The Fight Against Revisionism in the U.S. Communist Party

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1. Guest

   January 4, 2015 at 12:00 am

   In 1945, American Communist leader Earl Browder was expelled from the Communist Party USA and replaced by his old nemesis, William Z Foster. Browder was accused of various right-wing deviations from the true Communist program, among them an attempt to turn the party itself into a looser "association". His line, which included the idea that the Soviet Union and the United States could peacefully cooperate after World War II on a permanent basis, was condemned as "Browderism".

   There was just one problem. "Browderism" was really Stalinism, the Stalinism of the People’s Front and the 7th Congress of the Comintern, consistently applied. The Communist Party had supported Roosevelt, the New Deal and the American war effort against Nazi Germany and Japan, including the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stalin was behind this, of course. I don’t know if Stalin approved of Browder’s decision to turn the CPUSA into a looser and more "soft line" association, or if Browder moved too fast, but he clearly didn’t backtrack fast enough when Roosevelt died and the more anti-Soviet Truman became president. The American Communists quickly unseated and expelled Browder (after various hints from Moscow), switching to a more "hard line" pose.

   Or did they?

   Some CP members were dissatisfied with the new leadership around Foster. Indeed, most of the "new" leaders (with the exception of Foster) had supported Browder just a few months previously! As for Foster, he immediately decided to purge the party of "leftist sectarians". Eventually, an entire layer of party activists was expelled, since they refused to go along with Foster’s "Browderism without Browder". The most well known expellee was William F Dunne, a former editor of "Daily Worker". By contrast, the author of this pamphlet, Burt Sutta, seems to have been completely unknown. He was just a regular party member in Queens, New York. Yet, Sutta might have been one of the more interesting expellees.

   In his pamphlet, Sutta has little problem showing that on domestic issues, Foster has simply continued Browder’s politics. While opposing Truman’s foreign policy, the Communists nevertheless supported the Democrats, including Truman Democrats. In the unions, the Communists attempted to latch unto Philip Murray, leader of the Steelworkers, even as he was beginning to purge Communists from important positions. In New Orleans (where race segregation still was a reality), the Communists demanded that the local (White) police protect their meetings! Clearly, Foster did everything to foster a respectable image for his party, presumably as a tactic to avoid red-baiting.

   Sutta has little problem showing that Lenin had a different position. He quotes profusely from "What is to be done". What makes Sutta’s pamphlet intriguing is that he (tacitly) attacks popular frontism, for instance by repudiating the Communist Party’s support for Roosevelt, by stating that the Western powers even during the war were secretly plotting to attack the Soviet Union, or by rejecting any support for the "liberal bourgeoisie". What Sutta doesn’t do is laying the blame for all this "revisionism" on Stalin, where it clearly belongs. Yet, it may be significant that Sutta never references the 7th Congress of the Comintern, instead preferring to quote Lenin’s famous (and super-revolutionary) 21 conditions for admission to the Comintern. In a later text, Sutta apparently *did* muster some criticism of Stalin, and was roundly condemned as a "Trotskyite" for doing so by the other expellees.

   Most of the "left sectarians" didn’t realize (or pretended not to notice) that "Browderism" was the logical culmination of Stalin’s popular frontism. Instead, they attempted to prove that Browder (and Foster) had distorted Stalin’s true line, quoting various "radical" statements adopted at the 7th Congress in 1935. It should be noted in this context that Stalin didn’t suddenly discover this policy during the mid-1930’s. He had it already during the 1920’s (the Bloc of Four Classes).

   Sutta’s text, despite its political confusions, could be seen as an early forerunner of similar debates within the "Marxist-Leninist movement" of the 1970’s, including those triggered by Enver Hoxha’s criticism of Mao. The Albanian leader attacked "Maoist" positions which really originated with Stalin, while pretending to be a super-Stalinist. True to form, Hoxha attacked Browder rather than Stalin! Some people noticed the discrepancy, and acted accordingly. In the United States, the previously crank-Hoxhaite Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP) evolved into a kind of peculiar anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninists (or, if you are less kind, "Third Period Stalinists minus Stalin"). A very small group in Sweden followed a similar trajectory. Perhaps Burt Sutta of Queens County was an early precursor of these people?

   I realize that this review is somewhat "esoteric", and also somewhat "emic". In reality, I really don’t care about the factional disputes within the Marxist-Leninist movement. I mean, come on, what’s wrong with good ol’ Labour Zionism? Still, I did find "The Fight Against Revisionism in the U.S. Communist Party" relatively interesting, in its own kind of way, and therefore give it three stars.t should be noted in this context that Stalin didn’t suddenly discover this policy during the mid-1930’s. He had it already during the 1920’s (the Bloc of Four Classes). Sutta’s text, despite its political confusions, could be seen as an early forerunner of similar debates within the "Marxist-Leninist movement" of the 1970’s, including those triggered by Enver Hoxha’s criticism of Mao. The Albanian leader attacked "Maoist" positions which really originated with Stalin, while pretending to be a super-Stalinist. True to form, Hoxha attacked Browder rather than Stalin! Some people noticed the discrepancy, and acted accordingly. In the United States, the previously crank-Hoxhaite Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP) evolved into a kind of peculiar anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninists (or, if you are less kind, "Third Period Stalinists minus Stalin"). A very small group in Sweden followed a similar trajectory. Perhaps Burt Sutta of Queens County was an early precursor of these people? I realize that this review is somewhat "esoteric", and also somewhat "emic". In reality, I really don’t care about the factional disputes within the Marxist-Leninist movement. I mean, come on, what’s wrong with good ol’ Labour Zionism? Still, I did find "The Fight Against Revisionism in the U.S. Communist Party" relatively interesting, in its own kind of way, and therefore give it three stars.