If I reply to one message per day in this thread (as I'm constrained to do), it will continue until 2010. I haven't even read Miychi's missives yet... JD
I wrote:>>But wasn't Earl Browder -- a long-term leader who was quite popular with the CPUSA's rank and file members -- kicked out of the leadership of the CPUSA for disagreeing with the Party Line handed down by Moscow? << Charles Brown writes:>On Browder, I was going to use him as an example of the ability to remove the very top leader in the CPUSA . He was General Secretary. < In most historical interpretations, the top leader of the CPUSA wasn't the real top leader, since the CPUSA was subordinate to the COMINTERN or COMINFORM... (Note: I do not believe that the CPUSA was simply a "puppet" of the USSR. It had to also keep its own rank and file happy and so reflected their wishes to some extent. When they didn't as with the Hitler/Stalin pact or the "secret speech" of 1956, they lost members in droves. Though the organization involved bureaucracy, it was not purely so, because of the role of the member's "exit" option, and to a lesser extent their votes and statements of opinion.) CB:>There was a letter from a French, not Moscow, Communist , named DeClou (sp.) criticizing Browder's proposal that the CP become an educational organization rather than a political party. In general, that was termed liquidationism, liquidating the party...< Most interpret that letter as a statement of the opinion of the leadership of the COMINTERN/FORM. That opinion had a very strong impact, indicating the power of that international, Moscow-centered, organization. JD
