The history of the CPUSA

These articles deal with the history of the Communist Party of the USA, which was once a revolutionary party which brought tremendous progress to the workers' movement, the anti-racist movement, and international solidarity. At its best, the CPUSA was a great step forward from the social-democratic organizations of the past, and it sought to bring Leninism to the revolutionary movement. But in the mid-1930s, the basic character of the party began to change; it was corroded from within by Stalinism; and it eventually became a handmaiden of liberalism. a little brother of the Democratic Party, a partner with union bureaucrats, and a defender of state-capitalism internationally. It became a major obstacle to the revolutionary movement it had once sought to build..

The articles below deal with both the positive achievements and the decay of the CPUSA. As far as the 1930s, they show the major change in orientation and standpoints that took place between the start and the end of that historic decade. They point to the original goals of the CPUSA, discuss how it sought -- albeit with varying amounts of success -- to transform itself to accomplish these goals, and the degeneration of these goals. For example, the great sit-down strikes of the 1930s were not only a major event for the working class as a whole, but also an example of how communist organizing brought major changes to how the struggle took place at workplaces. The history of this struggle shows the militant and dedicated work of communist activists in the auto industry, the origin of the United Auto Workers, and the difference between Marxist-Leninist work in the workers' movement and revisionism.  It's not just that today's UAW national leadership that practices business unionism, but the union bureaucrats were also doing it back in the days of the UAW's formation. It was not the business unionist leaders, but the combination of a mass upsurge, rank-and-file organization, and communist activism and party-building that led to the successful sit-down strikes of the 1930s.

The history of the CPUSA shows both the importance of communist party-building, and also the necessity for the struggle against the Stalinist and anti-Marxist standpoints that corroded the CPUSA and that stand against the rebuilding of a revolutionary working-class movement and of a true communist party today.

The CPUSA'S work in auto and the change in line of the mid-1930's
(Workers' Advocate Supplement, vol. 3, #3, March 1987, with a brief intro from April 2008, 143K)

The CPUSA and the unemployed movement of the 1930s
(Workers' Advocate Supplement, vol. 6, #2, February 15, 1990, 91K)

On the history of the CPUSA and the CI on the BLACK NATIONAL QUESTION
(Workers' Advocate Supplement, vol. 1, #9, Nov. 15, 1985, with notes from July 2008)

How the legacy of the 7th Congress of the CI sabotaged the fight against Browderism
What happened to the anti-revisionists in the CPUSA after World War II?
(Workers' Advocate Supplement, vol. 4, #3, March 15, 1988, 51K)

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