The Communist International and US Communism, 1919-1929 (original) (raw)

The Soviet World of American Communism

Political Science Quarterly, 1999

book reviews j 173 group. Indeed, Reed thoroughly shows how the Chicago NAACP was able to adjust its incentive structure and become more programatically diverse and relevant, thus increasing its fund-raising capacity and membership. Reed's book provides a solid contribution to the literature and is far richer than can be captured in this short review. It is well written and researched and carefully thought out. It is recommended to students of Chicago politics, urban history and politics, and African American politics.

Mark Solomon — The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936

Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate, 1999

Immediately following World War I, organizations based primarily on race or class generally precluded serious interracial organization and theoretical analysis of the interplay between racial and class-based discrimination. Marcus Gamey captured the imagination of the New Negro in his quest to build an Africa for Africans, but his venture, the United Negro Improvement Association, quickly became mired in scandal, and Gamey's pandering to capitalists alienated him from more class conscious black liberationists. The Socialist Party offered a place for African Americans to work with whites to fight against capitalism, but it did not hlly integrate the problem of racism into its understanding of class struggle. The American Communist party challenged the duality represented by the Garveyites and the Socialists. Founded in 19 19, the American party took nine years to formulate its thinking on the role of racism within a capitalist society. But at its Sixth Congress, in 1928, the Communist party finally committed itself to its line on self-determination in the Black Belt. This theory's creation and the activity and discussion that it generated began a groundbreaking interracial movement based upon the idea that the struggle against racism was a precondition to class unity. By examining the complex relationship between the American Communist party and African Americans, Mark Solomon's The Cly Was Unity induces readers to rethink the historical connection between race and class and its relevance to today's society. This book, the first in a promised two-volume series, integrates first-rate interviews and archival materials with rich sources gleaned from the Communist International's archives in Moscow. In fact, this is the first book to incorporate materials from the Comintern's archives into an analysis of the relationship between African Americans and the Communist party. These revealing sources provide both national and international perspectives on the issues of race and class, placing Solomon at the center of the ongoing debate concerning the nature of American communism. To this end, Solomon deftly challenges the two schools of thought cm American communism and argues for a new paradigm. The first group of scholars, including Irving Howe, Lewis Coser, Theodore Draper, and Hawey Klehr, interpreted all aspects of internationalism with negative moral

“Run Quick and Find the Reds”: Historians’ Search for American Communists

American Communist History, 2019

I want to thank the executive committee, and especially Vernon Pederson, for asking me to speak to today and to everyone who came from far and wide to participate in this important conference. We are here today because we understand that when we research and write about American communism, we are entering an arena where the stakes are high: wars hot and cold have been fought, people gave their lives, others had them taken; and untold money was spent for the cause and to defeat the party altogether. In the end, the movement had an enormous impact on America's political shift to the right as well as on movements that flourished on the left. And today, in Trump's America, the history of American communism resonates. In the weeks leading up to the mid-term election, the Trump administration released a 72page report published by the Council of Economic Advisors attacking socialism. The report threatened that a democratic sweep in the midterms would likely result in the USA "becoming the next Venezuela." The report honed in on the likelihood that democrats would force government run healthcare down the throats of American citizens, ultimately draining national coffers. A sub section of the report titled: "The Socialist Economic Narrative: Exploitation Corrected by Central Planning" connects the messaging of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. The Socialism that appears un-American in the depictions offered by Trump and his followers, takes on a different cast among today's socialists who are inspired by Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Democratic Socialists of America, now larger than the Socialist Party ever was, and approaching the numbers of the Communist Party, are looking to the history of socialism generally, and the American Communist party specifically, and they are asking questions about what worked in the past and what didn't. They want to learn from the Old Left's organizing strategies and world view and to understand why the USA and the anti-communist left turned so fiercely on communists. The significance of our work is clear. So is its timeliness. In the USA and across the globe, rural and urban communities are confronting challenges brought by globalization, ethnic and racial nationalism and

Towards a Prosopography of the American Communist Elite: The Foundation Years, 1919–1923

American Communist History, 2019

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

Making "The Case Against the Reds": Racializing Communism, 1919-1920

Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification and Othering, 2019

∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper) ISBN: 978-1-60732-813-1 (cloth) ISBN: 978-1-64642-001-8 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-64642-002-5 (open-access PDF) ISBN: 978-1-64642-003-2 (open-access ePUB)

The Founders of American Anti-Communism

2006

This article focuses on the vital contribution made by a network of inter-war activists in the US government, the military, the security services, eugenics institutes and big business lobbies to the creation of American anti-communism. Long before the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, this network helped entrench an ideology of anti-communism in the center of American political life. Its members developed political propaganda and mythology, and spread their message across the political, economic and social spectrum. In particular, the article debunks the myth of the 1920s as a period of political “normalcy”; describes the linkages between nascent anti-communism and America’s immigration policy revolution of the mid-1920s; explains the prevalence of racial theory, anti-labor views and cultural prejudice in the US’s growing national security apparatus; ties the emergence of 20th century anti-communism to long-standing anti-labor views and activity; describes the rise of “100% Americanism” in response to communism; and explains how doctrines of innate inequality were used to justify what was described as “anti-communist” repression.

The Socialists Within the Black American Experience, 1917-1924

1975

This paper will: 1) discuss the nature of the Messenger; 2) examine one of the organizations created by the socialists; 3) explore their relationship to the major figures of Negro leadership; and 4) review some of the reasons historians offer for the socialist collapse. "Although Black history is dotted with a few socialist thinkers and writers advocating the replacement of capitalism, their influence was small and followings were negligable. "

Book Review: The Communist Experience in America

Labour History (Australia), 2011

Harvey Klehr is one of the leading ‘traditionalist’ historians of the American left, and among the most relentless critics of his ‘revisionist’ counterparts. The latter generation of scholars, Klehr believes, have unjustifiably celebrated the virtues of American communists and minimized the evils of the Communist Party-USA. The Communist Experience in America, a collection of his previously published essays, vividly conveys his indignation.