Earl Browder was an opportunist chairman of the Communist Party USA who led the Party in an alliance with the New Deal coalition, and ultimately moved to liquidate the Party's independence and collaborate fully with the ruling class.
Browderism[edit | edit source]
In 1940, Browder was sentenced to 4 years in prison for passport fraud. In 1942, as Molotov was about to visit the US, FDR commuted Browder's sentence, freeing him.
Browder soon published a book Victory and After promoting class collaboration.[1] p. 145 He believed the USA and USSR would peacefully unite into the "United Nations". [1] p. 145 This is the root of Browderism.
In January 1944, the 28-member National Committee was convened, but with an additional 200 guests invited by Browder. Browder declared that after the Tehran Conference, "Capitalism and Socialism have begun to find their way to peaceful coexistence and collaboration in the same world."[1] p. 188
To reflect its collaboration with the New Deal, Browder said, the CPUSA should change its name to the "Communist Political Association". The National Committee approved his proposals.
William Z. Foster and his friend Sam Darcy were opposed to this, and sent a letter to the Party leadership, signed by Foster. It was read by the Politburo and rejected. Sam Darcy refused to submit to the decision and was expelled from the Party.
In early 1945, when the Soviets discovered how far Browder had gone, they wrote a letter in Moscow to denounce him, quoting Foster's letter and naming him. It was handed to Jacques Duclos of the French Communist Party to be published in his name. The letter denounced Browder's "liquidation of the independent political party of the working class" and "notorious revision of Marxism".[2] p. 95
The letter strengthened communist elements of the CPUSA, and in June-July, Browder was demoted, the old name was restored, and William Z. Foster became Party chairman.
In January 1946, Browder began publishing an economic newsletter with a $100/year subscription price. He wanted to gain a readership of business executives and political decision-makers: corporate and political bureaucrats. [3] p. 135 For this grift, he was expelled from the Party.
Browder obtained a visa to go to the USSR in April to appeal his expulsion, but the Soviets did not reinstate him.
He returned to the USA and registered as a foreign agent of the USSR.
Aftermath[edit | edit source]
In 1956, after Khrushchev's Speech, there was reportedly an attempt to reinstate Browder in the CPUSA, but it failed.
In 1957, Browder appeared on the Mike Wallace Show and said, "Getting thrown out of the Communist Party was the best thing that ever happened to me." He elaborated that the communist movement was "changing its character" and if he wasn't kicked out, he wouldn't know how to leave the movement.[4]
When asked about Khrushchev's plea for "peaceful co-existence" between capitalism and socialism, Browder was sympathetic, saying "I believe that he's trying to do a job in the direction of relaxing the tensions of the world."[4] He gave the impression that Khrushchev didn't go far enough in subservience to the American capitalists: "I even then, all these years ago was preaching something more than he said today."[4] He also criticized Khrushchev for supporting the "Hungarian regime" of Kadar (newly built after the Uprising of 1956).
Commentary[edit | edit source]
Sam Darcy: "Browder was really a corrupt man. Everything evil in Communism, he championed."[5]
Gil Green, a democratic socialist who helped found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism splinter from CPUSA in 1991, was favorable to Browder, and claimed that the "Duclos letter" was a device of Stalinist global domination.
"I was terribly shocked by the article. But in my naiveté and innocence, I was shocked because I was supposed to have been involved in what was a betrayal of Marxism. This was undoubtedly coming from Moscow.... According to the Italians, later on, there is evidence that it was not aimed so much at Browder and the party here as at the Italian and French parties. The fear was that, with their underground fighting against the Nazis, they would emerge with tremendous prestige and be able to take an independent course. And while the blow was struck against us here, it wasn't necessarily concerned with us alone." [6]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.
- ↑ Klehr, Harvey, Haynes, John Earl and Anderson, Kyrill M. The Soviet World of American Communism. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.)
- ↑ Philip J. Jaffe, The Rise and Fall of American Communism. New York: Horizon Press, 1975.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Mike Wallace Interview. Earl Browder. https://web.archive.org/web/20091220124734/http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/browder_earl_t.html
- ↑ U.S. Labor and Industrial History, Web Archive at University of Albany. https://web.archive.org/web/20220428092702/https://www.albany.edu/history/LaborAudio/index.html
- ↑ Stephanson, Anders, and Gil Green. "Interview with Gil Green". Ed. Michael E. Brown, Randy Martin, and George Snedeker. Comp. Frank Rosengarten. New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism. New York: Monthly Review, 1993. 307-26. Print.