Earl Browder

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Earl Browder : biography

May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1971

On January 7, 1944, the 28 members of the governing National Committee of the CPUSA were called into session in New York City.Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pg. 188. Although they usually conducted their business in closed executive session, the members of the National Committee were surprised to learn that their session was to be held in a large room in front of about 200 invited guests. In his keynote report to the gathering, General Secretary Browder revisited the close cooperation indicated at the Teheran Conference and declared that "Capitalism and Socialism have begun to find their way to peaceful coexistence and collaboration in the same world."Quoted in Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pg. 188.

The Communist Party found itself in the position of advancing its policy initiatives through political cooperation with New Deal supporters, Browder indicated, and he declared that "Communist organization in the United States should adjust its name to correspond more exactly to the American political tradition and its own practical political role."Quoted in Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pg. 190. Consequently, the name of the Communist Party USA would be changed to the "Communist Political Association," Browder noted — advising those gathered of a decision which had already been rendered by the Political Buro of the party.Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pg. 190. A series of speakers followed Browder, each lending support to the predetermined change of party name and shift in conception of the organization’s role in the American political firmament.

The National Committee voted unanimously in support of Browder’s proposals and established committees to draft a new constitution for the organization and to prepare for a May 1944 convention to ratify the changes.Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pg. 191. Factional opposition to Browder’s change took the form of a letter to the party leadership by Browder’s nemesis William Z. Foster and Foster’s friend, Philadelphia District Organizer Sam Darcy, signed only by the former.Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kirill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998; pg. 93. The pair took aim at Browder’s view that the bourgeoisie would continue its wartime coordination with the Roosevelt administration after the war and predicted a breakdown which would require an aggressive response by American Communists.Klehr, Haynes, and Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, pp. 93–94.

Browder only allowed the Foster-Darcy letter to be circulated to a handful of top party leaders, who at a February 1944 meeting of the Polburo voted to reject the letter.Klehr, Haynes, and Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, pg. 94. Foster’s objection was muted when Browder made clear that open criticism would have been regarded as a punishable breach of party discipline.Isserman, Which Side Were You On? pp. 192–193. Darcy refused to submit to party discipline on this matter, however, viewing it as a matter of fundamental principle, and he was subsequently expelled from the CPA by a committee headed by Foster himself.

Expulsion and after

With the end of the Great Power alliance at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, so-called "Browderism" came under attack from the rest of the international Communist movement, particularly with respect to the restructuring of the American party in 1944. In April 1945 the French Communist Party’s theoretical magazine, Les Cahiers du communisme, published an article by French party leader Jacques Duclos which outspokenly declared that Browder’s beliefs about a harmonious post-war world were "erroneous conclusions in no wise flowing from a Marxist analysis of the situation."Quoted in Klehr, Haynes, and Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, pg. 95. Browder’s "liquidation of the independent political party of the working class" was held by Duclos to constitute a "notorious revision of Marxism."