One summer night in the early 1960s, at a rally in New York, the leftist Murray Kempton proclaimed to an audience full of old Reds that although America had not treated them well, it had been very lucky to have them.
My mother was in the audience that night, and when she came home, she said, “America is lucky there were communists here. They are the ones who pushed the country the most to become the democracy it always claimed to be.” She surprised me that she said it in such a soft voice, because she had always been an ardent socialist; but it was the sixties and by then she was really tired.
The American Communist Party was formed in 1919, two years after the Russian Revolution. For 40 years, it grew steadily, from about two to three thousand members to 75,000 at its peak in the 1930s and 1940s. In all, almost a million Americans were communists at one time or another. While it is true that most of those who entered the Communist Party in those years were members of the troubled working class (Jews from the garment district of New York, miners from West Virginia, fruit pickers in California), it is even more It is true that many members of the enlightened middle class (teachers, scientists, writers) also joined, because, for them,
Perhaps now it is difficult to understand, but at that time the Marxist vision transmitted by the Communist Party awakened in the most ordinary men and women an awareness of their own humanity that gave greatness to life
American communists, for the most part, never set foot in party headquarters, never saw a member of the Central Committee in person, and never heard of internal policy-making meetings. But everyone knew that the party unionists were instrumental in the improvements of industrial workers in this country; that party lawyers were the most vocal advocates for blacks in the southern states; that many party organizers lived, worked, and sometimes died with miners in the Appalachian Mountains, seasonal workers in California, and steelworkers in Pittsburgh.
Thanks to his passion for structure and the eloquence of his rhetoric, the party materialized on a day-to-day basis and became known not only to its own members but also to the many sympathizers and fellow travelers of that time. He had built an extraordinary network of regional and local chapters, schools and publications, organizations that dealt with big problems in communities—the International Order of Workers, the National Negro Congress, the Unemployment Boards—and a provocative newspaper that regularly read by progressives and radicals.
As an old Red said: “Throughout the Depression and World War II, every time some new catastrophe was announced, organizations concerned with remedying major problems in communities—the International Order of Workers, the National Black Congress, the Unemployment Boards—and a provocative newspaper regularly read by progressives and radicals. As an old Red said: “Throughout the Depression and World War II, every time some new catastrophe was announced, organizations concerned with remedying major problems in communities—the International Order of Workers, the National Black Congress, the Unemployment Boards—and a provocative newspaper regularly read by progressives and radicals. As an old Red said: “Throughout the Depression and World War II, every time some new catastrophe was announced,The Daily Worker sold out its copies in a matter of minutes.
Perhaps now it is difficult to understand, but, at that time, in this place, the Marxist vision of world solidarity that the Communist Party transmitted awakened in the most ordinary men and women an awareness of their own humanity that gave greatness to life. : grandeur and clarity. That inner clarity was something that many not only became fond of but addicted to. Against his influence, no vital reward, not love, not fame, not wealth, could compete.
At the same time, this absolute totality of the world and the self was precisely what, too often, made communists true believers, unable to face the corruption of the police state that formed the basis of their faith, even when any child 10-year-old could see that there was a double game. The US CP was a member of the Comintern (the Moscow-led organization of the Communist International) and as such had to answer to the Soviets, who intimidated communist parties around the world into supporting domestic and political policies. foreign affairs that, most of the time, served the interests of the USSR, and not those of the member countries of the International. Due, the American CP always did everything possible to satisfy what its members considered the only socialist country in the world and which they felt obliged to support at all costs. This unwavering devotion to Soviet Russia allowed American communists to remain deluded through the 1930s and 1940s and much of the 1950s, as the Soviet Union crushed Eastern Europe and became increasingly totalitarian, with its everyday reality increasingly hidden and its increasingly self-interested demands.
Communist demonstration on May 1, 1935, in New York.
In the early 1950s, the PC came under serious attack due to the McCarthy panic over US security—scores of communists went into hiding for fear of jail or worse—but then, in 1956 the party nearly disintegrated under the weight of the scandal of communism itself. In February of that year, Nikita Khrushchev addressed the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and revealed to the world the unimaginable horror of Stalin’s rule. The speech spelled political devastation for the organized left around the world. In the weeks that followed, 30,000 people left the American CP, and before the year was out, the party was back to what it had started out as in 1919: a small sect on the American political map.