The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) [1] is a de facto social democratic and social imperialist organization that has origins in a communist party.
The Communist Party USA was founded in 1919 after the pro-Soviet wing of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) broke off and formed the Communist Party of America (CPA), which became the Communist Party USA in 1921 after a series of mergers with other groupings that had left the SPA.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, a series of Trotskyists were expelled from the Communist Party USA, including James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman (the latter of which became one of the early neoconservatives), who went on to found the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a section of the Fourth International (FI).
From 1935 onward, the CPUSA abandoned the sectarian and ultraleftist policies they had followed under the third period, and had been working for a Popular Front under the leadership of Earl Browder, who pushed for an alliance with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in order to strengthen the New Deal and gain influence in the newly founded American Federation of Labor (AFL).
In 1944, Earl Browder liquidated the CPUSA to form the Communist Political Association (CPA), with the belief that there would be prolonged harmony between the United States and the USSR after WWII. In 1945, many communist parties internationally (Including the French Communist Party) had shared a criticism of Earl Browder's policies, labeling it as "Browderism". William Z Foster would later be the new general secretary of the Communist Political Association, turning it back into the Communist Party USA.
During the 1960s, the New Left had taken root in the US, largely being a part of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The New Left in the United States was very critical and hostile towards the policies of at the time General Secretary of the CPUSA Gus Hall, because of his stance of opposing identity politics (such as the CPUSA's opposition to the LGBT movement at the time), but as well as his skepticism of student politics and focus on Labor Unions.
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, there was a crisis in the CPUSA leadership. Angela Davis and Pete Seeger, with a few others, formed a faction in the party called Committees of Correspondence (CCDS). CCDS became it's own organization in 1994 after staging a walk out at the CPUSA convention, after Gus Hall tried to quiet the crowd by singing The Internationale. The CCDS convention included speeches by Angela Davis about liberal identity politics, as well as speakers from Social Democratic parties around the world, like the newly founded Die Linke party, as well as Lula's Workers Party (PT) of Brazil.
Even though the CCDS split from the CPUSA, and sabotaged a lot of it's important resources, many people loyal to the CCDS stayed in the Communist Party USA. What didn't help was that Gus Hall was very old and sick at the time, being in a wheelchair by 1996. Gus Hall died in 2000. After which Sam Webb was elected General Secretary, who promised a number of reforms to the CPUSA.
Sam Webb carried out a number of liquidations in the CPUSA, even larger than anything Earl Browder had done. Webb had sold or gotten rid of a lot of property that the CPUSA had previously owned, as well as dissolved a number of mass organizations that the party once held, including National Council of American–Soviet Friendship and Women for Racial and Economic Equality (WREE). The CPUSA under Webb also developed a theory that the party needed to stop running independent candidates, and instead support every and all DNC approved candidate in a desperate attempt to form a popular front with the liberal bourgeoisie against "Fascists" in the GOP.
Sam Webb eventually resigned from his spot as General Secretary in 2014, later leaving the CPUSA in 2016 in order to become a delegate for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). John Bachtell served as a placeholder leader in the meantime, who basically ran the party exactly the way Sam Webb had done previously.
In 2019, CPUSA abolished the post of General Secretary, making the position of Co-Chairs. Joe Sims and Rossana Cambron were made Co-Chairs of the party at the 2019 convention, but other significant things happened at that convention, including adopting the thesis of the pseudo-historian Gerald Horne (a pro-British leftist) as the official party line, replacing the previous position of being against national nihilism. Tarryn Fivek (an individual who had wrecked Workers World Party) had joined the party in 2019.