The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is an American political party with a communist platform that was founded in 1919. Its history is deeply rooted in the history of the American labor movement as it played critical roles in struggles to organize American workers into unions, in leadership of labor strikes, as well as prominent involvement in later civil rights and anti-war movements. Many party members were forced to work covertly due to the high level of political repression in the United States against Communists. CPUSA faced many challenges in gaining a foothold in the United States as they endured two eras of the Red Scare and never experienced significant electoral success. Despite struggling to become a major electoral player, CPUSA was the most prominent leftist party in the United States. CPUSA developed close ties with the Soviet Union, which led to them being financially linked.

Membership of the CPUSA peaked in the late 1940s, with over 75,000 members in 1947. But their influence spanned beyond just their membership as some candidates in national elections garnered over 100,000 votes. However, the CPUSA began to decline in membership in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, presumably due to the Red Scare where the US government publicly tried and convicted Communists and CPUSA members on the grounds of the Smith Act. CPUSA faced challenges when the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place, as they lost their main source of funding. The Communist Party USA is still alive today but its membership and activity have shifted to a more online medium. It has stayed active despite various challenges, including a significant fracturing in the 1990s but is less successful (in membership numbers) than it once was.

History

Background

A form of communism was pursued by religious groups in the 17th century. In the settlements of Plymouth and Jamestown, some land was held in common. The Labadists in Maryland (1684–1722), Johann Kelpius' colony of "The Woman in the Wilderness" (1605–1704) in what is now Philadelphia, the Dunker celibates (1713) at Ephrata in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and a community at Snowhill, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1820), pursued communism of a sort. As well, Shakers at New Lebanon, New York lived in a communistic way from about 1782 into the 1900s. Harmonites were a later variety of American religious communists. The Oneida Community, or the "Perfectionists," established by John Humphrey Noyes, which lasted from 1848 to 1880, is another example of a communistic religious community."Communism" in Bliss et al, Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1897), p. 311

As well, forms of communism and socialism were adhered to in a variety of secular utopian communities in American history. This includes many that were founded by the Fourierist and Owenist movements. The Kaweah (California) community and Ruskin colony (Tennessee) also ascribed to communist principles.

Chronologically overlapping with these communistic social experiments, the earliest American socialist political groupings and parties got their start in the last half of the 19th century. Stephen Pearl Andrews and Victoria Woodhull were habituées of utopian communities and also participated in the communist movement's 1st International. Edward Bellamy and his book Looking Backward spawned both a wave of communistic Bellamy communities at various points in the U.S. and also a 1890s-era socialist political movement, the Nationalist Clubs, which provided leadership to the People's Party and the Populist Party.

The first socialist political party in the United States was the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). Formed in 1876 it was for many years a viable force in the international socialist movement. By the mid-1890s, the SLP came under the influence of Daniel De Leon and his radical views led to widespread discontent amongst the members, leading to the 1901 founding of the reformist-oriented Socialist Party of America (SPA), which included Eugene Debs and other former members of the People's Party. A left wing emerged within the Socialist Party, to the consternation of many party leaders. The new Left wing of the SPA attempted to win a majority of executive positions within the party's internal elections, after the election results, in which the left wing of the party succeeded in electing many candidates, moderate leadership subsequently invalidated the 1919 elections. This flouting of democracy within the party set the stage for factions to split off to begin forming a new Communist Party.

In January 1919, Vladimir Lenin invited the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party to join the Communist International (Comintern). During the spring of 1919, the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, buoyed by a large influx of new members from countries involved in the Russian Revolution, prepared to wrest control from the smaller controlling faction of moderate socialists. A referendum to join Comintern passed with 90% support, but the incumbent leadership suppressed the results. Elections for the party's National Executive Committee resulted in 12 leftists being elected out of a total of 15. Calls were made to expel moderates from the party. The moderate incumbents struck back by expelling several state organizations, half a dozen language federations, and many locals; in all two-thirds of the membership.

1919–1921: Formation and early history

The Socialist Party then called an emergency convention on August 30, 1919. The party's Left Wing Section made plans at a June conference of its own to regain control of the party by sending delegations from the sections of the party that had been expelled to the convention to demand that they be seated. However, the language federations, eventually joined by C. E. Ruthenberg and Louis C. Fraina, turned away from that effort and formed their own party, the Communist Party of America, at a separate convention on September 1, 1919. Meanwhile, plans led by John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow to crash the Socialist Party Convention went ahead. Tipped off, the incumbents called the police, who obligingly expelled the leftists from the hall. The remaining leftist delegates walked out and meeting with the expelled delegates formed the Communist Labor Party on August 30, 1919.

The Comintern was not happy with two communist parties and in January 1920 dispatched an order that the two parties, which consisted of about 12,000 members, merge under the name United Communist Party and to follow the party line established in Moscow. Part of the Communist Party of America under the leadership of Ruthenberg and Jay Lovestone did this, but a faction under the leadership of Nicholas I. Hourwich and Alexander Bittelman continued to operate independently as the Communist Party of America. A more strongly worded directive from the Comintern eventually did the trick and the parties were merged in May 1921. Only five percent of the members of the newly formed party were U.S.-born English-speakers. Many members came from the ranks of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).Buhle, Marxism in the USA: From 1870 to the Present Day (1987)Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist party of the United States: from the depression to World War II (1991) p. 10

1919–1923: Red Scare and the Communist Party USA

From its inception, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) came under attack from state and federal governments and later the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. In 1919, after a series of unattributed bombings and attempted assassinations of government officials and judges (later traced to militant adherents of the radical anarchist Luigi Galleani), the Department of Justice headed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, acting under the Sedition Act of 1918, began arresting thousands of foreign-born party members, many of whom the government deported. The Communist Party was forced underground and took to the use of pseudonyms and secret meetings in an effort to evade the authorities.

The party apparatus was to a great extent underground. It re-emerged in the last days of 1921 as a legal political party called the Workers Party of America (WPA). As the Red Scare and deportations of the early 1920s ebbed, the party became bolder and more open. However, an element of the party remained permanently underground and came to be known as the "CPUSA secret apparatus". During this time, immigrants from Eastern Europe are said to have played a very prominent role in the Communist Party.Klehr, Harvey. Communist Cadre: The Social Background of the American Communist Party Elite. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press. A majority of the members of the Socialist Party were immigrants and an "overwhelming" percentage of the Communist Party consisted of recent immigrants.Glazer, Nathan The Social Basis of American Communism.

1923–1929: Factional war

Now that the above ground element was legal, the Communists decided that their central task was to develop roots within the working class. This move away from hopes of revolution in the near future to a more nuanced approach was accelerated by the decisions of the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern held in 1925. The Fifth World Congress decided that the period between 1917 and 1924 had been one of revolutionary upsurge, but that the new period was marked by the stabilization of capitalism and that revolutionary attempts in the near future were to be stopped. The American Communists embarked then on the arduous work of locating and winning allies.

That work was complicated by factional struggles within the Communist Party which quickly developed a number of more or less fixed factional groupings within its leadership: a faction around the party's Executive Secretary C. E. Ruthenberg, which was largely organized by his supporter Jay Lovestone; and the Foster-Cannon faction, headed by William Z. Foster, who headed the party's Trade Union Educational League (TUEL); and James P. Cannon, who led the International Labor Defense (ILD) organization.Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States: from the Depression to World War II (1991), p. 13.

Foster, who had been deeply involved in the steel strike of 1919 and had been a long-time syndicalist and a Wobbly, had strong bonds with the progressive leaders of the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) and through them with the Progressive Party and nascent farmer-labor parties. Under pressure from the Comintern, the party broke off relations with both groups in 1924. In 1925, the Comintern through its representative Sergei Gusev ordered the majority Foster faction to surrender control to Ruthenberg's faction, which Foster complied. However, the factional infighting within the Communist Party did not end as the Communist leadership of the New York locals of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) lost the 1926 strike of cloakmakers in New York City in large part because of intra-party factional rivalries.Ottanelli, The Communist party of the United States: from the depression to World War II (1991), p. 125.