The period of 1956-58 has been of great importance to the anti-revisionist movement in the United States. It is in this period that the mythology of the New Communist Movement locates the revisionist turning-point of the CPUSA. While we know this to be ahistorical and empiricist in nature we must, nonetheless, view this period within a proper perspective to understand why this is the immediately observable “turning-point” which the NCM chooses target.
This was a period where a number of stresses and strains made the Party’s practice and its internal contradictions fully evident. The Secret Speech by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the uprisings in Poland and Hungary which were quelled though force, and the repression of the McCarthy period were but some of the external causes through which the internal contradictions of the Party came to a head.
At this time the CP was split into a right faction headed by John Gates the editor of the Daily Worker who had just returned from four years in prison, the center which was lead by the Secretary of the CP, Eugene Dennis, and the left led by William Z. Foster, the Party’s Chairman.
It was a time where a reevaluation of the Party’s practice in the post-war period was being seriously considered in light of the fact that the Party had lost nearly 80% of its membership and was severely isolated from the working class. The question of how to go forward was in the forefront of the struggles which ensued. The party press was open to an exchange of opinions on important issues, a frankness whose diversity was without precedent.
At the end of this struggle the right found itself defeated, with the center and the Fosterite “left” controlling the party with hegemony resting with the center. As this session will show, the distinguishing of left and right at this time will not be an easy task because there were elements of realism and revisionism in the positions of each faction. The truth of this observation can be seen in the fact that the Gatesian “right” was defeated but the right-revisionism of the Party remained. To paraphrase Earl Browder, “Revisionism triumphs even though the revisionists are defeated.”
I. In the period in question, the CP was hotly debating the source of its errors from 1945-56. From what we know about the history of the CP, in what light should we consider the claims concerning the main error of the party being either left-sectarianism or right-opportunism? How does the struggle against “leftism” in this period relate to the OC position concerning the main danger to the party- building movement?
II. What were the differences/similarities between the practice of the CP which Dennis supported in his NEW LOOK article, the proposals of Gates for a Political Action Association and Foster’s affirmation of peaceful transition? How should we assess this in line with the anti-revisionist movement’s notion that the CP “went revisionist” in 1957 and Irwin Silber’s contention that all the Communist Movement needs to do is go back and rectify the line of the CP during this period?
III. What are some of the correct criticisms which each faction had of CP policies and how might the CP have synthesized these singular critiques into a totality for rectifying the CPUSA?
The Communists Take a New Look, by Eugene Dennis, pps. 19-32, 35-37, 43-48.
On the Party Situation, William Z. Foster, pps. 16-21.
Time for a Change, John Gates, pps. 44-45, 47-56.
What Kind of a Change?, Eugene Dennis, pps. 40-41.
Marxism-Leninism and “American Prosperity,” William Z. Foster, pps. 44-48.
Proceedings of the 16th National Convention of the CP, “The American Road to Socialism,” pps. 304-09.