Earl Browder

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Earl Browder : biography

May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1971

Tension developed between the trio, with Foster seeing his long-desired place as CPUSA chief foiled by a man who had formerly been his lieutenant at the Trade Union Educational League; both the midwesterners distrusted the ambitious, college-educated New Yorker Weinstone.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 47. Browder’s considerable administrative skills, his ability to intelligently defend his ideas, and his willingness to yield to others when necessary scored points for his personal cause in Moscow.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 49.

By the end of 1932 Browder’s primary leadership role was consolidated. Protracted squabbling with Weinstone, returned from Moscow and anxious to once again pursue the top party leadership positions, over party policy threatened to erupt into a 1920s-style factional war.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 52. In August the Comintern Representative, sensing such a danger, advised Moscow of "some strong person" to stop the "squabbling."Quoted in Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 53. The third member of the Secretariat, William Z. Foster, the party’s candidate for President, suffered an attack of angina pectoris and was ordered by doctors to cease campaigning and to undergo bed rest — with visitation and dictation similarly proscribed.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 53. With Foster out of the picture and a big majority of the party leadership backing him over Weinstone, Browder appealed to the Comintern to resolve what he called "impossible relations" with Weinstone by assigning one of them for Comintern work abroad.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 54.

On November 13, 1932, after extensive debate, the Comintern ruled in Browder’s favor, determining that Weinstone would be removed from America to once again serve in Moscow as the CPUSA’s official representative there. Moscow’s vision seems to have been for a joint party leadership between Browder and Foster.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 55. The unexpected factor proved to be the chronic and incapacitating nature of Foster’s heart ailment, which left Browder in a position of effective unitary leadership.

Although Weinstone had been removed from America to break up an incipient factional war, he continued to campaign for the position of party leader. In the spring of 1933 he obtained the final test of strength he had been looking for, in the form of a dozen meetings of the Comintern’s Anglo-American Secretariat in Moscow spread out over 29 days.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 58. Throughout April Browder and Weinstone leveled charges and counter-charges against one another, examining the Communist Party’s activities in the United States in fine detail.Ryan, Earl Browder, pp. 59–60. Despite significant criticism of certain of his actions, Browder emerged from the Moscow sessions in a firm position of authority. Weinstone, accepting defeat at last, remained in Moscow as the CPUSA’s CI Rep until 1934.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 59.

Leader of the Popular Front

While Earl Browder was one of the top leaders of American Communism during the so-called Third Period of the early 1930s, he came into his own during the interval which followed, the era of the Popular Front against fascism. With the rise of Adolf Hitler to Chancellor of Germany at the end of January 1933, the balance of power in Europe was shifted. Formerly home to one of the most powerful Communist organizations, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was quickly and easily suppressed. The failure of the KPD to cooperate with workers adhering to the rival Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was seen by many Comintern officials as a major contributing factor to the disaster. New tactics building a broad alliance in opposition to fascism seemed to be indicated.

Browder was an enthusiastic supporter of this new party line. By the middle of 1934 the Browder-led Central Committee of the CPUSA was pushing the leaders of its youth section, the [Young Communist League, to establish a working alliance with the youth section of the rival Socialist Party, the Young People’s Socialist League.Ryan, Earl Browder, pg. 76. In the same vein, Browder himself picked up hints from Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas that joint work between Socialists and Communists might be possible on specific issues, in reply to which Browder issued a letter formally proposing a large scale united front of the two organizations.