Earl Browder
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Earl Russell Browder (May 20 1891–June 27 1973) was an American socialist and leader of the Communist Party USA.
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Early years
Browder was born in Wichita, Kansas. He joined the Socialist Party of America at the age of 15. During World War I he gave speeches urging the United States not to join the war, calling the conflict an imperialist conflict. When the US joined the war in 1917, Browder and other Socialilst Party leader were arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for opposing conscription. Browder was imprisoned but continued to campaign against the war after his release resulting in his second imprisonment in 1919.
The left wing of the Socialist Party split to form the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party. The two parties fused in 1921 and Browder joined the unified party in 1921 becoming managing editor of the party newspaper, Labor Herald.
In 1928 Browder and his lover Kitty Harris went to China and lived together in Shanghai where they worked together on on behalf of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, a Comintern organization engaged in clandestine labor organizing. The two returned to the United Staes in 1929.
CPUSA leadership
Browder became general secretary of the Communist party in 1930 and took over the top position of party chairman in 1932 after William Z. Foster suffered a heart attack.
Foster was the party's candidate for President of the United States in the 1936 presidential election but won only 80,195 votes. He tried to run for President in the 1940 presidential election but was forbidden by a court order from travelling around the country and won only 46, 251 votes.
In 1939 Browder appointed Rudy Baker to head the CPUSA underground apparatus to replace J. Peters, after the defection of Whittaker Chambers.
Browder was sentenced to prison in 1940, ostensibly due to passport violations, but was released after 14 months when the US joined World War II and became an ally of the Soviet Union. Browder embraced the popular front tactic and led the CPUSA's tactic of expressing cautious support for the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt while demanding that it should go much further than it did.
During this period Browder successfully recruited dozens of operatives from amongst his associates for Soviet intelligence. In November 1943 Browder turned control of the Perlo group over to Jacob Golos and it subsequently was taken over by Elizabeth Bentley after Golos death. Venona decrypt #588 April 29 1944 from the KGB New York office states “for more than a year Zubilin (station chief) and I tried to get in touch with Victor Perlo and Charles Flato. For some reason Browder did not come to the meeting and just decided to put Bentley in touch with the whole group. All occupy responsible positions in Washington, D.C.”
In 1944, Browder declared that communism and capitalism could peacefully co-exist. The Communist Party reconstituted itself as the Communist Political Association. With the end of the Great Power alliance at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, "Browderism" came under attack from the rest of the international Communist movement. In 1945, Jacques Duclos, a leader of the French Communist Party, published an article denouncing Browder's policy. With the Comintern having been dissolved during the war, the "Duclos letter" was used to informally communicate Moscow's views. William Z. Foster, Browder's predecessor and a staunch Stalinist, led the opposition to Browder within the party and replaced him as party chairman in 1945, with Eugene Dennis taking over as general secretary. Browder was expelled from the party in 1946.
Post-expulsion
Browder continued to campaign for his views outside the party and criticized the CPUSA's domination by Moscow, writing that "The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform. But when the Communists abandoned reforms and championed a Soviet Union openly contemptuous of America while predicting its quick collapse, the same party lost all its hard-won influence. It became merely a bad word in the American language."
In April 1950, Browder was called to testify before a Senate Committee investigating Communist activity. Questioned by Joseph McCarthy, Browder was willing to criticize the American Communist Party but refused to answer questions that would incriminate former comrades. Charged with contempt of Congress, Judge F. Dickinson Letts ordered his acquittal because he felt the committee had not acted legally.
Browder's final public appearance was in a debate with Max Shachtman, the dissident Trotskyist, in which the pair debated socialism. Browder defended the Soviet Union and Stalinism while Shachtman acted as a prosecutor. It is reported that at one point in the debate Shachtman listed a series of leaders of various Communist Parties and noted that each had perished at the hands of Stalin; at the end of this piece of theatre, he remarked that Browder too had been a leader of a Communist Party and, pointing at him, announced: "There but for an accident of history stands a dead man".
An attempt to reinstate Browder in the CPUSA following the Twentieth Party Congress and the move to destalinization failed. He remained outside of the party until his death in Princeton, New Jersey in 1973.
See also
External links
- Earl R. Browder, U.S. Communist Party leader campaigns for the Presidency speech excerpt (http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_29.html). June 28, 1936. 1:06 minutes. History Channel archive in Real Audio direct link (http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/ra_archive/speech_29.ram). Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Communist Party (1390 - 1945) (http://www.marxists.org/subject/usa/deam/communistparty.html). History, documents, and publications reprinted online by Marxists Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org). Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Duclos, Jacques. On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States PDF file (http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1945/04/0400-duclos-ondissolution.pdf). Published in Cahiers du Communisme, April 1945. Reprinted in William Z. Foster et. al., Marxism-Leninism vs. Revisionism. New York: New Century Publishers, Feb. 1946), pp. 21-35. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Constitution of the Communist Political Association: Adopted by the Constitutional Convention, May 20-22, 1944 PDF document (http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1944/05/0522-cpa-constitution.pdf). Published in The Path to Peace, Progress and Prosperity: Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the Communist Political Association, New York, May 20-22, 1944. New York: CPA, 1944. pp. 47-51. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Browder, Earl and Max Shachtman. Is Russia a Socialist Community? The Verbatim Text of a Debate (http://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1950/03/russia.htm). March 1950 debate moderated by C. Wright Mills. Published in The New International: A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism, Vol.16 No.3, May-June 1950, pp.145-176. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
Venona links
- Venona transcripts #1065 28 July 1944 (http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/b45.gif|)
- Venona transcripts #1065 Translators notes 28 July 1944 (http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/b45a.gif|)
Further reading
- Earl Browder Papers 1879-1967. Syracuse University Library Special Collections (http://libwww.syr.edu/information/spcollections/). Collection # (NXSV403-A). 52.0 linear ft. Online guide (http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/guides/e/EarlBrowderPapers-Des.htm) retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Earl Browder Papers, 1891-1975: A Guide to the Microfilm Edition. edited by Jack T. Ericson. 36 reels of 35mm microfilm. Online guide (http://www.il.proquest.com/research/pd-product-Browder-Earl-Papers-62.shtml) retrieved June 6, 2005.
- Haynes, John Earl and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. Yale University Press.