The 1920’s were an important formative period for the communist party in the US. This period, was characterized by great factional struggle and the frequent intervention of the Comintern at decisive moments.
Prom 1923 on, the party was divided into two basic factions led by Charles S. Ruthenburg and William Z. Poster respectively. Ruthenburg’s faction included such people as Bert Wolfe, Jay Lovestone and John Pepper, a Comintern agent who had been a part of the abortive Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. The Foster faction was made up of people such as James P. Cannon, the father of American Trotskyism, Alex Bittleman of the Jewish Federation, Ludwig Lore and, at times, Earl Browder.
These factions split over the results of Pepper and Ruthenburg’s approach to working toward a Parmer-Labor Party. Originally intended as a broad united front in which communists would participate, it quickly became a mere appendage of the party which led to its isolation from the mass movement. Pepper was instrumental in using his prestige to push the line leading to this unintended isolation while Ruthenburg followed reluctantly.
The Foster-Cannon-Bittleman-Lore faction developed in opposition to these actions and gained control of the party from Rutnenburg1s group at the 3rd Convention of the party in early 1924. Foster’s group controlled the Central Committee and the Political Bureau with Ruthenburg retaining his position as executive secretary while Poster was chairman of the party.
In 1924 both factions, excluding Lore, supported the idea of working with the independent Farmer-Labor movement(not just the Workers Party front group) to support US Senator Robert Lafollette’s Progressive Party campaign for the Presidency. Differences in the character of this support led the Ruthenburg and Foster factions to Moscow to settle the dispute.
At this time the struggle against Trotskyism was developing in the Soviet Party and European conditions were leading the Comintern to predict that Germany was “pregnant with revolution.” These circumstances led to the assumption that coalitions with left-progressive movements must be abandoned since conditions in Europe demanded it. While the US was not a part of this alledged revolutionary situation in Europe its implications were mechanically applied to the US by the Comintern. The US communist movement had to change its line over-night and began denouncing LaFollette as the “candidate of political gangsters.” In the election the progressive party got a disappointing 17% of the vote, the communists nearly none. Lafollette died the next year and the progressive party followed his example.
After the election, ’the debate over a farmer Labor movement continue with Foster saying it was useless to communists given the period and Ruthenburg saying it still had a chance, Once again the factions went to Moscow to arbitrate and attend the Fifth Plenum of the ECCI.
At the Fifth Plenum the Comintern stated that a “partial stabalization of capitalism was occurring”, whereas less than a year previously it was predicting revolution. This led to Foster being rebuked for opposing the re-vitalization of the Farmer-Labor movement since a stable conjuncture was seen as requiring a unite front strategy. It was also decided that the soon to be held 4th Convention of the US party would be mediated, by a “neutral” chairman who turned out to be Sergei Gusev, a Comintern agent and ex-secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee which directed the Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd in 1917.
At the 4th Convention Foster had a 2 to 1 margin in support for his faction and was planning to unseat both Ruthenburg and Lovestone from vital party positions thus strengthening his power to the greatest possible extent. Yet gusev, with Comintern approval, called for the Ruthenburg-Lovestone goup’s dominance and his word was final. The Ruthenburg-Lovestone faction held sway in the party until 1929 when, a couple years after Ruthenburg’s death, Lovestone was dislodged as party leader by yet another Comintern intervention.
It was in this early period that the Bolshevization campaign of the party was initiated, the trade union-question fought over and the party began to edge away from being little more than an ultra-left propaganda sect. It was in this period that the party showed patterns of development and practice which were to characterize it for a long time to come. Therein lies the period’s great importance.
I. Why was the party a propaganda sect in the early years of its existence? How did its line on the Farmer-Labor party help it break out of the propaganda sect period? How can we forsee the present ML movement breaking out of its propaganda period and making the transition to a different relationship between itself and the masses?
II. What was Bolshevization, how was it carried out, and what did it mean to the party?(this in terms of organization, structure, membership fluctuation and composition) Given the need for close links with the working class, is the factory cell form required?
III. What were the limitations in membership, finances and line which effected the party’s work with women and Blacks?
IV. How did the Passaic strike represent and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the party’s trade union work? How were factional struggles in the party and the intervention of the Comintern an organic part of this period?
[missing – EROL]