Communist Party USA

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. While the CPUSA played a significant role in organizing industrial unions and defending the rights of African-Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, it was effectively eliminated as a political force by McCarthyism and the Cold War.

The Third Period (1928-1935)

The upheavals within the CPUSA in 1928 were an echo of a much more significant change: Stalin's decision to break off any form of collaboration with western socialist parties, which were now condemned as "social fascists", had particularly severe consequences in Germany, where the German Communist Party not only refused to work in alliance with the German Socialist Party, but attacked it and its members. In 1928 there were about twenty-four thousand members. By 1932 the total had fallen to six thousand members.

Related Topics:
Germany - German Communist Party - German Socialist Party

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the United States the principal impact of the Third Period was to end the CPUSA's efforts to organize within the AFL through the TUEL and to turn its efforts into organizing dual unions through the Trade Union Unity League. Foster went along with this change, even though it contradicted the policies he had fought for previously. He did not, however, remain head of the CPUSA: in 1932 one of his subordinates, Earl Browder, replaced him.

Related Topics:
Dual unions - Trade Union Unity League - 1932 - Earl Browder

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Party's slogan in this period was "the united front from below". The Party devoted much of its energy in the early years of the Great Depression to organizing the unemployed, attempting to found "red" unions, championing the rights of black Americans and fighting evictions of farmers and the working poor. At the same time, the Party attempted to weave its revolutionary politics into its day-to-day defense of workers, usually with only limited success.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1932 William Z. Foster, then head of the CPUSA published a book entitled Toward Soviet America, which laid out the Communist Party's plans for revolution and the building of a new socialist society based on the model of Soviet Russia.

Related Topics:
William Z. Foster - Toward Soviet America

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~