American Communism Quotes

[Dalton] Trumbo himself was a terrible Communist.

My parents called themselves progressives. The agenda was a Soviet America...the slogan of the communist party in those days was peace, jobs, democracy. Sound familar? The communist party is the democratic Party.

So it went until the spring of 1927, when Charles Ruthenberg died and the struggle for factional parity at his casket – conducted, it must be said, somewhat more fairly than the struggle for parity at the fourth convention – climaxed the ceremonies to honor the first leader of American Communism.

American Communists have the opportunity to preach freely their ideas. It would be absolutely wrong to hold the Soviet government responsible for activities of the American Communists.

I admit that I do not recall the speeches of Comrades [Earl] Browder and [Samuel] Darcy. I do not even recall of what they spoke. It is possible that they said something of this nature. But it was not the Soviet people who created the American Communist Party. It was created by Americans.

For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists.

My great-great-grandfather Julius founded the Communist Party in New York.

Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams…. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.

My grandfather was an American Communist, and he married my grandmother, who was a Russian Communist. During the 1950s, the McCarthy era, my family was viciously persecuted.