or no concrete meaning.” He sees the division of the Communist movement into two organizational streams as a product of different paces of “sobering up” about the prospects of imminent revolutionary transformation in the USA. Bedacht also provides an extensive account of the factional division in the Communist Party which swirled around the Labor Party question in 1922-24. Bedacht testifies that “It was in the course of the discussions and deliberations about efforts for the development of a broad Labor Party movement that the concepts about the possibility and the need of a legal, respectively illegal Communist Party in America crystallized. Out of these discussions the Geese were born as an organized group. They had ghosted about before around questions such as ‘force and violence.’ But the discussions about our approach to the masses via a Labor Party touched off the ‘final conflict.’ Our side became more and more convinced that the successful and effective functioning with and within a Labor Party would require and make possible the open functioning of a legal Communist Party. The illegalists-in-principle, on the other hand, for whom control meant leadership, could see a protection for the purity of the principles of the Party only in the underground.” The botched handling of the Farmer-Labor Party question in 1924 “broke up the behind the scenes bridge between us and Fitzpatrick” and “initiated the bitter and destructive fight within the CP between the Foster group and the Ruthenberg (later Lovestone) group,” Bedacht recalls. “Foster accused the National Committee of the Party that it broke faith with Fitzpatrick,” Bedacht notes. “Interview with Ludwig E. Katterfeld by Theodore Draper.” [conducted September 8, 1956] Extensive extract of the lengthy interview conducted by historian Ted Draper with Communist Labor Party founder and CI Rep Ludwig Katterfeld during the course of his researches for The Roots of American Communism. Katterfeld was 75 years old at the time, attempting to recall events which took place 3 decades previously; consequently, there are certain insufficiencies with this document as a primary source for which the historian must compensate. One of the most intriguing recollections of Katterfeld is that he was in joint control of the party at some point in the early 1920s— he wrongly recalls with the then-incarcerated Gitlow. This provides a working theory to explain one of the mysteries of the United Communist Party: why it was Katterfeld and not nominal Executive Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht ("Paul Holt") who delivered the report of the CEC of the UCP to the Woodstock Unity Convention of 1921. Included is a photograph of Katterfeld in 1922 from the Davenport collection. MAY
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