Communist Party USA
Initially operating underground due to the Palmer Raids, which started during the First Red Scare, the party was influential in American politics in the first half of the 20th century.[10] The party was unique among labor activist groups of the time in being outspokenly anti-racist and opposed to racial segregation after sponsoring the defense for the Scottsboro Boys in 1931.[11][12][13] The transformative changes of the New Deal era combined with the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union during World War II created an atmosphere in which the CPUSA wielded considerable influence with about 70,000 vetted party members.'[16] However, as Cold War hostility ensued, the party was restored but struggled to maintain its influence amidst the prevalence of McCarthyism (also known as the Second Red Scare).Its opposition to the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine failed to gain traction, and its endorsed candidate Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party under-performed in the 1948 presidential election.The party itself imploded following the public condemnation of Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, with membership sinking to a few thousand who were increasingly alienated from the rest of the American Left for their support of the Soviet Union.[17] The CPUSA also used a covert apparatus to assist the Soviets with their intelligence activities in the United States and utilized a network of front organizations to shape public opinion.Historian Ellen Schrecker concludes that decades of recent scholarship[note 2] offer "a more nuanced portrayal of the party as both a Stalinist sect tied to a vicious regime and the most dynamic organization within the American Left during the 1930s and '40s.At the time, the older and more moderate Socialist Party of America, suffering from criminal prosecutions for its antiwar stance during World War I, had declined to 40,000 members.[38] In October and November, after the Soviets invaded Finland and forced mutual assistance pacts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Communist Party considered Russian security sufficient justification to support the actions.[6] In 2014, the new draft of the party constitution declared: "We apply the scientific outlook developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and others in the context of our American history, culture, and traditions.[1] Joe Sims, chairman of the CPUSA, published a letter to Solidnet denying that such a split took place and claiming ACP represented "pro-Trump individuals.Economic measures such as increased taxes on "the rich and corporations, strong regulation of the financial industry, regulation and public ownership of utilities," and increased federal aid to cities and states are also included in the Immediate Program, as are opposition to the Iraq War and other military interventions; opposition to free trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); nuclear disarmament and a reduced military budget; various civil rights provisions; campaign finance reform including public financing of campaigns; and election law reform, including instant runoff voting.[56] Accordingly, the Communist Party holds that right-wing policymakers such as the neoconservatives, steering the state away from working-class interests on behalf of a disproportionately powerful capitalist class, have "demonized foreign opponents of the U.S., covertly funded the right-wing-initiated civil war in Nicaragua, and gave weapons to the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq.Local and national actions were organized on the Internet, including the "Virtual March on Washington DC" .... Elected officials were flooded with millions of calls, emails and letters.They concluded that mass education of their members was essential to counter false propaganda, and that the fight for the peace, economic security and democratic rights was interrelated.Before World War II, the Communist Party had relatively stable support in New York City, Chicago and St. Louis County, Minnesota.Whittaker Chambers alleged that Sandor Goldberger—also known as Josef Peters, who commonly wrote under the name J. Peters—headed the Communist Party's underground secret apparatus from 1932 to 1938 and pioneered its role as an auxiliary to Soviet intelligence activities.There are a number of decrypted World War II Soviet messages between NKVD offices in the United States and Moscow, also known as the Venona cables.Theodore Hall, a Harvard-trained physicist who did not join the party until 1952, began passing information on the atomic bomb to the Soviets soon after he was hired at Los Alamos at age 19.This is the traditionalist view of some in the field of Communist studies such as Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, since supported by several memoirs of ex-Soviet KGB officers and information obtained from the Venona project and Soviet archives.The records provided an irrefutable link between Soviet intelligence and information obtained by the Communist Party and its contacts in the United States government from the 1920s through the 1940s.Included in Communist Party archival records were confidential letters from two American ambassadors in Europe to Roosevelt and a senior State Department official.Thanks to an official in the Department of State sympathetic to the party, the confidential correspondence, concerning political and economic matters in Europe, ended up in the hands of Soviet intelligence."[85] According to intelligence analyst Darren E. Tromblay, the SOLO operation, and the Ad Hoc Committee, were part of "developing geopolitical awareness" by the FBI about factors such as the Sino-Soviet split.Rank and file foreign-born members of the Communist Party were targeted and as many as possible were arrested and deported while leaders were prosecuted and, in some cases, sentenced to prison terms.The widespread support of action against communists and their associates began to abate after Senator Joseph McCarthy overreached himself in the Army–McCarthy hearings, producing a backlash.Others like Benjamin J. Davis, William L. Patterson, Harry Haywood, James Jackson, Henry Winston, Claude Lightfoot, Alphaeus Hunton, Doxey Wilkerson, Claudia Jones, and John Pittman contributed in important ways to the party's approaches to major issues from human and civil rights, peace, women's equality, the national question, working class unity, socialist thought, cultural struggle, and more.Du Bois, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Lloyd Brown, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Robeson, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others were one-time members or supporters of the party, and the Communist Party also had a close alliance with Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.[90] One of the most prominent sexual radicals in the United States,[according to whom?][citation needed] In 2004, more than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and after Russia had legalized male homosexual relations, the editors of Political Affairs published articles detailing their self-criticism of the party's early views of gay and lesbian rights and praised Hay's work.
Jackson HinklePresidiumNational ConventionJoe SimsC. E. RuthenbergAlfred WagenknechtCommunist Labor Party of AmericaSocialist Party of AmericaManhattanNew YorkPeople's WorldYouth wingYoung Communist LeagueIdeologyCommunismMarxism-LeninismBill of Rights socialismPolitical positionFar-leftCominternMembers in elected officesPolitics of United StatesPolitical partiesElectionsSocialismin the United StatesUtopian socialismBrook FarmIcariansJonestownLooking BackwardNew HarmonyOneida CommunityProgressive Era1877 St. Louis general strike1912 Lawrence textile strikeCatholic Worker MovementGreen Corn RebellionLabor unionizationHaymarket affairMay DayWomen's suffrageRepression and persecutionAmerican Defense SocietyAmerican Protective LeagueCommunist Party USA and African Americanslabor movement1919–19371937–1957Espionage Act of 1917First Red ScareJohn Birch SocietyMcCarthyismSeattle General StrikeSmith ActSmith Act trialsAnti-warcivil rightsBlack power movementCOINTELPROI Have a DreamMarch on WashingtonNew LeftPoor People's Campaign1999 Seattle WTO protests2007–2008 financial crisisOccupy Wall StreetAlstonAndrewsAvrichBalagoonBellamy (Edward)Bellamy (Francis)BergerBerkmanBookchinBowmanBruenig (Elizabeth)Bruenig (Matt)BrisbaneBrooksBrowderButlerCannonCantorCarmichaelChomskyCockburnDavis (Angela)Davis (Mike)De la CruzDe LeonDennisDreiserDu BoisEhrenreichFearingFeinbergFosterFourierGilmoreGitlowGoldmanGraeberGreeneGuthrieHammettHamptonHarburgHarringtonHarrisonHaywood (Bill)Haywood (Harry)HawkinsHedgesHeywood (Angela)Heywood (Ezra)HillquitHoffmanJamesonKellerLabadieLa GuardiaLondonLovestoneMcReynoldsMitchell