APRIL 1945
"On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States," by Jacques Duclos. [April 1945] One of the seminal documents in the history of the American Communist movement. In 1944, head of the CPUSA Earl Browder launched the party on a "new course," disavowing the "political party" model for the organization and replacing it with a "Communist Political Association. This change was formally ratified by the 12th National Conference of the CPUSA, held in May 1944. This article by French CP leader Jacques Duclos appeared in the April 1945 issue of the French party's theoretical magazine and was quickly recognized by American Communists as a signal from Moscow as to the inappropriateness of the "new course" undertaken in 1944. When Browder refused to change course again, a factional struggle ensued, resulting in short order in Browder's removal from power and expulsion from the party. Despite the document's length and detail, Duclos' unleashes only one particularly harsh paragraph: "Despite declarations regarding recognition of the principles of Marxism, one is witnessing a notorious revision of Marxism on the part of Browder and his supporters, a revision which is expressed in the concept of a long-term class peace in the United States, of the possibility of the suppression of the class struggle in the postwar period and of establishment of harmony between labor and capital."
JUNE 1945
"Speech to the CPA National Committee," by Earl Browder [June 18, 1945] This is a very lengthy defense of the wartime policies of his administration by recently cashiered General Secretary Earl Browder. Browder makes his defense by reciting a massive number of quotations from his own wartime speeches and writings as well as two from Lenin -- this endless regurgitation representing well over half of the 9500-word excerpt here. Stripping away his self-congratulatory bluster, Browder's basic argument is that "The basic soundness of American Communists' wartime policy had not been directly challenged in the present discussion until the reports today." He holds that his uncontested policy was sound and rational, made necessary by the need to establish a Second Front in Europe and to support the Roosevelt administration against an alliance of Republican and conservative anti-Administration forces who were empowered in the rightward-tilting Congressional elections of 1942. The lack of Democratic Party dynamism in the aftermath of the 1942 vote demonstrated "the Democratic Party could be the vehicle for a people's victory only when it was supplemented by independent organizations of labor and the people (including dissident Republicans), in a broad coalition," Browder declares. Browder maintains the CPUSA's policy of guiding the labor movement to compliant support of the Roosevelt administration in matters of its personnel or policies was "entirely correct" since a militant policy would have resulted in a Dewey victory in 1944. Browder acknowledges that "We have undoubtedly been suffering from a number of vulgarizations and distortions of our correct political line, which require correction," but argues that their correction can "only upon the foundation of that political line and not upon its abandonment." Browder rejects charges that the policies with he was associated were a manifestation of "revisionism," since "our policy since 1942 has been basically correct, has proved itself so in life, and has brought victories and advances in all fields to the nation and to the working class, including the matter from the change from Party to Association."
