Communist Party USA

• 1. Founding And Early Struggles

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  The Communist Party USA emerged from the left wing of the Socialist Party of America in 1919. This new organization sought to establish socialism through Marxism, Leninism while aligning with the Soviet-controlled Communist International. The U.S. government immediately viewed this party as a subversive threat. During the Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920, authorities arrested and deported many foreign-born members. Leaders faced prosecution and prison sentences. By August 1919, only months after its founding, the party claimed between 50,000 and 60,000 members. These early years were marked by factional struggles and clandestine activities. The older Socialist Party had declined to 40,000 members due to criminal prosecutions for its antiwar stance during World War I. Despite these immediate suppressions, the CPUSA remained a small but militant force throughout the 1920s.

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• 2. Depression Era Expansion

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  During the Great Depression, some Americans were attracted by visible Communist activism on behalf of social and economic causes. Party membership swelled from 7,500 at the start of the decade to 55,000 by its end. William Z. Foster and later Earl Browder led the party through this period of growth. The organization played a key role in labor organizing and anti-fascist movements. Strikes helped establish it as a formidable force within the American labor movement, particularly through the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In the mid-1930s, the CPUSA followed the Comintern's popular front line which emphasized alliances with progressives and liberals. This shift allowed the party to gain broader acceptance. Membership reached an estimated 70,000 by the late 1930s. The party also rallied to defend the Spanish Republic after a nationalist military uprising moved to overthrow it. Many members joined the Lincoln Brigade to fight fascism abroad.

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• 3. Cold War Prosecutions

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  As the Cold War began, the Second Red Scare saw the party prosecuted under the Smith Act. This law criminalized advocacy of violent revolution and led to high-profile trials of its leaders. In 1949, the federal government put Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and ten other Communist Party leaders on trial for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. All remaining eleven defendants were found guilty. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of their convictions by a 6, 2 vote in Dennis v. United States. By 1957, membership had dwindled to less than 10,000. Some 1,500 of these remaining members were informants for the FBI. Jack and Morris Childs became FBI informants in 1952 while serving as high-ranking officials in the party. They monitored Soviet funding and traveled to Moscow and Beijing to meet USSR and PRC leadership. Both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987 for their intelligence work. The party was banned by the Communist Control Act of 1954 although it was never really enforced.

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• 4. Soviet Funding And Espionage

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  From 1959 until 1989, when Gus Hall condemned Mikhail Gorbachev's initiatives, the Communist Party received substantial subsidies from the Soviets. Starting with $75,000 in 1959, this amount increased gradually to $3 million in 1987. There is at least one receipt signed by Gus Hall in the KGB archives. Whittaker Chambers alleged that Sandor Goldberger, also known as Josef Peters, headed the CPUSA's underground secret apparatus from 1932 to 1938. Theodore Hall, a Harvard-trained physicist who did not join the party until 1952, began passing information on the atomic bomb to the Soviets soon after he was hired at Los Alamos at age 19. Hall escaped prosecution. Decrypted World War II Soviet messages between NKVD offices in the United States and Moscow, known as the Venona cables, appear to confirm Julius Rosenberg's responsibility for espionage. In 1993, experts from the Library of Congress traveled to Moscow to copy previously secret archives of party records sent to the Soviet Union for safekeeping.

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• 5. Civil Rights And Labor History

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  The Communist Party played a significant role in defending African American rights during its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. The Alabama Chapter helped organize unemployed Black workers through the Sharecroppers' Union and numerous anti-lynching campaigns. Rosa Parks emerged as a prominent member of the civil rights movement after being organized by young activists from the Alabama chapter. James Ford, Charlene Mitchell, Angela Davis, and Jarvis Tyner all ran as presidential or vice presidential candidates on the party ticket. Harry Hay developed his political views as an active member before founding the Mattachine Society in the early 1950s. Emma Tenayuca led the 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike while organizing Mexican workers in Texas. The party was instrumental in the founding of the progressive Black Radical Congress in 1998. It also had a close alliance with Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Many African American thinkers, artists, and writers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Gwendolyn Brooks were one-time members or supporters.

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• 6. Ideological Shifts And Decline

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  Internal divisions grew when Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech denounced Joseph Stalin's rule. Party membership in the Communist International and its close adherence to Soviet political positions gave most Americans the impression that the party was a foreign agent. By 1957, membership had dwindled to less than 10,000. In 1989, the Soviet Communist Party cut off major funding due to CPUSA opposition to glasnost and perestroika. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the party held its convention to resolve whether it should reject Marxism, Leninism. The majority reasserted the party's now purely Marxist outlook. A minority faction urged social democrats to exit the reduced party. The collapse dealt a devastating blow leading to financial difficulties and further decline in membership. From 1922 to 1988, the party published Morgen Freiheit, a daily newspaper written in Yiddish. The two newspapers merged in 1986 into the People's Weekly World which has since become an online only publication called People's World.

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• 7. Modern Electoral Activity

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  In June 2014, the party held its 30th National Convention in Chicago. On the 7th of April 2021, the party announced intentions to run candidates again after over thirty years of hiatus. Steven Estrada ran for city council in Long Beach receiving 8.5% of the vote. In 2025, the party increased electoral activity fielding candidates for city council in Ithaca and Northampton. Their candidate in Ithaca, Hannah Shvets, was elected with 64% of the vote. Daniel Carson was elected to the Bangor city council coming in second place out of nine candidates. In July 2024, dissenting members formed their own party called the American Communist Party citing CPUSA support for the Democratic Party. Online political commentators Haz Al-Din became founding chairman while Jackson Hinkle served as a founding Plenary Committee member. In 2011, CPUSA claimed 2,000 members. By 2024, the party claimed 20,000 members on its mailing list.

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