Communist Party USA
미국 공산당
A Marxist–Leninist party founded in 1919, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, from the left wing of the Socialist Party of America. It belonged to the Comintern and greatly extended its influence in the labour and anti-fascist movements during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was severely weakened by the Smith Act trials and McCarthyism during the Cold War and continues to operate as a small party.
In depth
The Communist Party USA emerged in 1919 from the left wing of the Socialist Party of America. According to the Russian source it was founded on 31 August 1919 through the merger of the communist groups of Charles Ruthenberg and John Reed, and in 1921–1929 it was called the Workers Party of America. According to the English source, by August 1919, only months after its founding, it claimed 50,000 to 60,000 members. The government regarded it as subversive, and the Palmer Raids of 1919–1920 brought mass arrests and deportations. The party followed the Comintern line and was the first racially integrated political party in the United States.
During the Great Depression, under William Z. Foster and Earl Browder, the party played a key role in labour organising, particularly through the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and took up the rights of African Americans and the unemployed. In the mid-1930s it followed the Comintern’s popular front line and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Figures for its membership at the end of the 1930s differ even within the English source, which gives 55,000, about 66,000 (1939) and about 70,000; the Russian source gives about 100,000 in 1939. During the Spanish Civil War members joined the Lincoln Brigade of the International Brigades.
After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 the party switched from anti-fascism to advocating peace and opposed involvement in the war, then fervently supported the war effort after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. In 1945 Browder was ousted and replaced by Foster. As its role in Soviet espionage became known during the Cold War, Eugene Dennis, Foster and ten other leaders were put on trial under the Smith Act in 1949; according to the Russian source more than 140 leaders and members were prosecuted under the act in 1948–1951. With Khrushchev’s Secret Speech of 1956 adding to the crisis, membership fell below 10,000 by 1957, of whom some 1,500 were FBI informants.
Under Gus Hall, who led it from 1959 to 2000, the party remained loyal to the Soviet Union even as other communist parties distanced themselves from Moscow. According to the Russian source Soviet funding first exceeded one million dollars a year in 1965. When the party opposed glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet Communist Party cut off its funding in 1989. At the 1991 convention the majority reaffirmed its Marxist–Leninist line and a minority left the party. In 2021 the party announced that it would run candidates in elections again after a hiatus of over 30 years.