The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, is a Marxist-Leninist party established in 1919, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, emerging from the left wing of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). The CPUSA sought to establish socialism in the United States via the principles of Marxism–Leninism, aligning itself with the Communist International (Comintern), which was controlled by the Soviet Union. It was considered to be the most important left-wing organization in the United States through the mid-20th century.
The CPUSA's early years were marked by factional struggles and clandestine activities. The U.S. government viewed the party as a subversive threat, leading to mass arrests and deportations in the Palmer Raids of 1919–1920. Despite this, the CPUSA expanded its influence, particularly among industrial workers, immigrants, and African Americans. In the 1920s, the party remained a small but militant force. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the CPUSA grew in prominence under the leadership of William Z. Foster and later Earl Browder as it played a key role in labor organizing and anti-fascist movements. The party's involvement in strikes helped establish it as a formidable force within the American labor movement, particularly through the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In the mid-1930s, the CPUSA followed the Comintern's "popular front" line, which emphasized alliances with progressives and liberals. The party softened its revolutionary rhetoric, and supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. This shift allowed the CPUSA to gain broader acceptance, and its membership surged, reaching an estimated 70,000 members by the late 1930s. On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the CPUSA initially opposed U.S. involvement, but reversed its stance after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, fervently supporting the war effort. The Popular Front era of CPUSA lasted until 1945, when Earl Browder was ousted from the party and replaced by William Z. Foster.
As the CPUSA's role in Soviet Espionage activities became more widely known, the Party suffered dramatically at onset of the Cold War. The Second Red Scare saw the party prosecuted under the Smith Act, which criminalized advocacy of violent revolution and led to high-profile trials of its leaders. This decimated the CPUSA, reducing its membership to under 10,000 by the mid-1950s. The Khrushchev Thaw and revelations of Joseph Stalin's crimes also led to internal divisions, with many members leaving the party in disillusionment. The CPUSA struggled to maintain relevance during the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While it supported civil rights, labor activism, and anti-Vietnam War efforts, it faced competition from New Left organizations, which rejected the party's rigid adherence to Soviet communism. The Sino-Soviet split further fractured the communist movement, with some former CPUSA members defecting to Maoist or Trotskyist groups. Under the leadership of Gus Hall (1959–2000), the CPUSA remained loyal to the Soviet Union even as other communist parties distanced themselves from Moscow's policies, which marginalized it within the American left. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 dealt a devastating blow to the party, leading to financial difficulties and a further decline in membership.
In the 21st century, the CPUSA has focused on labor rights, racial justice, environmental activism, opposition to corporate capitalism, and continues to engage in leftist activism. The CPUSA publishes the newspaper People's World, and as of May of 2026, is in the process of re-establishing its theoretical journal, Political Affairs.
Modern membership In 2000, the Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America said CPUSA had about 1,000 members and "has virtually ceased to exist". CPUSA reported 2,000 members in 2011, 5,000 members in 2017 and 2018, 15,000 members in 2023, and 20,000 members in 2024. In 2026, CPUSA claimed to have recruited 20,000 members since Trump's 2016 win, of which 11,000 remain active.
In the past, CPUSA often claimed a higher membership than its internal records showed. In the 1990s, CPUSA claimed its membership was 15,000 to 20,000 people, but its actual membership was likely around 1,000 to 2,000. In 2019, former Party member Daniel Rosenberg claimed "nearly half" of new joiners since 2000 paid no dues and merely signed up for the mailing list. In 2023, CPUSA said "one-third" of new members since 2021 paid dues.
History
During the first half of the 20th century, the Communist Party was influential in various struggles. Historian Ellen Schrecker concludes that decades of recent scholarshipShe mentions James Barrett, Maurice Isserman, Robin D. G. Kelley, Randi Storch and Kate Weigand. 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."Ellen Schrecker, "Soviet Espionage in America: An Oft-Told tale", Reviews in American History, Volume 38, Number 2, June 2010 p. 359. Schrecker goes on to explore why the Left dared to spy. It was also the first political party in the United States to be racially integrated.
By August 1919, only months after its founding, the Communist Party claimed to have 50,000 to 60,000 members. Its members also included anarchists and other radical leftists. 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. The sections of the Communist Party's International Workers Order (IWO) organized for communism around linguistic and ethnic lines, providing mutual aid and tailoring cultural activities to an IWO membership that peaked at 200,000 at its height.
During the Great Depression, some Americans were attracted by the visible activism of Communists on behalf of a wide range of social and economic causes, including the rights of African Americans, workers, and the unemployed.Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, (New York:Vintage Books, 1978), , pp. 52–58 The Communist Party played a significant role in the resurgence of organized labor in the 1930s. Others, alarmed by the rise of the Falangists in Spain and the Nazis in Germany, admired the Soviet Union's early and staunch opposition to fascism. Party membership swelled from 7,500 at the start of the decade to 55,000 by its end.
Party members also rallied to the defense of the Spanish Republic during this period after a nationalist military uprising moved to overthrow it, resulting in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, along with leftists throughout the world, raised funds for medical relief while many of its members made their way to Spain with the aid of the party to join the Lincoln Brigade, one of the International Brigades.
The Communist Party was adamantly opposed to fascism during the Popular Front period. Although membership in the party rose to about 66,000 by 1939,Soviet and American Communist Parties in Revelations from the Russian Archives, Library of Congress, January 4, 1996. Retrieved August 29, 2006. nearly 20,000 members left the party by 1943. While general secretary Browder at first attacked Germany for its September 1, 1939 invasion of western Poland, on September 11 the Communist Party received a communique from Moscow denouncing the Polish government. Between September 14–16, party leaders bickered about the direction to take.
On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, followed by coordination with German forces in Poland. The Communist Party then turned the focus of its public activities from anti-fascism to advocating peace, opposing military preparations. The party criticized British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French leader Édouard Daladier, but it did not at first attack President Roosevelt, reasoning that this could devastate American Communism, blaming instead Roosevelt's advisors. The party spread the slogans "The Yanks Are Not Coming" and "Hands Off," set up a "perpetual peace vigil" across the street from the White House, and announced that Roosevelt was the head of the "war party of the American bourgeoisie." The party was active in the isolationist America First Committee.Selig Adler (1957). The isolationist impulse: its twentieth-century reaction. pp. 269–270, 274. In October and November, after the Soviets invaded Finland and forced mutual assistance pacts on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Communist Party considered Russian security sufficient justification to support the actions. The Comintern and its leader Georgi Dimitrov demanded that Browder change the party's support for Roosevelt. On October 23, the party began attacking Roosevelt. The party changed this policy again after Hitler broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact by attacking the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
In August 1940, after NKVD agent Ramón Mercader killed Trotsky with an ice axe, Browder perpetuated Moscow's line that the killer, who had been dating one of Trotsky's secretaries, was a disillusioned follower.
The Communist Party's early labor and organizing successes did not last long. As the decades progressed, the combined effects of McCarthyism (also known as the Second Red Scare) and Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 "Secret Speech" in which he denounced the previous decades of Joseph Stalin's rule and the adversities of the continuing Cold War mentality, steadily weakened the party's internal structure and confidence. Party membership in the Communist International and its close adherence to the political positions of the Soviet Union gave most Americans the impression that the party was not only a threatening, subversive domestic entity, but that it was also a foreign agent that espoused an ideology which was fundamentally alien and threatening to the American way of life. Internal and external crises swirled together, to the point when members who did not end up in prison for party activities either tended to disappear quietly from its ranks, or they tended to adopt more moderate political positions which were at odds with the party line. By 1957, membership had dwindled to less than 10,000, of whom some 1,500 were informants for the FBI.Gentry, Kurt, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. W. W. Norton & Company 1991. P. 442. . The party was also banned by the Communist Control Act of 1954, although it was never really enforced and Congress later repealed most provisions of the act, also with some declared unconstitutional via the court system.
The party attempted to recover with its opposition to the Vietnam War during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, but its continued uncritical support for an increasingly stultified and militaristic Soviet Union further alienated it from the rest of the left-wing in the United States, which saw this supportive role as outdated and even dangerous. At the same time, the party's aging membership demographics distanced it from the New Left in the United States.