File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-08.224, message 34


Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 16:45:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: In the Time of Stalin: Nation,  Race & Class in the interwar South,  1928-1940


        
THE COMINTERN & THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY


Recent scholars of the heyday of the CPUSA -- generally agreed to be the
1930s and 40s -- have made much of the party's "independence" from Stalin
and the Third International.    While an earlier generation of cold warriors
had sought to show a slavish subservience on the part of American Communists
toward Moscow,   new studies suggest a home grown radicalism,  coupled with
innovative organizing techniques and a determined cadre of dedicated
activists,  enjoying a remarkable success in building the Party across a
wide section of America's working class.    Rather than the bogey of Moscow,
the American CP is seen as a more or less home-grown affair,  at worst
oblivious to the machinations of the world revolutionary movement
headquartered in Moscow.   Indeed,  in several of the most important works
of this new genre,  Stalin is barely mentioned,  and then only against a
larger background of purely local concerns and campaigns in which the Soviet
leader figured hardly at all.[1]     

I find both versions misleading.    While I hold no brief for the Theodore
Drapers,  the Harvey Klehrs,  and the rest whose tales concerning Moscow's
puppetry amount to little more than sophisticated forms of modern
McCarthyism,  I remain equally unconvinced by the contemporary arguments of
their opponents.    There is too much of the simple moralizing on both
sides.    The real story, I believe,  is far more complex,  but for the most
part reflects credibly on the parties involved.[2]     In this brief essay,
I can only touch upon the more important features of the relationship
between Moscow and America,  and only in the most superficial way.

Much of the general outline of the work of the CPUSA *was* directed by
Moscow,  for purposes decreed in Moscow,  with leadership approved (or at
least not actively opposed) by Moscow,  and with the help of resources
distributed by Moscow.    I am not sure by what standard either side should
be condemned for this state of affairs.  If a theoretical justification was
sought in Comintern for this type of arrangement,  it could be found in the
argument that the USSR was the one bulwark of communism in a hostile world,
and its defense was therefore a primary and overriding interest of
communists everywhere.    Article 14 of the "twenty-one conditions" of 1920
had already required from communist parties "unconditional support to every
Soviet republic in its struggle against counter-revolutionary forces."[3]

The slow process of "Bolshevization" of foreign communist parties,
initiated in the twenty-one conditions of 1920, proclaimed at the fifth
congress of Comintern in 1924,  reached its logical conclusion with the
consolidation of Stalin's dictatorship.    By the end of 1929,  long and
often bitter struggles within the German,  French,  Polish,  Czechoslovak,
British and American parties had been ended by firm decisions of Comintern
to cast its mantle over one of the contending factions,  and by the
expulsion from the party,  or removal from the leadership,  of those who
contested the decisions.    After this time,  changes in the leadership of
parties were effected by *fiat* from Moscow,  and with little pretence of
debate or choice within the parties themselves.[4]       

The consequence of this process on Communist movements outside Russia was,
of course, decisive.    For nearly twenty years before Stalin finally junked
the Third International the question could reasonably have been asked
whether it did not on balance do more to prejudice than to advance the cause
of Communism throughout the world.    In every important country except
Germany the Communist parties had come into being under the direct impetus
of Moscow; they bore the Russian stamp as their birthmark.   The mere
existence of Comintern with its vast resources and world-wide pretensions
stood in the way of the development of indigenous Britsh,  French or even
German Communism,   which might have responded to national outlooks and
national emergencies.    The movements that existed could be,  and were,
discredited as puppets whose strings were pulled in Moscow.[5]   

At the same time,  the American Party stands out in two rather remarkable
ways.    First of all,  if it is true that the Communist parties of France,
Italy,  Belgium and most countries of western Europe grew immensely stronger
in the decades following the abolition of the Third International than they
were at any time during its existence,  the reverse is true for the CPUSA.
Second,  of the parties experiencing exponential growth within racist
societies during the twenties and thirties,  only the American CP seems to
have *begun* with predominant races in leadership positions,  rather than --
as in the case of South Africa,  for example -- ending up with a racially
balanced leadership only after years of positive and deliberate efforts in
that direction.[6]    

Both features were at least in part attributable to the efforts of Comintern
representatives who,  during the decade of the twenties,  travelled
extensively throughout the Black Belt and struggled to fashion a policy for
American Communists in a unique and dangerous environment.    Too,  the
leaders of the CPUSA were urged by Moscow to redouble their efforts against
intra-party racism,  a point brought home to Stalin during a number of
meetings with Black working class leaders.    The rather unique positon of
the American party with respect to the struggle for social security,
unemployment insurance and trade union rights -- the US lagged behind prewar
Europe in all three -- coupled with the special condition of American blacks
as an oppressed "nation" within a nation,   proved propitious in building a
genuinely native "American" Left-wing movement.     This,  coupled with the
successful struggle to open a Second Front against Hitler in Europe -- a
movement that for all practical purposes could only have been undertaken in
the US -- insured that this period in American CP history would be its most
fruitful to date.[7]

NEXT: TURMOIL IN THE BLACK BELT,  1928 - 1940


Louis Godena

[1] Draper's *American Communism and Soviet Russia* (1960) was the highwater
mark of the cold war school.   The American war in Southeast Asia and the
concomitant exposure of many of its crimes elsewhere overseas led in part to
the reexamination of the history of Communism here in the US.    This
literature receives a recent but brief survey in Michael E. Brown, *et al*
(eds),  *New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism* (New York,
1993: Monthly Review Press)

[2] There is no published work in English or French of which I am aware that
details the history of the relationship between the Comintern and the CPUSA.
Such a work is badly needed,  and would go far in explaining the unique
success and puzzling failures which marked the history of the American party
during this era.

[3] My own interpretation draws heavily on Carr's *Twilight of the
Comintern,  1930 - 1935* (London, 1982: Macmillan),  as well as Branco
Lazitch, *Lenine et la IIIe Internationale* (Neuchatal, Switzerland,  1952:
Editions de la Baconniere),  which,  despite its age,  offers the best
precis' of the Third International I have found anywhere.

[4] Maurice Doniere,  *The Comintern and Western Communist Parties,  1928 -
1943* (New York,  1964: Oxford University Press),  pp. 181-189.    Also,
Carr,  "The Third International, " in *From Napoleon to Stalin and other
essays* (New York,  1980: St Martin's Press),  pp. 82-92.

[5] Robin DG Kelly,  *Race Matters* (New York,  1994: Free Press),  ch. 8.

[6] Wm Foster,  *History of the CPUSA* (New York,  1953: International
Publishers); *Fifty Fighting Years: History of the South African Communist
Party* (London,  1986: Inkululeko Publications)

[7] Foner and Allen (eds), *American Communism and Black Americans: A
Documentary History,  1919-1929* (Philadelphia,  1987: Temple University
Press), pp. 161 - 200.  



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005