Talk:Communist Party USA/Archive 1

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Contents

External link to Hoover Institution

The Hoover Intitution link has more to do with Soviet Espionage than with the American Communist Party and when a suitable page is created should be moved there. User:Fredbauder

The modern party

"what is the american communist party all about??????" Fair question. Maybe eventually the article will give an answer. I must admit that personally, given its history, I don't have an answer. That must come eventually from those who participate in the party and the nature of its activities in the future. Fredbauder 16:10 Oct 16, 2002 (UTC)

Name of article

Communist Party USA is the common form and this article should be moved there. That's how their website (www.cpusa.org) is headed. --Jiang 23:54 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The actual name of the organization is Communist Party of the United States of America, see http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/15/ Perhaps a redirect from Communist Party USA? Fred Bauder 20:21 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Guess I'm psychic, that what we have now. Fred Bauder 20:23 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I know that's the formal name...but we should place it (according to naming the conventions) under the most common name, and only mentioning the official name in the article itself. When people see "Communist Party USA," a good number don't automatically convert that to "of the United States of America." I look around on their website and the only place I see their full name ever used it on their consitution (the link you provided). --Jiang 21:57 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Bias and incorrect statements

I find the article reads more like an indictment than an encyclopedia article. It is full of bias and incorrect statements. For example, this statement: "For many years it was led by its General Secretary Gus Hall, but this leadership was ended amidst accusations that Gus Hall had accepted money from other nations." I dispute these allegations. Where is the justification for this nonsense? Gus Hall was the leader of the CPUSA until he died. That, at least, should be fairly easy to confirm.

Sam Webb's title

Sam Webb's official title, per the CPUSA web site, is not General Secretary, but National Chair.

Regarding Soviet funding

I removed the unsubstantiated allegation that Hall accepted money from other nations. In its original incarnation, this wording further alleged that "this leadership was ended amidst accusations..." (see above). This is obviously not so. --Jose Ramos 12:32, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Gus Hall did not support the initiatives taken by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. When this became clear to the Soviet Union, the money the Communist Party USA had been receiving from the Soviet Union was cut off creating a financial crisis thus bringing prior receipt of money into the open. " What is your source for these two allegations? --Jose Ramos 10:50, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Aleksei Myagkhov, aka Aleksei Myagkov, Inside the KGB, Ballantine Books, 1992, paperback, ISBN 0345325796 Most national communist parties which met the approval of the Soviet Union received some money, including the US party. The notion that Gus Hall was somehow blamed for accepting money was someone else's (User:-- April) addition, but is probably true. His disapproval of perestroika is from the above source. Fred Bauder 14:15, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC) Boy is this bullshit out of my faulty memory. The actual source is The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999, hardcover edition, pages 287-293 and page 306, ISBN 0-465-00310-9. The same material is in Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, John Barron, Regnery Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0895264862; 2001 edition, ISBN 0709160615 This is the biography of Morris Childs who together with his brother Jack arranged for and handled the money transfers during the 1960s and 70s. Morris and his brother Jack were double agents; in 1975 they received the Order of the Red Banner from the Soviet Union; in 1987 they were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan. Fred Bauder 02:30, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"$3 million in 1987". Just using one's brain shows how ludicrous this is. First, bringing $3M into the country in cash (in small bills?). Second, just how would you spend over $8000 in cash per day (every day for a year) surreptitiously? Third, if this really happened, how come there were no criminal charges? --Jose Ramos 06:45, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the beginning they used $20 dollar bills, but as noted this did involve bulkly packages, it was then changed in 1974 to $50 and $100 bills. Deliveries were made more than once a year. Transfers were made between KGB operatives (the book does no say how they got the money into the country in the first place) by brush passes with Morris and his brother Jack Childs at 4 pre-arranged locations in New York City at a certain time, 3:05 PM. There was absolutely no danger of discovery as both persons who received the money were FBI agents, but careful precautions were insisted on by the KGB. How was the money spent? Certainly for the newspaper, but probably some for travel, rent, salaries, publishing books, bookstores (one in New York, one in San Franciso), etc. Some was embezzled by the Childs. In terms of being well spent the Party did grow from its 70s low of less than 10,000 to a late 80s high of about 15,000. Gus Hall believed the reactionary Reagan presidency offered an excellent opportunity for the Party and talked it up in his conversations with the Centre (Central Committee international department). He seems to have been believed which was the basis for increased funding. Prosecution would have exposed the three most highly placed FBI operatives in the Party, the identity of whom were known only to the FBI, KGB and a few top Communist leaders. Morris, in particular, regularly traveled to Moscow and functioned as the go-between between the CPUSA and the KGB while regularly reporting to the FBI. The third agent was Albert Friedman who received clandestine radio messages from Moscow and handled messages to the Childs brothers regarding money transfers. Fred Bauder 11:38, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I find your answers weak. You never even attempted to answer the second question. --Jose Ramos 06:43, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Moscow Gold" and CP funding

The allegation that the CPUSA received funding from Moscow is Machiavellian and disingenuous, at best. The purpose is to make the CP out to be a "foreign" group, so as to effectively deny or denigrate the existence of conditions such as poverty, racism, exploitation, etc. If such conditions were admitted to be serious, that would tend to justify the existence of Marxist criticism. It is disingenuous because the US regularly, for over a century has meddled in the affairs of scores of other countries, which meddling has included not only funding opposition groups, but actions of a more serious nature.

FWIW, the CPUSA receives its funding from members and sympathizers in the following ways: 1) Dues and sustainers from members; 2) Assesments for Southern Solidarity (to support the especially difficult conditions in the South), for conventions, etc.; 3) Three separate yearly fund drives to support a) the Party's activity, b) the paper (People's Weekly World), and c) the monthly journal (Political Affairs); 4) Gifts and bequests; 5) Sale of Party books and pamphlets. Frequently, members traveling to other cities for meetings or educational activities are put up in comrades' houses. Convention attendees have been known to carpool and drive 2000 miles to save money.

A financial crisis in the early nineties would have been due to the loss of many members who left the Party in the ideological confusion and doubts surrounding the dissolution of the Soviet Union. --Jose Ramos 14:47, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, I believe the referenced source is accurate. Whatever its virtues, the Communist Party did not have very much support among the American public and funding from the USSR was useful at the time although kept secret from Party members. What place such information ought to have in the article is uncertain. Probably it doesn't belong in the first paragraph. Likewise Gus Hall's disputes with Gorbachev. However I must dispute any effort to write an article from a positive point of view on Wikipedia; that is not our editorial policy. Someplace in the article there needs to be included the general revulsion Americans feel for what they see as a foreign totalitarian ideology. Fred Bauder 13:15, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This claim that the CPUSA received funding from Moscow is highly questionable. It is certainly illegal, and the US government has never brought charges against the CPUSA for it, although it's claimed here that the US government knew about this supposed incident but never did anything about it. Putting these specious and slanderous accusations of a handful of people into the article as fact is ridiculous. The far right has been accusing the CPUSA of receiving money and taking orders from the USSR for decades, and the left has always knocked their arguments down. This activity would be illegal, yet Fred Bauder says the US government knew about it, yet did nothing, because it had to be "secret". I guess that it's still a "secret" so teh US government still has not brought charges, yet it's not secret enough that Fred Bauder doesn't know about it or can put it into Wikipedia. Putting these rumours in would be like filling the Bill Clinton page with every rumour Scaife's Arkansas project heard while down in Arkansas, and putting it up as fact (Clinton killed Vince Foster, Clinton dealt cocaine out of Mesa, Arkansas, people had other people killed in Arkansas, blah blah blah). -- JohnWoolsey 00:15, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The source is The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999, hardcover edition, pages 287-293 and page 306, ISBN 0-465-00310-9. The same material is in Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, John Barron, Regnery Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0895264862; 2001 edition, ISBN 0709160615 This is the biography of Morris Childs who together with his brother Jack arranged for and handled the money transfers during the 1960s and 70s. Morris and his brother Jack were double agents; in 1975 they received the Order of the Red Banner from the Soviet Union; in 1987 they were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan. Fred Bauder 02:30, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC) Fred Bauder 20:27, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This accusation of the Daily World being cut back from a daily to a weekly is a blantant contrived lie by CIA SOURCES

The People's Weekly World

http://www.pww.org/article/archive/246/

clearly outlines its linage of when it came into existence and as even grade school kids can subtract the number of the volume from the year of existence hence the Jan 8, 2005 Vol. 19, No. 28 issue printed in the 19th year of existence means it started in 1985-1986 not 1989 as has been said though typically the CIA elements amonst us love to didtort matters inorder to revise history as it suits them.

I have many sins, working for the CIA is, however, not among them. If there is an error, please correct it. It is possible that the newspaper was cut back to a weekly before the loss of Soviet funding. The problem, ultimately, can be laid to lack of public support, especially among people in New York City where once upon a time, the Daily Worker was widely read.



A copyediting problem

Hi, just reading through this article and I noticed the following fragment:

During the 1950s, the Communist Party was decimated by Senator Joe McCarthy and his anti-Communist campaign. However, during the New Left Movement of the 1960s. In the 1970s, the CPUSA managed ...

Notice the "However, during the New Left..." fragment. As I am not knowledgeable on this subject I cannot finish the thought. Perhaps someone could fill it in?

Not NPOV

Wikipedia is very weak when it comes to controversial political topics, such as this one. I think most of the commercial encyclopedias are much better. --Jose Ramos 05:23, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. We don't get close to NPOV on loads of topics. Secretlondon 23:25, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
Would you explain things to a confused American? I read this article, and it doesn't seem to bash the CPUSA at all...it talks about when and why they were formed, how they were attacked by the FBI, and describes them in what I would call neutral-to-positive terms. What is wrong here? Jwrosenzweig 23:29, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
For starters, how about the hoary lie that the party received money from Moscow? It's bad enough alleging such nonsense, but it's stated as fact. How about the bit about changing the name to evade the authorities? How about the bit about being subservient to Moscow? I could go on.
It's not a lie, it's a verifiable fact, as the attesting citations in the article show. Dogface 15:34, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
A POV tone is set by a Wiki administrator, Fred Bauder, who states above: "Someplace in the article there needs to be included the general revulsion Americans feel for what they see as a foreign totalitarian ideology."
The article contains errors of misinformation in addition to outright lies. But there's no use correcting the simple misinformation while the lies and POV stuff remains. --Jose Ramos 12:30, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If you are refering to my addition of the CPUSA's espionage activities, then I will provide you with all the verification needed for every one of my statements. --TDC
That I am a Wiki administrator should carry no weight whatever with respect to my edits of this article. I have tried to present only facts which are verifiable. The strongest positive language in the article is also part of what I inserted. Perhaps one thing that needs to be made clear is the fact that most rank and file party members and sympathizers don't find certain verifiable negative information to be credible and why that should be so in an oppressive society. Fred Bauder 13:23, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Looks like TDC has restored the claims about Soviet funding of the CPUSA. I don't claim to know the facts, but I do know that it is terrible scholarship to refer (as his new addition does) to "documents" without giving any indication what those documents are. I'm not asking for an exhaustive list, and plenty in wikipedia is undersourced, but to explicitly refer to "documents" and then ask the reader to take it on faith that you have them is... well, is worthy of either Stalin or Joe McCarthy. -- Jmabel 21:42, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually TDC has added a separate section at the bottom which duplicates that material which is included further up in the text. It had not been deleted nor should it be as there is good evidence supporting Soviet funding of the Party. If you will look back in talk you will find the sources of the information. Fred Bauder 04:43, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Again:

The source is The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999, hardcover edition, pages 287-293 and page 306, ISBN 0-465-00310-9. The same material is in Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, John Barron, Regnery Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0895264862; 2001 edition, ISBN 0709160615 This is the biography of Morris Childs who together with his brother Jack arranged for and handled the money transfers during the 1960s and 70s. Morris and his brother Jack were double agents; in 1975 they received the Order of the Red Banner from the Soviet Union; in 1987 they were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan. Fred Bauder 02:30, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC) Fred Bauder 20:27, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC) Fred Bauder 04:43, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

William Z. Foster

TNX to the anon who (correctly) changed "James Z. Foster" to "William Z. Foster" -- Jmabel 05:33, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

CPUSA position on fascism

A recent edit has added the completely false allegation that, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the "CPUSA turned from fighting fascism." Further, a part of a newspaper page from the Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF) has also been added.

It seems to me, if someone says that the CPUSA believed such and so, they should be able to quote from: 1) the offical organ of the Party, the Daily Worker, or 2) from books or pamphets by the national leadership of the Party, or 3) from resolutions passed at a national convention of the Party.

I don't see the relevance of the WCF newspaper at all. The unstated insinuation is that it was a Communist paper. The WCF was a liberal-left coaltion of groups for political and economic reform in the Puget Sound region of Washington State.

The WCF was a front group see http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/379/1/76/ A page on the Communist Party USA website which contains the following paragraph: "One anecdote from the 30s is about the Party caucus in the Washington State legislature. At one point, the caucus had six or seven members, all elected as Democrats, through the agency of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, including Tom Rabbit and Bill Pennock. When they wanted to meet, they would have the pages go around announcing a meeting of the “Committee on Roads and Bridges.” There was no such committee." So the illustration, though not fully explained, no one has yet tried to write the front group article, is fair enough. Fred Bauder 22:16, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)
Your "argument" is not convincing. 1) No evidence to call WCF a "front group". 2) No evidence that CP's peace talk was soft on fascism. 3) The insistence on using a third-hand source shows the weakness of the claims. --Jose Ramos 06:43, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No source has been supplied for the disputed allegations. If you cannot supply a primary source, shouldn't they be removed?

Encyclopaedia Britannica, or any other major encyclopedia, would never behave this way. --Jose Ramos 05:51, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

To address your ‘concerns’:
1) the offical organ of the Party, the Daily Worker
Earl Browder in the Daily Worker for February 25, 1941 "If my kind of crime rates four years in prison, what should be the punishment for Franklin Roosevelt, who got a third term [as president] on a false passport, a promise to keep America out of war? I think the supreme punishment for this crime will be written in history that he betrayed the peace and prosperity of the American people."
2) from books or pamphets by the national leadership of the Party
J Fields BEHIND THE WAR HEADLINES, Workers Library, 1940
3) from resolutions passed at a national convention of the Party
From May 31 to June 1, 1940 the 11CPUSA held a special antiwar conference in New York City that was attended by about two thousand party officials and delegates. A microfilmed transcript of the proceedings was sent to Moscow. Every party leader of note and many local members spoke at length opposing either assistance to Britain and France or American military preparation
A good source of information on this topic can be found in thr book, Soviet World of American Communism written by Harvey E. Klehr and John Earl Haynes. While I am sure you will doubt the creidibility of its authors, they have excelent documentation of what they write, backing it up with thousands of KGB documents, Venona transcripts, personal letters written by CPUSA officials, CIA and NSA documents, as well as plenty of clippings from the Daily worker. TDC 16:17, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There was strong support for fascism and anti-Semitism in America emanating from some very influential public figures, such as Henry Ford, Henry Luce (of Time Magazine), and the Catholic radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, to name a few. There were forces who wanted the U.S. to go into war against the Soviet Union as an ally of Germany. If you examine the Communist peace talk in context, you will see that it opposed war against socialism and for fascism.

At the same time, U.S. industrialists were trading with Hitler. For example, the oil companies were actively arming Hitler, selling him crucial rubber technology and high-grade aviation fuel technology, obviously for his war machine. He had already used his airforce to bomb Spanish cities as, for example, Guernica.

To show the extent to which some were willing to go, look at what Senator Truman said: "If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible" (New York Times, June 24, 1941).

There was absolutely no diminution of anti-fascist feeling among Communists at any time whatsoever.

Communists had fought Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, a fight in which the U.S. was formally neutral. That is, Germany and Italy could invade Spain, but the U.S. government did not want to get involved to save the Spanish Republic, and actually interdicted aid to the legal government of Spain. This objectively aided the fascist cause. Germany and Italy were using Spain as a training ground for the coming war, and only the Left came to Spain's defense.

Further, the Soviet Union only entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the pointed refusal of the U.S. and Britain to join the Soviet Union in multilateral action to "staitjacket the madman (Hitler)". Churchill was more interested in "strangling the Bolshevik baby in its crib". Communists saw this as an attempt by reactionary forces in the West to use Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union. --Jose Ramos 19:49, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Woah ... Slow down there. Most of your argument has nothing to do with the argument in question. Who cares about Ford, Couglin, Time magazine [btw, why would Hitler be a bad choice for man of the year in 38 when stalin was MOTY in 39, and the Nation Magazine's man of the decade in 1940?]. It has nothing o to with the article and not much to do with the point.
The CPUSA's members did loose respect for the party, well quite a few at any rate, when the CPUSA on direction from the Comitern, followed Moscow's stance on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Stalin, for whatever reason trusted Hitler, and entered into the pact thereby getting a chink of Poland.
A good example of this rank-n-file disillusionment is sci-fi author Frederick Pohl, who dropped out of the CPUSA around this time, when anti-facist talk went out the window for real-politick. It's detailed in his book _The Way the Future Was_.
If you still believe that Stalin did not trust Hitler then how does one explain the initial rout the Soviets faced during Barbarosa, when Soviet intel knew the exact date and time it was going to begin more than 6 weeks beforehand and relayed that info to Stalin.
From September 1939 to June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the CPUSA dropped its support for an antifascist Popular Front. It denounced President Roosevelt’s efforts to aid Britain, France, and other nations at war against Germany and opposed FDR’s reelection in 1940. The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, led by Milton Wolff, tacked in parallel with the CPUSA and opposed all assistance to the anti-Nazi belligerents. After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, all this changed. The CPUSA once again donned the cloak of antifascism, and the VALB called for American intervention in the war.
You seem to believe that the CPUSA was somehow driven by principal and ideology, instead of bieng nothing more than a puppet for whatever its Soviet bosses told them to do.
Well here are some revelations that can all be verified.
The CPUSA was controlled by Moscow.
All CPUSA officials were controlled by Moscow.
All CPUSA platforms reflected the will of Moscow.
Your bias is very obvious. --Jose Ramos 06:43, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This is becoming more and more undeniable by the day, Mabey 10 or 15 years ago we could argue about the CPUSA and whether of not it was a Soviet puppet because at best all of my evidence would be circumstantial and hearsay.
This is no longer the case. Since 1991, there has been an avalanche of info on Soviet espionage and infiltration of western progressive movement like the anti nuclear movement.
As I continue to read and condense, this article will reflect these facts.TDC 20:45, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

John Gates

Fredbauder, what do you mean by "disagreeably liberal". Disagreeable to whom, and liberal in what respect? -- Jmabel 18:02, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This material is from pages 239-243 of Volume 1 of The American Radical Press: 1880-1960 edited by Joseph R. Conlin, Greenwood Press, 1972, ISBN 083716625X (for the set), ISBN 0837172829 (Volume 1). 'Led by aging William Z. Foster, they accused Gates of encouraging the "liberalization" of the party in the worst sense of the term: turning it towards bourgeois liberalism, which meant capitalism and liberalism.' I'll think about how the article might briefly better read to remove ambiguity. I have done so and think the link to John Gates clears up any ambiguity. Fred Bauder 19:48, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to split article

Let's split off History of the Communist Party USA and make most of the main article about the current, now independent of Moscow, Party. Although they act like they take orders from the ghost of Breshnev the current Communist Party USA never made a treaty with Hitler, doesn't take orders from the architects of the Gulag and most accurately ought to be presented as what they are (or chose to be) now, not as a remnant of their chequered past. Although I doubt it will take much of the heat out of our discussions it might help some in moving forward with presenting useful information for our readers. Fred Bauder 18:32, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)