American Communist Party Quotes
Browder, had been prohibited by Court Order from touring the country during the 1940 Presidential Campaign. He personally blamed FDR although the Communist vote was so small that no matter where and how Browder campaigned it would not have made any difference. However, the court order gave Browder the opening leading some to believe that the communist following was larger than it was—why else would the establishment want to keep the campaign limited?
Such intellectuals as Max Eastman. John Dos Passos, and James Rorty were officially so classified.
In 1927 the Russian Communist Party changed its position regarding the world union movement. Prior to that the Communists would not organize unions competing with already existing trade unions. Foster was one of the communist leaders who was the strongest advocate of this solidarity of the working class. However, after years of preaching one thing, he reversed himself. This type of adherence to party discipline led to him getting a derogatory nickname. See {592421}.
American Communist Party Newspaper. The communists were so supportive of the war effort that they were often unconditional defenders of the Roosevelt Administration’s war program. Most communists suspended their advocacy of labor strikes and Black enfranchisement during the war because it would ultimately lead to the weakening of the Allied efforts against the Nazis. Programs such as the “March on Washington Movement” were seen as untimely and therefore subversive and fascist. For more communist criticism of attempts during this period to further civil rights see {603312}
Browder and the Communist Party were bothered that the Socialist Party had allowed a sect of American Trotskyites join their ranks.
Charles Ruthenberg, the general secretary of the American Communist Party, died in March 1927 amidst a lasting struggle to maintain factional parity within the party.
He was half right. There is no way a leading communist would have been elected to the Chamber of Commerce, but 45 days later Stalin and Hitler signed their infamous pact. American communists who had been castigating Hitler all of a sudden received orders to flip-flop and castigate the Americans and English for their war mongering against Hitler. Many quit the party over the incident but Browder and most of the leadership adjusted their rhetoric, only to have to flip-flop again when the pact fell apart and the Russians needed U. S. and English assistance.
Unlike many socialists who were pacifists and against WWI, Foster and the communists were supporters of the war against fascist Germany, This was one of the reasons that Nazi Germany was virulently anti-communist later.
Bedacht used this analogy to justify the expulsion of Ludwig Lore, a leader of an ideological faction with the Communist Party.
A. B. Magil
See {596090} for the official party line at the time.
Davis was criticizing the civil rights protesters, who were protesting the U.S. Army’s discrimination of four Blacks at Fort Devens in April 1945. Even though Davis himself was Black, he, along with most communists believed that the international problem of Nazism should be treated first and foremost, and without interruption.
Ironically, this view was also held by many of the capitalist “Captains of American Industry” who believed that all unions were revolutionist regardless of the views of the union’s membership or leadership. Even today, there are some who still equate trade unionism with communism and revolution. The majority of the unions and the left never believed that, but the extreme communists and extreme capitalists did than and some do today.
Every sect of Russian communism had an offshoot in America and in other countries as well. When bad blood broke out between sects in Russia, the battle spread to the rest of the world as when Leon Trotsky was assassinated by Stalinists in Mexico and the Trotskyites were viciously and physically attacked here in America. In many cases there was little ideological difference but the split reflected different leadership styles and personalities. Despite Frank’s warning, American communism was a mirror reflection of Russia until Stalin negotiated the WWII pact with Hitler, when anti-Stalin Communists began to be active, and because America was a more open society, American communists were ahead of their Russian comrades in denouncing Stalinism.
William Z. Foster, the 1928 communist presidential candidate, was arrested because his party’s leaflet contained this “inflammatory” slogan.
American Communist Party newspaper. National Recovery Administration. The NRA was one of the key provision of FDR’s New Deal. The American right saw the program as Communist and left wing, while the Communists distrusted it as being right wing as this quotation illustrates. See also {46137}. The Supreme Court found the program unconstitutional ending this bizarre political debate. FDR was often attacked by both ends of the political spectrum but retained the support of a large coalition in the middle.
The devastating and disillusioning effect of The Depression on the middle class brought a new kind of recruit in droves to the Communist ranks. The Party was used to attacking the middle class and its values not appealing to them. The party workers were blue collar and now thousands of professionals with their work styles and value system entered the ranks. These new communists were better educated, more independent, better read, and less ideological than the Party was used to. They joined quickly and quit the party if there was something they didn’t like. So they were received by the party loyalists ambiguously.
