American Communist Party

IN 1919, VLADIMIR Ilyich Lenin invited the Socialist Party of America to join the Communist International (Comintern), the international organization of communist parties and movements. Yet, tensions among right-wing socialists and more radical socialists and anarchists led Socialist Party leaders to purge the radicals in an attempt to regain control over the party membership. The expelled radicals soon organized independently, and September 1919 saw the creation of two separate communist political parties in the United States: the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America. Under pressure from the Comintern, in mid-1921, the two parties combined [Page 29]to form a single organization—the Communist Party of America, later renamed Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) in 1929.

From the outset, the CPUSA struggled with image problems that weakened its appeal. Many early party members were foreign-born; as late as 1929, only one-third of party members spoke English as their primary language. Implicit or explicit distrust of the radical politics of these “hyphenated-Americans” hampered the party's initial recruitment efforts. Communists were often associated with the violent actions of “Bolsheviks” and anarchists, and the CPUSA was targeted by justice and immigration officials in the Palmer Raids carried out in 1919 and early 1920.

It was not until the end of 1936 that the CPUSA could claim that the majority of its members were American-born. Another problem faced from the beginning was the CPUSAs perceived subservience to the Comintern—and by extension, to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The influence of the Comintern over the communist movement worldwide meant that the CPUSA and other communist organizations had little choice but to follow the Comintern's direction. With a party line that was dictated from Moscow and an organization subject to echoes of the politically motivated purges that destabilized the Soviet leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, the CPUSA suffered from the dilution and diminution of the party's initial links to an authentic homegrown radical labor movement.

As the prosperity of the 1920s led to the depression of the 1930s, the CPUSAs appeal increased, especially among intellectuals who were attracted to the “John Reed Clubs” that had been set up specifically to attract new party members. Even so, early attempts to forge a united front with socialist parties and organizations were met with suspicion on both sides. As President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal instituted a series of social and political programs to mitigate the worst effects of the Depression, the American Socialist Party and the CPUSA seemed to be moving toward each other on the political spectrum, but not close enough to make a united front politically plausible.

The CPUSAs most successful action during the 1930s was the creation of party front organizations—groups that had some affiliation to the party, but were not always openly associated with the CPUSA. Membership of these front organizations consisted of those who accepted some of the CPUSAs aims, but were not ready or not entirely willing to join a group of people who would be known as “fellow travelers.” The front organizations helped boost party funding, and the more successful front groups included the American Youth Congress, which at the time attracted the support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

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