Dan Snow's History Hit - Communism in America

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

The history of the United States' relationship with communism is one littered with fear and persecution. So where did the American Communist Party come from? How powerful has it been in the last century? And where is it now?In this episode of American History Hit, Don is joined by Dr. Vernon Pederson, Professor at the American University of Sharjah and President of the Historians of American Communism.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. The senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm very pleased to say you don't have to listen to me today. We've got an episode of our sibling podcast, American History Hit. This one is all about the history of communism in the US of A. Yes, there was once actual communists in the USA. And Don Wildman is learning all about it in this excellent episode of the podcast. Enjoy! As the polls close, it's been another presidential election day in America, here on November 4th, 1976. It's been a hard-fought campaign set against the red, white, and blue backdrop of our nation's bicentennial. 200 years of Americans in

pursuit of happiness. Well, sort of. In 1972, our last vote for president, it was all Nixon in a landslide, only to watch the man resign in disgrace two years later. Between Vietnam and the recession and inflation and OPEC gas lines, the public's faith in its government has significantly eroded these last years, with voter turnout down 10% over the past decade. But one political party has somehow been emboldened by these dreary doldrums. The Communist Party USA, founded back in 1919, has begun to gain some traction, calling for an 80% cut in defense spending, an end to Cold War policies, a 30-hour workweek for the same pay, independence for Puerto Rico, women's equality, and the outlawing of racism.

As usual, though, it might have seemed there were only two candidates in this race, Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter versus incumbent Republican Gerald Ford. But on the ballot as well, there's Minnesota's Eugene McCarthy, Lester Maddox running for the independents, Roger McBride libertarian, and perennial candidate for president Gus Hall for the Communist Party USA, who has garnered 58,709 votes nationwide, .07% of the electorate. In this losing cause, Gus Hall frames the campaign as a victory. Ours is not an election party. An election is a continuation of our year-round work to raise issues we're interested in.

That's turning a negative into a positive. The communist way. In a United States that would mostly prefer, it would just go away. Hello and welcome to another episode of American History Hit. Don Wildman here. Over the past several centuries of human civilization, social thinkers have strived to solve the troubling inequities arising from the Industrial Revolution, as economies reorganized around new technological innovations, and populations stratified into those who owned the new means of production, private individuals or corporations, and those who worked for them. This capital-driven factory system soon dominated Western economies,

and steam-driven machinery kept churning onward as improved transportation networks brought products to markets far and wide. But by the mid-1800s, it had become clear that unchecked capitalism was a system that so inherently favored the upper classes, it created difficult and often dangerous conditions for workers. Resistance developed against the industrialists and the governments protecting them, just as it had against the tyrannical aristocracy of previous decades. So it was that an alternative economic notion was hatched, based generally on the platonic ideal of a collective society in which the community, rather than individuals, owned and managed property and

resources, and yes, factories. It was a broad movement, termed socialism, which would then develop and evolve into other more specific ideas and movements, including one expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their 1848 work, The Communist Manifesto. Socialism and communism are two sides of the same coin. And when that coin was minted in America, where capitalism and free enterprise are viewed to this day as the bedrock foundation of the American way of life, well, there was bound to be friction, if not blood in the streets. The evolution of this movement and the reaction against it is our topic today, as we track the rise and fall of the American Communist

Party, guided by Dr. Vernon Peterson, professor at the American University of Shajah in the United Arab Emirates, president of the Historians of American Communism, based in New York City. Greetings, Dr. Peterson. Hello, Vernon. Hello. Good to be here. I had to reach back for my marks and angles. How'd I do on that little summary? Actually, not too bad. I'd add a couple of small correctives to that. Socialism has been around as a concept for a long, long time. The earliest visions of a more equitable society go all the way back to Plato. What makes Marxism different is that it applies a scientific understanding of history

as a continual process of revolution and renewal to theories about how best to run collective society. Right. And for that reason, it is considered, or was considered especially, a radical difference. Oh, very much so. Yeah, in that it called for the overthrow, literally, in the language of the previous system and the ruling class that guided it. Well, in fact, what made it so attractive was it claimed that the laws of history made the overthrow of the capitalist society inevitable.

Yeah, exactly. Interesting. No matter how hard they resisted change, no matter how oppressive they became, in the end, they were doomed by their own contradictions. That's really attractive to people. It's fascinating stuff. It's the underpinning of so much, especially in the 20th century, but even today. I want to circle back to my introduction of you and the organization that you are still the head of. Is that right?

The American Historians of Communism? That's correct. And I just want to read the mission statement of this, which is fascinating to me. to read the mission statement of this, which is fascinating to me. To promote sharing of information among scholars interested in the history of American communism, American anti-communism, Soviet espionage in America, American ties to the communist international and red international of trade unions, social justice, it's going on, social justice and cultural movements sponsored or endorsed by the Communist Party. There's a lot of angles.

The history of communism is remarkably complex. Its origins, its theories first, but then its actions and reactions otherwise. Why has it always been so particularly controversial in America? Because there's two sides to the thing. On the one hand, the Communist Party has always stood for a lot of extremely attractive social values. They were among the very first political organizations in America to denounce racism, to demand a better share of the nation's wealth for the working class, and to promote international cooperation and efforts towards peace. All these things are hard to argue with as being good things. Yeah. At the same time, though, they were intimately associated with an oppressive regime abroad, the Soviet Union, dedicated to promoting its goals, and when pressed, wanting to see a violent overthrow of the United States government.

They didn't believe that the reforms and the ideals that they promoted could be achieved without violence in the end. It would take a Marxian revolution. So on the one hand, you have people saying the communists are great guys. Look at all the values they have. On the other hand, people say, yeah, but they want to destroy the world that we built. How can we tolerate that? So that's why they're always such impressively controversial organizations studying. Sure.

And to this day, I mean, there are those who think of communism as the devil's hand at work on Earth. It's amazing. I imagine most Americans don't realize that communism really caught on here. And in the 20th century, I mean, it's... Let's talk about how it started. The American Communist Party founded in 1919.

It is, as I understand, a split off from the Socialist Party of America. Can you take us through the process? Oh, absolutely. Socialism gets a later start in America than it does in Europe, in part just because our society is so much more fluid. There's such a higher level of wealth. People move around more. So the organization's a bit tricky. But by 1901, we have a fully formed socialist party in the United States. The leader is a man named Eugene V. Debs. And although he firmly believes in working within the system to reform it, he's a genuine radical. He wants to see virtually 100% inheritance tax. He wants to see the abolition of the Senate, which he believes is an elitist institution. Absolute equality for women. So it's a genuinely

radical organization. It does very well, though. Debs runs for president five times. His best effort, he gets 6% of the vote. More importantly, there are socialist administrations at the local level all over the United States and a few members of Congress who identify as socialists. So this fits the American Party very much in with the worldwide movement that you could describe as democratic socialism. Because they work within the system. The revolution's coming, but we're not pushing for it.

We're pushing for immediate reform. What changes that is the Russian Revolution. This is the spark that inspires everyone worldwide. I just want to understand, the socialism in America really comes out of it. It's important to understand how much unrest there had been in the late 19th century into the 20th. I mean, it continued onward from there, too. But there had been really big things happening that the Socialism Party was the response to. Am I right?

That's correct. It's part, well, it's caused by a combination of things. But the biggest one was the explosive growth of American industry and its demand for workers basically just ate people up. Plus, there's no social safety net in America in the late 19th century. If you lose your job, you lose everything. And that combined with this rising unrest in the Soviet Union, which people were aware of, and well, even before that, really, World War I comes along, and that starts the ball rolling. Well, in fact, it's during World War I that the whole thing happens. Yes, exactly. And here's the quick note I want to make.

Generally speaking, most Marxists in the world by the early 20th century had all become democratic socialists. In other words, Marxism started out very radical. But as conditions improved over the course of the late 19th century, and as workers' organizations became more effective, course of the late 19th century. And as workers' organizations became more effective, they evolved into democratic socialists saying, we can work within the system, we'll get immediate reforms, the revolution will come when the revolution comes, when the conditions are right. However, in some parts of Europe, where societies were much more oppressive, you get much more radical versions of socialism evolving, and the most radical version of all evolved in Russia. And the official title was the Russian Socialist

Workers' Democratic Party, but we all know them as the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks actually pull off a revolution and topple the provisional government in Russia, and establish a regime bent on creating socialism. And that inspires all of the socialist parties all across the world, and they have a complete rethink. Should we continue on with our idea of being reformist parties, or should we work directly for revolution? Do we emulate the Russians? Do we join the Communist International, Do we emulate the Russians? Do we join the Communist International, which Lenin founds as soon as he can in 1919 to unite the other radical movements in the world?

And what happens in America, and in fact everywhere, is the Socialist Party splinters. So the communism in America is born directly out of the Socialist Party. About one-third of the members decide, we're going to go with the Russian model. We're going to work for revolution now. And of course, because it's America, we don't have just one.

We have two communist parties. Well, there's always two sides of the story, isn't there? And even, I mean, backing up, I'm just trying to get the context. I've always been cloudy on so much of this. In the 19th century, all of this stuff is happening as a reaction to so much aristocracy and the power structure in Europe that has been holding people back. Here in America, those ideas are not as welcome because we see the industrial age and free

enterprise as being its own solution to the problem, that there's going to be this filtering down of wealth, the Reaganomics of later. That was a conscious thing in America, right? Because these ideas were around. They knew about Marx. Oh, yeah, yeah. They knew about Marx from the first Marxist organizations in America date to the 1870s. Sure, yeah. But again, the big story in America is we don't need a revolution because we have social mobility. It's not just that the wealth filters down. It's that you can be wealthy yourself. We don't have an entrenched aristocracy. Anybody can rise from the bottom to the top.

And enough guys do that it gives a lot of credibility to it. And until the Russian Revolution, until the splintering, the Socialist Party kind of subscribed to that view. They were just pushing more of a social safety net idea too, right? Well, they believed that ultimately that a revolution would have to occur to destroy the bourgeois class because the bourgeois would never surrender their privileges voluntarily. However, while we're waiting for the revolution, there's a lot of room for things we can do immediately to make our lives better. Which is why Eugene Debs is jailed and all sorts of things. These people are seen as really dangerous operatives in society.

This is a terribly undermining force to most conservative Americans, certainly. And the offshoot of the Socialist Party was an organization called the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW. These guys were genuine anarchists. They did not believe in voting. They did not believe in working through the system. And they advocated organization at the point of production up to wildcat strikes and sabotage. So they were a much more radical group that wanted change now, and they were willing to use violence to achieve it. So these are the guys people are terrified of. A lot of socialists were relatively respectable, although frightening. For example, one of the most prominent socialist party members was a woman named Ella Reeve Bloor, referred to as Mother Bloor, an early advocate for women's rights, for birth control, for radical redistribution of wealth.

But to look at her, you wouldn't have seen her as a crazy radical. She dressed very conservatively. She had upper middle class mannerisms because she was interested in pushing political reforms and not necessarily blowing up copper mines. It was fascinating. I'd forgotten that the motto of the SPA, the Socialist Party of America, was Workers of the World Unite. I'd always associated that directly with communism, but it's actually the socialists that have that title. In fact, Marx himself invented that. That's a Marxian slogan. It goes all the way back to the creator. Well, there you go. You see the blurred lines there between the socialists

and the Marxists. We're mentioning biographies. We might as well talk about John Reed. Incidentally, I rode my bike by his house this morning. Oh, hey, I'm kind of jealous. He's right down the road. John Reed is a fascinating story. Of course, we all know that he was portrayed by Warren Beatty in the famous movie Reds,

which barely scratched the surface on this man's career, of course. Famous from his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, which is really when he gets his groove going on as far as being a journalist of this movement. But John Reed was drawn to what was happening over in Russia, like so many. I mean, this was exciting stuff. This is a new world beginning with the Russian Revolution, which begins, of course, in 1917. He heads right on over and gets himself involved. Tell me how Reed tells the story of the Russian Revolution to America.

Reed's a war correspondent, so he's fortunate to find himself right at the heart of things going on. He is enthralled by it. His big contribution to American understanding of it, of course, is his book, Ten Days That Shook the World, which is his eyewitness account of the seizure of power by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Socialist Party. It's an incredibly compelling account. He takes you eyewitness down onto the streets. He takes you into the meeting halls. You can hear the Russians arguing back and forth with each other. He presents the main personalities of the day, although interestingly enough, he writes a lot more about Trotsky than he writes about Lenin,

because Trotsky was the more visible of the two. Reed has a hard time getting his book published, because when he returns to the United States, we're already in the beginnings of the grip of the first Red Scare. So the government impounds all of his notes. It takes him almost a year to get his book published. But he's very active in the Socialist Party at the same time. He's one of the figures that splits the Socialist Party. He's there at the birth of the twin Communist Parties in 1919. It's the senselessness of World War I that really is at the heart of the twin communist parties in 1919. It's the senselessness of World War I that really is at the heart of his argument for this. This is the illustration of the flaws of capitalist society.

This is really, it's all playing out here, how unfair it inherently is. Reid sees this, this is at the heart of his writing, correct? Absolutely. The American Socialist Party was one of the few worldwide socialist parties that opposed the war from the beginning. Socialism makes it very clear that wars of this nature are just wars between imperialists and elite groups struggling over the loot of the world. And it's the working class and the common man that has to do all the suffering and dying so these guys can get even richer.

And that was absolutely Reid's point of view in everything he wrote about the conflict. That's one reason he went to Russia, because he saw that things were perhaps going to change. And in his mind, they did dramatically. And so when he comes home to get his book published, that's when he takes part in the creation of the American Communist Party? Yes, he does. The Socialist Party holds a big convention in the summer of 1919. And the argument is over whether we're going to be like the Russians or whether we're going to continue on our moderate, more left-center path.

What happens is that the radicals are all expelled from the Socialist Party. Like I say, about a third of the membership. the radicals are all expelled from the Socialist Party. Like I say, about a third of the membership. That group then reconvenes in Chicago in the end of August of 1919, and they split again. The foreign language groups form the Communist Party of America. The very next day, John Reed and the native stock socialists form the Communist Labor Party of America.

And then they both send representatives to Moscow to the Comintern to see which one's going to recognize who, which is the legitimate party in America. So from the very beginning, they're intimately tied with the Soviet Union. Reed, talk about a compressed life. I mean, this man dies at 32. He dies in 1920. Impressed life. I mean, this man dies at 32. He dies in 1920. So he goes through this whole mill so quickly because he's both incredibly inspired, but also becomes quickly disillusioned. Tell me how that happens for him.

Reed noticed toward the end of his life, he feared that the Russian communist movement was becoming too authoritarian and too dictatorial in demanding that the member parties, that the associated parties follow its lead strictly. Although Warren Beatty does exaggerate the degree of Reed's disillusionment. And he never denounced the Soviet Union. He never spoke out against it. And he's buried in the Kremlin wall. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's fascinating. I am guilty of being one of those carried along with warren beatty's wave yeah because i assumed that was true although there is a great scene in the movie where reed

is talking to emma goldman and this is historically very accurate emma when she was deported to the soviet union was extremely unhappy with what she saw there. She felt society was indeed too regimented, too orderly, and that there needed to be a lot more freedom and spontaneity. Warren Beatty, as John Reed, argues with her, saying, no, no, no, you have to understand the realities of Russian life. You have to understand the challenges facing Lenin and Trotsky. They need to be more firm at the beginning to get the revolution off in the right direction. Emma doesn't believe him. And in fact, she leaves the Soviet Union, immigrates to Canada.

So Reed could see that there was things that were less than ideal, but he still felt that the ultimate direction was correct. Yeah. So back home, the American Communist Party starts 1919, and then we can pretty much break it down. I don't know if this is completely true, but I have myself breaking it down into several stages. Those first exciting years for them, just it kind of mirrors what's happening in Russia, right? In terms of Lenin passing off to Stalin and things get a little confusing at that point.

Oh, the history of the early Communist Party is almost a textbook example of the intimate ways that the American Party is tied to events in the Soviet Union. Initially, by the way, the American Party is resisted so stoutly by the American government. They arrest over 3,000 members of the party in February of 1920 in the Palmer Raids and actually attempt to deport every one of these people. But by spring, the economy's beginning to recover from the post-war recession, people's minds are clearing, and only a few hundred people are actually deported. But it drives the party underground for about two years. Is it seen as an outgrowth of anarchism? I kind of skipped over that whole thing, but that was such a big deal in the early, early 1900s. Oh, very much so. In fact, the anarchists were the more radical and the more visible organizations. The most famous anarchist

act in American history is the Haymarket Square bombings in Chicago in the 1880s, which killed a number of policemen and resulted in eight people being executed. The anarchists, in particular the IWWs, these guys admire the communist organizational skills, they admire their discipline and direction, and lots of them wind up joining the Communist Party. So the party in the early years is made up of former socialists and former anarchists, and then later on people who joined because of the Great Depression. But while the party is in the underground, the Soviets tell them that there can only be one communist party per country that gets our franchise. So you guys have got to unite and stop squabbling. And they do. And the first era of the communist party in America, once they sort out their internal difficulties and come back out from the

underground as the Workers' Party, is a period called the United Front. And in this era, they're working very hard with mainstream labor unions, and they're working very hard with other left-wing parties, not so much with the leadership, but trying to work with the membership and convince them that the party has the better idea, that the party is better organized, so that they'll come around to the Communist Party agenda. And they make some inroads. They do all right with the Textile Workers Union. They bring a certain faction of the Socialist Party around. So they're a very small group, but they're starting to get noticed. And the big event is really in 1923 when they link up or they attempt to link up with the Farmer Labor Party in America and run a fusion ticket for national office. They're going to run Senator Robert Follett

for president. The whole thing eventually collapses in factionalism, but the next big change isn't because of that. The next big change is because of Stalin's elimination of his rivals in the Soviet Union. So Stalin completely reorients the direction of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. They had been operating under a kind of a mixed, a little capitalism, a little socialism that Lenin instituted. It was his last act before he had his strokes and became unable to participate in politics, was to create the new economic policy, which moderated communism, reintroduced some pre-enterprise. Stalin, however, when he comes to power, says, okay, that's fine.

We needed to do that, but it's not working anymore, and we have to radically change. He introduces what he calls socialism in one country. We're going to build socialism through crash industrialism, through collectivization of agriculture, and through severe party discipline, you know, because we have to be militant. We have to be on our guard that translates into a new policy for all the non-ruling parties in the west stalin calls it the third period and what it means is no more cooperating with mainstream organizations the revolution is coming sooner than we expected you need to show the working class who are the true friends of the working

class. So you need to be militant. You need to be visible. Other socialist parties and left-wing parties, you know what those guys are? They are social fascists, lulling people into a false sense of security. But in reality, they're helping out the newly born fascist parties that are rising up all over Europe. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research

from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades.

Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. I imagine in this time, American communists are having their own factions having to do with the revolution, right? I mean, that was always the problem was that we're trying to create something, a piece of violence here. We're trying to overthrow people and let blood. And that has to have turned off a lot of people within that organization.

Not really. Most of the guys who were opposed to an actual revolution stayed in the old Socialist Party. revolution stayed in the old socialist party. The factionalism that develops in the American party, though, and there is a lot, is based around, is America ready for a revolution? Is capitalism really on the last ropes in America? Stalin is saying that the contradictions of capitalism are becoming greater and greater, and it's about to enter a massive crisis. And when is he saying this 1928 just a year before the great depression but nobody can predict the future nobody sees that coming so when he tells the americans you've got to tighten up you've got to be more militant you've got to reject cooperation with the socialists and oh by the way forget all the work you did in the labor unions

you need to form your own red labor unions, which are pure communist. The American party head is a man named Jay Lovestone. And he says, no, look around you. The American economy is booming. Stock market's going through the roof. We have to be allowed to follow an independent policy in America. So he and 10 or 12 of the top party leaders actually go to Moscow to meet with Joe Stalin and tell him, we need our own program. The third period's good for everybody in Europe,

but not for us. Interesting. When people were being arrested, I'm thinking of the Pomerades, the general reaction, what are they being arrested for? How does the power structure of the United States articulate that? Yeah, actually, the guy who comes up with the legal justification for arresting these guys is none other than J. Edgar Hoover, who was a junior-level employee at the Justice Department back then. But they put him in charge of coming up with a legal case. And his justification is that the members of the Communist Party violate the Wartime Sedition and Espionage Act by openly advocating the overthrow of the United States government

by force and violence. And he bases this on party pamphlets, on speeches by both American radicals and the Russian kind. And that's So the whole thing is based from the very beginning. You're a threat to democracy. You want to overthrow our country. So we are beyond free speech here. They claim they're going beyond free speech and going into actual violence in action. The problem is that's the part that's really hard to prove.

In fact, it's impossible to prove because the party, they might talk a good game. They were not ready to stage a revolution. In fact, in the entire history of American communism, they've never been ready to stage a revolution. What would have been required to do that? What required to do that would be paramilitary force, stockpiling of weapons, and a program of violence as sabotage. And the Communist Party in America never does that. They talk a good game. They support the Soviet Union in foreign policy. They say that our society is flawed and contradictory and the revolution is inevitable.

But they never actually try to pull it off. And this is, when you read the literature on the party, the history that's been written, it divides into, it used to divide into two camps. One group that said, you know, these guys were clear-eyed reformists and they had the right idea about what needs to be done in America. And it was just reactionaries who want to maintain their own power base pushing against them. Revolutionary wet noodles. Yes. The other side says, no, these guys were tools of a foreign power, and they were out to get us.

Yeah, exactly. The fact is, both things are true. The Great Depression is confirmation of so much that's been talked about now for 100 years, that this whole thing is going to fall to pieces, and it was never based on any real foundation. It was just a bunch of imperial capitalists taking advantage of each other. That's the Depression. It proves it out. How does communism not just take over in a wave at that point?

Well, as a matter of fact, the Depression was the best thing that ever happened to these guys. Yeah. Because it appeared that they were absolutely prescient. Yep. You know, Stalin had been saying back in 28, it's coming. And it comes in 29, and the world economy collapses. And he's already said it's time to be more militant. Well, you know what? We'll be militant as hell. And these guys appear all over the United States. They set up a thing called the Unemployed Councils in the 30s, which are mostly made up of non-communists who have the misfortune of being unemployed, but the party provides the leadership for it. These guys are great at staging parades, demonstrations, and demanding concrete reforms to pull them out of the mess that the country's gotten into. The party membership explodes. Mind you, the churn is incredible. The average person

joins the party and stays up two to three years and is out the door again. But there's also a fragment that stays. So during the early depression, the party grows tremendously and things are looking really good for them. The radical labor unions they found never get very large, but they are big enough to hold strikes, demonstrations, and make a name for themselves. This is such a pivotal moment, this depression era for the Communist Party. I'm really curious why they didn't get it together like you're talking about, you know, start stockpiling weapons and all the rest. I mean, this is revolution to come. And yet they sort of take a different turn. It becomes more of a political group, right? Well, they've always been a political party. During the Depression, they basically joined the mainstream.

In the 20s, they would put up Foster for president in some states. And, you know, the big attempt was to merge with the Farmer Labor Party, which didn't come off. So they weren't able to get a national profile that way. But in the 1930s, they're able to run candidates for national office all over the country. They're able to get William Foster on the ballot in all 48 states, which they're very proud of. They're able to run candidates for Senate, for Congress, and for lots of local offices. And in a couple of places, there's a small town in Minnesota that elects a communist mayor. And believe it or not, there is a county in eastern Montana, and all of the county officials

from the sheriff to the county commissioners are communists. So the party does really expand its appeal and its outlook, but they don't see the need to stockpile arms and create a paramilitary because they feel that the mass of the American population will eventually join up with them, and they won't have to do that. What screws the deal up for them is Franklin Roosevelt. Yeah, exactly. The wind is out of their sails when the New Deal comes along, right? I mean, that's basically the social safety net that's been completely lacking is able to be enacted by the likes of the Democratic Party. That suddenly says, wait a minute, this is a new country that needs a new kind of approach to things.

Is irony the right word for this? I mean, you've got people who have been doing this for decades saying, we need a different kind of country, and suddenly this terrible thing happens economically, and it brings in this new age that defeats them. alas yeah we get it exactly no no now initially the communists absolutely hate roosevelt because they realize he's cutting the ground out from underneath them and now they call him a social fascist they say he's militarizing the country with his civilian conservation corps that's just a way to bring young guys together and organize them you know they've got shovels today they'll have guns tomorrow yeah yeah yeah they say all

he's doing is protecting and saving capitalism this is the most horrible thing that could ever happen right but what changes is once again Stalin does a u-turn. If the Great Depression was the opportunity, the fertile ground, World War II was the storm, the flood that comes down it. And so much react. I mean, Stalin has to react to this differently. He was guiding a worldwide movement. And now suddenly the war is at his front door. He's got to change his strategy entirely. Yeah, he does.

And he does it in the summer of 1935 at the 7th Comintern Congress, because Stalin realizes that the politics of the third period have failed. The Nazi party has risen to power in Germany, and everywhere that they've tried militancy, they've been turned back to take the United American case. The working class didn't flood into the communist unions. They flooded into the mainstream unions once Roosevelt made it legal to collectively bargain. That was their overwhelming choice. So Stalin sees that his policies have failed and his greatest enemy is growing in power. So he has to find a new tact. And what that is, is the popular front. At the 7th Comintern Congress,

all the speeches are, the greatest danger is fascism. We have to unite against fascism to protect communism, protect socialism. So stop calling the other left-wing parties social fascists. Instead, wherever you can link up with like-minded individuals to oppose these guys, do it. Liquidate the red unions, have your members join mainstream unions, and take active, constructive roles in them. Because that's the only way that we can save world civilization from the rising fascist menace. And it's a complete change. This is giving up on America, isn't it, as far as Stalin's concerned? complete change. This is giving up on America, isn't it, as far as Stalin's concerned, because that's surrendering to the fact that what has happened under Roosevelt is basically going to

take away any of the steam that communism had here. Actually, what they do is co-opt him, because at this point, they do a complete 180. From calling Roosevelt a fascist, they suddenly say, you know what? Roosevelt's not going far enough, but he's going far enough for now. And they start backing his administration, backing his policies. And this is the point where thousands of communists join New Deal relief agencies, and where a handful of communists actually get elected to the House of Representatives as Democrats, keeping their membership in the other party secret.

It's fascinating. I was speaking of Stalin, though, which is interesting to me. You know, this is the moment when they kind of give up, as far as the Russians are concerned, on the American, you know, on the American Revolution, Second American Revolution. Oh, yeah. That's put on hold right now because the fascist danger is much, much worse. Yes. It's interesting to me how much, you know, we think of, those of my generation, think of this movement, communist movement in America, as such a threat and even fascist threat. Frankly, it's all blurry and weird to all of us. It was just plain danger and bad. In fact, much of what it proposed was co-opted, as you say, by the New Deal.

And it had a very positive influence in some regards in American society, as many would claim. Others wouldn't claim that, but it's part of the mainstream in America, as you say. The Popular Front period, which continues all throughout the Second World War, is the height of Communist Party membership, activity, and influence in America. This is where Earl Browder takes over the party, and this is where they do their absolute best, because they're now able to tie Communist goals into support for the government, into patriotism. They're able to direct attention to the terrible threat looming from the fascist powers abroad. And they're brilliant, absolutely brilliant at tailoring aspects of their message to specific audiences. So they develop committees to fight against

lynching and racism in the South. They develop committees to promote peace and anti-war activities around the globe. They do other committees to, we need a fair wage, and they become union organizers' best friends. This is the point where the Congress of Industrial Organizations in America splits off from the AFL, and they could not have had the successes they had without the incredibly hard work of communist organizers in their ranks. Why are the Catholics so opposed to communism? Because communists are atheists. Of course. Straight and simple. That's what it is. But it really is a big theme worldwide, really. And there's another reason, too, that I can give you. The basic communist view of society is struggle. It's a constant class warfare between

the lower classes and the owning classes. Catholicism says that society is inherently organic, and although social justice is extremely important, all elements of society need to work together cooperatively to make it succeed. So on top of the atheism problem, they also fundamentally disagree with the road to a just society. And in fact, there are lots of labor priests in the 1930s who, God, they devote half their lives to opposing communist influence in labor unions because they feel they can organize them better on a Catholic basis. So when we speak of the rise and fall, it is really the mid-30s that is the peak for the American Communist Party. And from that point on, we begin the dissent. It's interesting

to me then that it takes until the 50s that we get the most famous reaction against communism in American society, this Red Scare, it would seem to be long over by that time as a threat. Well, the second Red Scare is not really about the American Communist Party so much as it's about fear of the Soviet Union. Of course, that's the Cold War coming in, yes. With the idea that these guys are simply the Soviet agents in America. And in fact, the American Communist Party is shattered by Khrushchev, isn't he? I mean, his denunciation of Stalin and all of what everything was based upon for the last few decades, he basically pulls the rug out in 1956.

Oh, man, does he. You know, I've interviewed a lot of old party members, and they found that so hard to take. I mean, for years, they've been Stalin cheerleaders. When the Soviet Union would abruptly change course, they would loyally follow them along, justify what the Soviets were doing. The biggest example of that is in 1939, when Stalin realizes that the West will not protect him from Hitler, that he has to figure out a way to survive on his own.

And he goes from, we have to oppose fascism at every turn to signing a peace pact with Nazi Germany. Yeah. And millions of people all over the world say, ha ha, we told you so, you guys are all the same. He doesn't let anybody know it's going to happen. So it catches them all flat-footed. But they loyally go along with Stalin.

They say, no, it's now the imperialist war that's more important. We need to struggle against England and America and France and the imperial powers in the West. And Stalin has realized he needs to cooperate with Mr. Hitler to preserve the independence of the peoples in Eastern Europe. It's all pretty specious. But they're willing to go along and do it and take the abuse. We used to think that the party lost a lot of members in 1939 when this happened. But when we got access to the party records in Moscow, we discovered, no, they didn't. They lost a few prominent types, but the bulk of the

membership stayed loyal. And two years later, Hitler invades the Soviet Union and they can go right back to anti-fascism. So anyway, these guys have been promoters of Stalin all along. During World War II, we are allies of the Russians, so that is brilliant for them. And the Communist Party is working hard. They sign a no-strike pledge. They work really hard for war production. Individual communists join the armed forces and do what they can to, you know, push our war effort along. And Earl Browder says, you know, we don't need a political party anymore. We need an educational group. And he liquidates the Communist Party and replaces it with the Communist Political Association. Oh, interesting.

And they all then start admitting they're communists. During the Popular Front, they tended to downplay whether they were in the party or not, but now being in the party is patriotic. It's quite all right. And that brief exposure does not do them well when the Red Scare comes. Yeah, but in my political awakenings in the 60s as a young kid, it was just kind of like a shrug that the communists were running alongside all these other people. It was interesting that it was there, but it was absolutely not discussed. And it wasn't even a problem or a threat in the news or even around my dinner table, frankly. What a complete turnaround from what it once was just decades earlier in my parents' childhoods. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, you'd asked earlier about the second Red Scare. And basically, that was triggered by three really traumatic events that happened all at once.

So this is the McCarthy era. Yeah, yeah, this is the McCarthy era. Come out the other side of the war, Earl Browder is convinced that he can make the Communist Party or the Communist Political Association a regular part of mainstream political America. In fact, his big slogan is, communism is 20th century Americanism. However, when the war ends, Stalin is already saying, okay, that was fun. We've dealt with the Nazis. We've dealt with the fascist threat. But now we're going to have to deal with the imperialists and the capitalists

because the mission remains what it always was, to bring a socialist revolution to the world. And he orders the American Party to reform itself. Earl Browder gets expelled, and the party reforms itself as the American Communist Party. Same time all this is happening, the Soviets explode an atomic bomb, 10 years ahead of schedule. Then the Chinese Communist Party topples the nationalist government and seizes control of the most populous country on earth.

And then the Korean War starts. breaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And these are the things that really gave all the fury to the second Red Scare. Because the Soviet Union appears to be an existential threat abroad, and then there's all of these people in the United States militantly defending the Soviet Union, and oh, the icing on the cake. The U.S. government discovers that the Soviets all throughout World War II had maintained a massive espionage apparatus in the United States with

cooperation by lots and lots of members of the American Communist Party. And it's the perfect storm for these poor guys. It's really fair to separate the story. I mean, in kind of summary here, the early 20th century is really a different kind of agenda for the American Communist Party. After the Red Scare, it's really informed by the Cold War. It's really the Soviet Union that's at the center point of all of this. They had a different agenda themselves in the early century, and suddenly they're reacting to the West after World War II. That goes hand in hand with any kind of agenda that the American Communist Party is left to have. Where are they today without that previous wind in their sails, as we said? Is it merely a lobbying group sort of in the same spirit as socialism?

Actually, I have to say, yes. I try to keep closed tabs on the comrades as I can, although they're fairly cagey about their actual numbers. The best guess is that there's about 5,000, honest to God, American communists left. They still have their newspapers, and they still have their May Day parades and do their fundraising. The party is really old. I'd say the membership is older. Yeah, I'd say the average membership has got to be like in their 60s or 70s. But since the end of the Cold War, what they've been able to do is shift entirely to the most attractive parts of their mission. They're back to talking about racial equality, social justice, plus environmentalism, and an end to constant wars and one nation attempting to dominate other nations.

So in some ways, the fall of the Soviet Union all of the time was devastating. I was very closely associated with the party in 89 when the Soviet Union fell. And it was traumatic for those poor guys. Because they didn't believe it was possible. It shocked them, literally to the core of their being. But they decided in the end that communism wasn't about the Soviet Union. It's about the inherent values. And that's what they're pushing today.

There's still big union boosters. And they've also become environmental activists. So they've tinged themselves a little green as well. Sure. I have one final question. In your historic view of things, does the failure of U.S. American communism speak to its own disorganization, maybe lack of specific mission, or to the inherent ability of the U.S. system to absorb it? Like, it's probably a combination of those factors, I suppose. But where does it fall for you? That's an excellent question. It took me a minute to kind of organize my thoughts. But I would say that there's a couple of factors. Number one, the communist message has always been, I think, too radical to sit well with mainstream America because they genuinely wanted a revolution and social upheaval.

And for many, many decades of their existence, when you ask them, what's the ideal society, they'd simply point to the Soviet Union and say, we're going to recreate that right here. You know, with American features, and it won't be quite as authoritarian as the Soviets, because there are factors in Russian history that force them to do that. But basically, that's going to be our model. What blunted their arguments is that the American economy has always been able to turn up a relatively high standard of living for the citizens. So even though you can point to, well, these people are really poor, they're a minority. It's not like poverty is widespread. And one of the best arguments that the American party ever had was their firm stance against racism and demand for racial equality. But after 1965, we begin to take dramatic steps to correct

what was one of the greatest flaws in our society, which also cuts the legs out from underneath them. So I would say the reason that they never made a tremendous headway here is they were always pushing it just a little further than most Americans are willing to take it. The American economy provided a pretty comfortable way of life. And that last bit, you are absolutely correct. The Roosevelt's New Deal found other ways to do some of the most important things they said had to be done. They allowed the workers to have a vehicle to organize. They built an effective social safety net so that you're not left with nothing when, you know, the capitalist guys decide that you're not profitable anymore. So, yeah,

it's a lot of things. But, you know, in this present election, 2024, upward mobility and the lack of it for so many is a huge issue. And it would seem to be that the lack of a voice like the American Communist Party or someone of that nature is missing, you know, in terms of like pushing that issue as a threat to American society. And now we're sort of falling back on lazy ways of looking at that problem and not trying to innovate and improve the system to make it a better life for more people. It seems to be at the forefront of things right now. Yeah, I would agree. And in fact, the last really clear voice addressing these problems in American society is Bernie Sanders, when he ran against

Hillary Clinton in 16 and in 20. You know, he attracted a tremendous amount of support, because he was the only guy who was standing up and clearly articulating, these are problems that have to be addressed. But they come from somewhere. That's what's important about this conversation is that the history of where these ideas came from is a very, very long history and an important one and a substantial one. And so many people nowadays associate it with left wingers. And it's just, you know, it's just written off when in fact it has an enormous legacy behind it. Dr. Vernon Peterson is a professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He is the president of the Historians of American Communism, who have a journal entitled

American Communist History. Is there a website we can send people to, Vernon? Yeah, www.taylorandfrancis.com, and then just click on American Communist History, and you'll be able to access all of our issues. A lot of them are free to download. Thank you so much. What a fascinating history. You've opened up the door to many episodes to come, I suspect. Thanks a lot, Vernon. Thank you very much for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements

to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much. Thank you. you