Josh Morris investigates how the Communist Party USA created a sense of camaraderie in its organizing efforts between members, looking at how both circumstances forced on organizers as well as conscious efforts of the party helped create an organizational culture that promoted (or in some cases damaged) solidarity among workers and oppressed people. 

“I remember a sea of signs, the hat-makers, the dressmakers, the pocketbook makers, the men’s clothing workers, the printers, on and on.  Everyone was a maker, a worker. Then it began to rain. ‘It’s raining Papa,’ I said, ‘Let’s go home.’ ‘Wait just a while,’ he answered. The rain kept coming down and the marchers continued to march.  Their hair got wet and the paint on their signs began to run. I did not fully understand what was going on but I was impressed. This must be very, very important, I thought. Otherwise people would never march in the rain.” -Beatrice Lumpkin¹

As a small child of less than twelve, Beatrice Lumpkin experienced an emotion that takes longer to read than it does to feel. Hoisted on her father’s shoulders, Lumpkin watched the May Day parades march down the major boulevards of New York City. The meaning of May Day rested in the remembrance of idolized martyrs of the Haymarket massacre of 1886 in Chicago. But it also commemorated something else: a spirit of fellowship, a warm feeling of loyalty and brotherhood, a solidarity among comrades. Although not old enough to vote nor educated enough to understand the history of May Day, Lumpkin went home that day with a solid sense of camaraderie. Camaraderie is not strictly political, however: it also contains a vital social and cultural component.

Throughout American history, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) best exemplified the concept of camaraderie in the fullest sense of the word, that of being inclusive of both political and social elements. American communists espoused the notions of camaraderie in a way that gave them a sense of purpose both inside and outside the Party. Historian Randi Storch showed how the fraternal order had an immediate effect on how the Party’s upper and lower strata coordinated with one another, with upper-level comrades handling oversight and lower-level comrades dealing with the physical organization of workshops, but with both being seen as equal parts of a whole.² Camaraderie differs slightly from broader concepts like solidarity, in that camaraderie implies a feeling alongside an act. As an act of expressing solidarity, camaraderie was the social and political glue for American communist organizations both large and small, and it transferred over to those they associated with during the height of their activism from the 1930s to mid 1950s.  

Politically, camaraderie solidified upper Party allegiance to the Communist International (Comintern) and local radical movements, while socially it served as a bridge to civil and labor organizations that shared a fraternal ordering such as United Auto Workers Local 600 in Detroit, creating the foundation for the Party’s support of the Popular Front. These fraternal aspects responded to and transformed under the social and political elements of camaraderie espoused by the Party, and created the conditions whereby Party members were forced to rely on one over the other. This essay explores the element of camaraderie in CPUSA history, and offers to uncover a critical examination of a solidifying yet also potentially divisive element of social activism. The fraternal sense of comradeship defined the labor movement for members of the CPUSA and supporters of international communism, starting during the Party’s rise into social activism in the 1930s and continuing well into the present.

To a large extent, it is impossible for any historian of either military or labor studies to avoid addressing the most critical element to a movement or army’s success, that being cohesion and unity among the constituent parties. In this loosely described manner, the concept of camaraderie extends back as far as Livy, who addressed the issue while discussing Quinctius’ military campaign against the Aequians and asserted that because “of [the] close cooperation between the army and its commander,” the Aequians did not attempt an offensive assault against the army. In the resulting victory, the Roman army plundered, Livy continued, taking advantage of the “valuable material, including cattle” that was stolen from Rome by the Aequians earlier in the year. Livy remarked that upon returning to Rome, “the cordial relationship between the army and its commander rendered the men…less hostile towards the Senate, which they declared had given [them] a father.”³  

What Livy described was political camaraderie, a bond between individuals of shared ideals. These ideals themselves can be almost anything political or religious in nature. We can see similar parallels between the opposing ideals of soldiers during the American Civil War. Chandra Manning describes how religion created for troops during the war a unified perception that “the hand of God is in this struggle, and the hand would not be stilled until the Union complied with God’s will.”⁴ The soldiers’ appeal to religion in this sense represented the political ideals of the war effort: the North fought to rid the world of “unholy” slavery. This use of camaraderie was not limited to the North, however, as Manning showed that “Confederate soldiers’ devotion to the material aspirations of themselves and their families…sustained men’s convictions of the necessity of the war.”⁵ The solidarity of the soldiers combined under the veil of religion and protection of family but nevertheless secured a political identity behind their solidarity. Quinctius’ men’s collective desire to reclaim the rewards of Rome was fundamentally no different from the Union’s desire to preserve the Republic, nor the Confederates’ desire to defend the institution of slavery.

Camaraderie is not limited only to the military, nor is camaraderie itself exclusively political.  While making an appeal to broad audiences on celebrating socialism, Gerald Cohen explained his interpretation of a community bond among individuals as a “common aim” to have a good time and enjoy life.  He explained this idea through the concept of a simple camping trip. A camping trip naturally has facilities as an enterprise in order to fulfill the conditions and desires of a basic camping excursion, things like wood for fire, tents for shelter, canned food, and clothing. Unlike traditional city life, however, the facilities of a camping trip are “availed to collectively: even if they are privately owned things, they are under collective control” for the duration of the trip. To an extent, Cohen stretches his argument by comparing a general desire to have fun with communal solidarity, but his text emphasizes human beings’ natural desire to work together when the time calls for it. Similarly, a worker in a factory shares the productive capacity of the factory with everyone else working it; the production process as a whole is a collective act. This understanding “ensures[s] that there are no inequalities to which anyone could mount a principled objection” within the specific group.⁶ 

Cohen argued that most people, particularly in closely defined settings such as a workplace, “cooperate within a common concern,” that being everyone’s general desire to both “flourish” and “relax” at their own pace on “condition that [he/she] contributes…to the flourishing and relaxing of others.”⁷ Cohen used examples of competition among campers to show how individualism naturally conflicts with this social sense of camaraderie.  If a man, for example, is “very good at fishing,” he will most likely “[catch] more fish than others do.” If in the context of a camping trip he were to argue that he “should have better fish” when the group eats, the group would naturally question “why should [they] reward his good fortune?”⁸ Similarly, Cohen argues that rights of inheritance, such as having camped at a site ten years prior, would yield no greater support from the group for the individual claiming ownership and thus leadership over the trip. Cohen describes social camaraderie as well as its political variant. Social camaraderie is a bond between individuals of shared concerns. This is substantially different from political camaraderie: instead of sharing a bond over an abstract, idealistic concept like nationhood or God, the social element of camaraderie is concerned exclusively with practical and achievable ends. Cohen’s limitation in his argument is that he reduces society to the size of a small community. In doing so he created an “ideal” of socialism, and later questioned the feasibility of implementing this ideal in society at large: “Many would point to features special to the camping trip that distinguish it from the normal mill of life in a modern society and… consequently cast doubt on the desirability and/or feasibility of realizing camping trip principles in such a society.”⁹ Without going into complex Marxist language, Cohen refers to the social conditions of society that limit the feasibility of this socialist ideal.

Camaraderie as a whole is also an element in the generation of happiness among employees within a workplace. Writing for the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Dr. Armenio Rego and Dr. Solange Souto refer to the “perceptions of spirit of camaraderie” as a “predictor” of “affective well-being,” or AWB.  AWB is described as simply a “frequent experience of positive affects and infrequent experience of negative affects” within a workplace. “Workplaces play a crucial role in people’s happiness,” Dr. Rego contends, by “providing them with…resources that satisfy their primary and secondary needs.” This is similar to Cohen’s conception, but different on the issue of satisfying needs instead of ease and relaxation. Camaraderie is exceptional in that it can be “considered to be a source of positive emotions.” The most interesting finding of their study focused on camaraderie’s connection with the “need to belong” shared by all human beings.  Their conclusion stated that “on the whole, lower levels of affective well-being emerge when poor camaraderie [is combined] with a high need to belong.”¹⁰ Political ideals do not necessarily always correlate into acceptance, nor do they fully satisfy the desire of belonging. Social camaraderie can perform these functions, but it fails to emerge as strong as political camaraderie due to social camaraderie’s more general approach to happiness, and political camaraderie’s more action-oriented understanding of happiness.

The separation of camaraderie into social and political spheres is fundamental to understanding how individuals within the CPUSA express the concept as a whole. Although the bonds between the social and political aspects culminate in social unity, they nevertheless remain disconnected from what guides and solidifies the bond. Political camaraderie is, for the most part, an idealistic principle, one that has many names depending on the context, from dogmatism to nationalism, to even strict pragmatism. This can contrast sharply with social camaraderie, as it did in the context of the American Revolution: the social camaraderie against unjust taxation proved stronger than the political camaraderie of British identity, and in many ways worked to dismantle any bonds colonists had with Great Britain. Likewise, political camaraderie within the CPUSA proved to be both their defining and unraveling feature: it not only created a unity whereby the political party itself was manifested, but it also created the divisive element that contributed to the CPUSA’s falling-out with American labor and civil rights during the second Red Scare. Social camaraderie for the Party proved to be the glue that kept political camaraderie in check, typically supporting or suppressing political elements in favor of social and cultural ones by the needs of practicality.

Social Camaraderie

“This good fellowship, camaraderie, usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between sexes; because men and women associate, not in their labors, but in their pleasures.  The compound feeling proves itself to be the only love which is as strong as death.”
-Thomas Hardy

Understanding social camaraderie forces one to abandon abstract ideals of political tenants and methodology, and instead focus on the small elements that bring people together for action. Thomas Hardy’s words from his 1874 book Far From the Madding Crowd focus on the social bond one shares with a lover and how the combination of love and fellowship create an even stronger bond, one as binding and consuming as death itself. This idea of a consuming or an associated pleasure among individuals of friendship and community is fundamental to the feeling of social camaraderie. Kets de Vries argues that mankind’s “essential humaneness is found in the seeking of relationships with other people.”¹¹ Dr. Rego pointsout that social camaraderie outside the workplace and political spheres “play a crucial role in meeting social, intimacy, and security needs, and in promoting physical and psychological well-being.”¹² It doesn’t take a leader, it doesn’t take a constitution, and it certainly does not require a method.  All it requires is “similarity of pursuits,” an association “in pleasures,” or a community-sense of belonging. Social camaraderie within the CPUSA proved to be the one single element capable of keeping political camaraderie, and its propensity to divide and conquer, under relative control by defining the Party’s movement under the broad movement of socialism, as opposed to the political movement of other Communist Parties around the world. As the testimonies show, social camaraderie kept humanity within the Communist Party, while its political tenants attempted to break it down into statism and authoritarianism.

For Russell V. Brodine, social camaraderie began in the family.  Before he was old enough to work a job or even drive a car, Brodine remembered how his family “developed habits of scrounging, reusing, and recycling, as poor people did out of necessity;” habits that continued throughout his life “as a matter of ecological principle.”¹³ Lumpkin remembered the vivid tales of her parents; her father who was “afire with the revolution,” and her mother who “caught the flame” from her father. As the daughter of two “active participants in the anti-Czarist Revolution of 1905,” Lumpkin experienced familial solidarity at a young age, as did Brodine, the son of two Swedish immigrants who fled Europe to escape the draft in 1903.¹⁴ Because of their backgrounds, the social solidarity of young CPUSA members like Russell Brodine and Beatrice Lumpkin differed from that of the typical family. Their solidarity was invariably more politicized than the average person, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they understood the politics of it. Brodine’s parents instilled him with social values that not only benefited him but also connected him with others in his community, exemplified by his emphasis on what impoverished people of a community “do out of necessity.” Similarly, Lumpkin’s parents instilled her with a historical connection to a movement much larger than any one individual, and the stories of her father’s triumphant escape from Czarist Russia created the social identity she carried with her throughout her life.¹⁵

Party members often looked up to their parents as role models of activism, sometimes from early adolescence.  Armando Ramirez learned from Vicki Starr, a prominent Party organizer, of his father’s union efforts and Party involvement as a shop steward in the stockyards of Chicago when he was only a child in 1939. “They were all comrades,” his father told him, some “40,000 workers in four major plants” organized by the Party and through his father’s assistance.¹⁶ Lumpkin’s attendance of May Day parades with her parents, although neither of her parents was a Party member, provided role models for to admire. Lumpkin’s parents excused her absence from school, but not in the typical fashion of calling in sick. According to her, “it was considered more loyal to the cause to stand up for your beliefs and say: ‘I was absent May first because it is a workers’ holiday.'”¹⁷ Again, with both Lumpkin and Ramirez’s stories, we can see how camaraderie instilled itself by connecting individual actions to larger movements at work.  Ramirez didn’t just learn of his father’s union efforts; he learned of union efforts among a workforce of 40,000. Similarly, Lumpkin experienced May Day as a day of remembrance tied with social activism, as opposed to merely a holiday. These examples separate social camaraderie from more benign interpretations of what Dr. Armenio called “a need to belong.” Camaraderie, unlike the more basic need to belong, is naturally more pragmatic toward social acts.

Social camaraderie is engineered outside the family as well. Personal experience in social relationships proved to be the defining element that solidified camaraderie among individuals. Party member Danny Rubin, born in 1931, grew up in a region of Philadelphia where “everything was named after the Distin family, and they had a restrictive covenant: No Negros, no Jews, no dogs, no bars.” Luckily, he lived in a region of the community where the covenant did not apply strictly. In understanding camaraderie, Rubin explained that

“Life had a big impact; I can remember at the age of six, my school was made up of primarily German-Americans and there was one Jew in each class, one Negro in each class, and there was one Italian in each class.  We were, you know, the victims of various words used against each: Kyke, dirty kyke, so on and so forth. So we would be teased and hit, so on, from six years old on. The three of us, one Italian, one African, and me, we would stand up to them, all of them.”¹⁸

Here we see an example in memory of a social camaraderie between classmates. But their solidarity did not build simply by sharing a classroom or a class year, which would fit the concept of a need to belong. Rather, their camaraderie built off the tension created by the social elements of racism and anti-Semitism; their solidarity was a natural antithesis to the solidarity of the white Christian students.

But the repression and antagonism extended beyond the classroom. Rubin explained that at “every high holiday in the Jewish religion, the [local] Synagogue was defaced with Nazi swastikas and broken windows and fires built up against the building.” Rubin felt “very aware of anti-Semitism,” and even more importantly realized “that it had something to do with the way African-Americans were being treated as well.”¹⁹ For Rubin, the expression of hate against minority groups solidified his understanding of social camaraderie.  To him, it was about standing up for what’s right in the community. Rubin’s perspective on anti-Semitism at first prompted him to seek out becoming a Rabbi. By 9th grade, his concern over anti-Semitism’s connection with racism drove him to become active in the Philadelphia Campaign for Free City College in 1944, a campaign organized by the American Youth for Democracy, affiliated with the CPUSA. By age 16 he was a Party member.

Still, for others, the social element of camaraderie existed in the American political experience with fascism and the depression. It was “only the Communists,” charged Party member John Gates, who “were able to infuse youths with idealism, missionary zeal, and a crusading spirit” against the forces of fascism and the depression.  For members like Gates, the Party during the Depression “was the locomotive of the future,” that created a sense of purpose for those participating in the struggle.²⁰  “American Communists were passionate about winning the war against fascism,” Lumpkin explained. Joining the defense industry, Lumpkin “felt that [she] was helping to win the war.” Marc Brodine, son of Russell Brodine and current Chair of the Washington State CPUSA branch, solidified his social camaraderie in resistance to Vietnam by joining peace organizations.  For him, growing up a “red diaper baby”  as Lumpkin did “wouldn’t have been enough to set [his] political path.”

The effects of anticommunism on social relationships contributed to social camaraderie among American communists as well.  Ramirez knew of a close associate of his father’s who “was immediately fired” once his Party affiliations were found out. When the man asked Ramirez to help him pass out the Party’s local newspaper to the company he formerly worked at, he “swallowed…whatever feeling of fear” he still had and took on the assignment.  After a year or two, at age 17, his father allowed him to formally join the Party.²¹ The fact that men like Ramirez joined the political organization out of personal concern highlighted the separation between social camaraderie and a more basic need to belong. Seen this way, social camaraderie through these social experiences helps explain the swell in Party membership by the mid-1930s across broad groups of workers, though the Party retained an extremely high turnover rate throughout the 1930s.  In 1928, the Party branch in Chicago had only 650 members. By 1934, with the impact of the depression and the rise of fascism in the background, the city’s Party local collected dues from 3,303 city residents, an increase of over 450%.²²

In workshops where Party presence was a regular expectation, social camaraderie found itself performing some of the most humane tasks. Local 600 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Detroit was known for its indirect affiliations with the local CPUSA branch of Detroit, particularly its defense councils.  Maurice Sugar, for example, was the legal representative for Local 600 during the 1930s and was open about his Party affiliation.²³ A correspondence letter between Local 600 members on March 31, 1944, advised workers to avoid “so-called tax experts who will charge excessive prices” for applying their NLRA back pay to their tax returns, and instead insisted that members use the local’s own personal expert, Jack Valian.²⁴ With a flat fee of only $3 per year, per worker, the union provided internal support for ease and efficiency. Elements of the Party’s organization efforts naturally blended into the fraternal community of Local 600 unionism. Throughout all of the correspondence minutes of Local 600, the words “brother” and “comrade” appear no less than once per paragraph. The utility of the language of camaraderie worked to further instill the social notion of solidarity among fellow employees within a specific workplace. Lastly, Local 600 supported its members beyond their employment, providing instruction to “assist [members] in seeking or obtaining employment after alleged discrimination and discharge.”²⁵

Social camaraderie functioned in a similar way to how it was built, through social networks and personal relationships, but this occasionally led to different interpretations of solidarity. Lumpkin’s extensive 342-page autobiography made no mention of the CPUSA’s switch in policy during the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, where Stalin stunned the world by aligning with the very power he condemned as the epitome of capitalism. Instead, she covered the period of February 1939 – June 1940 with a discussion about her extensive work in organizing elections for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Local 328. Peggy Dennis, on the other hand, explained that only through elaborate discussions with her lover, Eugene Dennis, did she come to accept and understand the meaning of the Nazi-Soviet Pact as a “well-written plot” by Soviet leaders for their own national defense, and the defense of the international Communist movement.²⁶ For Dennis, social camaraderie extended beyond simply the borders of the United States to encompass allegiance to a larger, more international movement.  

When CPUSA activist and field organizer Dorothy Ray Healey was asked her opinion on the shift in political ideals by Stalin, she said that it “becomes a disastrous thing…if a radical movement in another country takes what is fundamentally a diplomatic act for a separate foreign country and makes it its own political banner.”²⁷ For Healey, social camaraderie, unlike political camaraderie, could not extend beyond the borders of the United States if that fraternity threatened the solidarity of American workers. Danny Rubin, who joined the CPUSA during the McCarthy era, described himself as a “Marxist” before he even formally began paying his Party dues. “I’d been doing [political work] for years, all kinds of stuff,” he reflected.  By 1949, “[he] was co-head of the Labor Youth League, the official youth organization of the Communist Party [at the time].” For him, activism in the community was his “political work” and the social camaraderie he built through it was more defining of his ideology than his actual physical political membership and allegiance.²⁸

On the whole, social camaraderie tells more of a story of human social experience than it does of a bond shared over cherished ideals. It builds off personal interaction and upbringing; it functions as a connection between shared concerns and collective action; and most importantly, it bleeds through the divisions created by political boundaries. It was not capable however, as shown, of breaking down those boundaries. In the field, political and social camaraderie intertwined in a dialectic that succeeded externally better than it did internally within the Party.

Political Camaraderie

“The deeps are cold: in that darkness, camaraderie does not hold.
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.”
-Ted Hughes

Party member Alex Bittleman gave an effective description of the purpose of political camaraderie in the eyes of the Party in his essay on The Party and the Peoples’ Front.  Political solidarity intended, he stressed, “to build the Party and build the mass [labor] movement as part of an all-inclusive great task.”²⁹ In short, unite the masses behind the political ideal of socialism. Many activists echoed the same perspective, namely that the ideal of socialism and the end of the capitalist mode of production functioned as the everlasting bond between Marxists, socialists, and communists. The political bond solidified through the ideals of specific groups, typically outside the mass majority of society. Still, differences in theoretical and tactical ideals inevitably caused tension. For radical political groups like the CPUSA, political camaraderie, unlike social camaraderie, in the U.S. labor movement required a method, a constitution, and most importantly a vision for what the future had in store for working people. Its ideological basis naturally carried with it an obvious downside: a propensity to factionalize and divide the movement as a whole when people or groups differed from the pre-established vision. Political camaraderie within the CPUSA proved incapable of bending against the will of Soviet authoritarianism, which John Gates believed manifested a “closed system of dogmatic thought, blinding its adherents to the complexities of reality.”³⁰

The Communist Party was born out of a political division in 1919, a division that it carried through the 1920s right up through the present.  Factionalism has a long history with American radicals, particularly among socialist groups like the Knights of Labor and the Socialist Party of the United States (SPUSA).  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who became chairman of the Party in the 1950s, mentioned factionalism as an element in the Party’s creation due to a split in the SPUSA. It was September, when “the Socialist Party convention was held in Chicago,” and the majority-holding “left wing”, made up of predominantly Slavic immigrants, was ousted from the conference and Party altogether.  In response, the left wing “went to the IWW hall and organized the Communist Party,” which split yet again by the end of the year.³¹ Thus the political camaraderie among the mostly white minority sect of the Socialist Party exemplified a refusal to submit to the political camaraderie of the mostly foreign majority.  “From its very beginning,” explained Party General Secretary James Cannon, “the American Communist movement was wracked by tremendous factional struggles.”³² Political camaraderie, as seen by the SPUSA’s rejection of the left element and the left element’s immediate re-solidification into a new body, did not naturally carry with it the seeds for social camaraderie, but rather carried the seeds of political division.  

Flynn pointed to the effort made against the post-World War I Palmer raids, which targeted labor leaders as threats to the U.S. government, and the formation of an organizational platform by the Party’s future General Secretary, William Z. Foster.  Foster’s methodology put the communists and the more radical workers who supported him at odds with existing labor institutions, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). This was due to the AFL’s structure and political affiliations that excluded unskilled and non-white workers.  With Foster’s guidance, labor had, in Flynn’s eyes, “a new leader; a great organizer and strategist.” Slowly but surely, Foster’s achievements among laboring people gave him the clout to embody an ideal of political camaraderie, rallied behind the more radical approach of mass organizing the unskilled. Despite the popularity and success of Foster’s organizational platform among steel and packinghouse workers, the “AFL rejected his plans” and worked toward their own organizational platform alternative to Foster’s syndicalist approach.

Flynn pointed out that Foster succeeded in organizing over 20,000 African-Americans and broke the boundaries of racism to unite them with their “white brothers,” though she failed to connect this success with the AFL’s selective racism.³³ Despite this, there nevertheless remained an element of division and internal factionalism that pitted one element of the labor movement against another, this time outside the Party’s structure.  Solidarity instilled within the workplace through political camaraderie could generate a movement as it did for Foster in the steel industry, but it does not necessarily break down pre-existing political or social barriers such as those set up by the AFL.  The Party elaborated on the AFL in 1929 in its recurring pamphlet, The Communist.  The AFL was portrayed as an organization that utilized “specific methods for specific times,” referring to the era of craft unionism that dominated during the 1860s-1890s. This “skilled aristocracy” embraced fraternalism and limited class solidarity, but “could afford to ignore the interests of the broad masses.” The failure on part of the AFL, in the eyes of the CPUSA, was their attachment to older methods and interpretations of labor that had, by World War I, lost their social applicability.  The article charged that the AFL built its solidarity only upon social camaraderie; skilled craftsmen naturally have more in common with one another than they do with unskilled laborers. The article also argued that it was the same kind of social camaraderie that drove the unskilled labor movement: “large masses of unskilled workers were drawn into the vortex of the struggles through revolutionary solidarity natural to the unskilled.”³⁴ The only clear difference that remained, in the Party’s view, was between the AFL’s non-revolutionary methods and the unskilled working class’ revolutionary ones.  By 1920, political camaraderie solidified the ideals of the Party and helped form a cohesive strategy for organizational methodology, but, as the case of the AFL shows, tended to conflict with the practical reality of the politics of labor in the United States.  To overcome this dilemma, the CPUSA needed political recognition to separate itself from the multitude of other socialist political organizations, including its parent, the SPUSA. That support came from the Communist International (Comintern) in 1921.³⁵ 

The CPUSA saw its political support from the Soviet-run Comintern (sometimes called the Third International) as an indication that the Party was the true leader of American radicalism.³⁶ On the 10th Anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, commemorating the establishment of the Russian Soviet and subsequently the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR), Comintern representative A. Lozovsky wrote a short essay on organizational strategy that exemplified the standard Party line throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Solidarity could not build without communists first being knowledgeable on the needs and concerns of the workers in question. Winning over the masses of any country, Lozovsky stated, did not rest on “miracles,” but rather by obtaining “a clear understanding of the trend of development of the workers’ movement.” Lozovsky went on to define camaraderie “as strong political consciousness” among individuals, which follows “two lines: political and organizational.”  

As a traditional Marxist, Lozovsky attributed organizational efforts to “varied conditions of class struggle,” as opposed to a singular theory of organizational success.  “Bolshevism,” he contended, was “not a dogma, [nor] an abstract formula” for organization. As opposed to a unified blueprint for organizational success, Lozovsky emphasized that “the art of Bolshevik tactics consists of being continually in the advance-guard, not severed from the masses, not getting too far ahead, but certainly not hanging on their tail.”³⁷ Thus organizational efforts, in the eyes of the worldwide Communist body, depended upon the specific material conditions of particular nations and working-class groups.  But Lozovsky’s theory wasn’t his own, and the source of the Comintern’s early policies usually derived from the same set of sources.

From its creation, the Comintern’s views were backed up with excessive references to the writings of Marx, Lenin, and other revolutionaries from 1905-1917.  In many respects, the publications of the Comintern through the 1920s and 30s were reflections and reiterations of conclusions previously made. In August of 1932, the CPUSA re-published excerpts from Lenin’s Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, written almost 12 years prior, to substantiate claims made by Lozovsky and other Comintern authors who wrote in the late 1920s.  Lenin’s essay reiterated the concept of uniformity among Communists as being less important than the uniformity among the general masses. “We must not,” he said, “deem that which is worn-out for us is necessarily worn-out for the masses.”³⁸ In criticizing those who failed to recognize this, Lenin pointed to the German Communists who, he charged, were “mere babblers.”  They embodied strong elements of political camaraderie among each other but lacked any substantial connection with the workers of Germany.  Citing the German socialist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen, Lenin asserted that “every truth, if it be ‘carried to excess,’ [or] if it be exaggerated…it can be reduced to absurdity.”³⁹ Lenin’s message was straightforward when it came to political solidarity:  political camaraderie was only as worthwhile as it was useful and practical.  Rejecting parliamentary participation is “substance-less” when the revolutionary considers that workers generally support parliamentary procedure. In short, the perceptions of the working class create the foundation for the perceptions of a revolutionary. Thus the political camaraderie solidified through the Comintern contained strong support for Soviet leaders and revolutionaries while simultaneously urging CP locals to generate leaders and revolutionaries of their own, an aspect of their strategy that ultimately proved difficult as years proceeded.

The constant repetition of Comintern policy through the words of Lenin, Marx, and Stalin over lengthy periods of time without considering differences in circumstance inevitably created inconsistencies in carrying out policy. The Comintern’s publications remained for the most part political tenets as opposed to actual suggestions for organizational activity. The problem was not so much what the publications said, but rather the individual parties’ unquestioning loyalty to it.  Historian Peter Kenez showed how the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) utilized its Comintern influence as early as 1927 to dictate requirements for European and non-European Communist Parties to join the International. This forced a quasi-ideological agreement between Party leaders that subordinated all organizations to the Comintern and thus the CPSU. “The Stalinists,” as Kenez referred to the ardent followers of Joseph Stalin’s consolidation of power, “never contemplated collaboration.”⁴⁰ Their goal was control of the movement as a whole by utilizing the one body capable of doing so.  On the grounds of the Bolshevik victory, “Bolshevism became the authoritative doctrine among revolutionary circles in all the workers’ political movements of the world.”⁴¹  

The inconsistency was that the CPSU emphasized a fight against “superficial and mechanical methods” of organization while it simultaneously used superficial means of internal conformity within the Comintern in order to assure its own dominance.⁴² As such, Communist Parties outside the Soviet Union, including the CPUSA, dealt with the issue of organization in a two-fold manner.  On the one hand, they had to remain practical in terms of their organizational methodology; but they simultaneously had to assure that their actions and methods did not at any point contradict the boundaries of political camaraderie established by the Comintern or the CPSU. This dual nature of policy and practicality created turbulence within the political spheres of the CPUSA, often resulting in additional factional splits.

One of the largest problems the Comintern experienced during this pre-Depression period was amalgamating various communist parties into a cohesive international unit capable of dealing with factional elements of political solidarity.  In 1929, Comintern representative to the United States Otto Kuusinen wrote about how “comrades talk a great deal about analysis, about slogans, political lines…etc…concerned all too little with the organization of mass work.” His point was simple, that the political party should engage itself in the organization of labor.  This however created a factional debate within CPs. Coming from the Comintern, it was an unquestionable order put forth. The complication was how to go about doing it. Kuusinen condemned “internal shortcomings” that failed to be addressed by Party leaders, referring to the internal fractions of the Comintern. “Success,” Kuusinen emphasized, defined itself through the “permeability” of the Party “into other organizations and industries.”⁴³ He did not imply, however, that presence equated to solidarity among the workplace.  Kuusinen focused his criticism on “some comrades” who were “in [shop] nuclei merely in the sense that…they all work in the same factory.” Thus Kuusinen argued that social camaraderie alone failed to support the revolutionary platform of the Comintern. The revolutionary function required a more abstract and idealistic element to transform social solidarity into a bond that was capable of supporting political work.  That bond was political, not social, camaraderie.

The CPUSA endorsed Kuusinen’s perspective through its monthly publication, The Communist, and it began pushing for active political organization within workshops across New England, the deep South, and the Midwest. The Party’s Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), an umbrella union organization, and the Youth Communist League (YCL), a small recruitment league for the sons and daughters of Party members, exemplified CPUSA’s perspective of using political camaraderie in organizational campaigns.  Both organizations modeled the platform of a politically-driven strategy to revolutionize workers and citizens alike. The TUUL’s model was similar to the Party’s own internal setup, but organized unions with political idealism that espoused general support for socialism. A product of Foster’s Trade Union Educational League, the TUUL “radicalize[d] established unions from the inside−Communists referred to this activity as ‘boring from within.'”⁴⁴  

In contrast, Lumpkin described the YCL as an organization “of commitment, comradeship, and exploration.” At just 15 years old, Lumpkin was exposed to the “message of unity and the need to fight racism and fascism” in the YCL.  Setup not far away in the same neighborhood, was the local branch of the CPUSA. The TUUL, according to Dennis, was “a militant Left center, [an] almost lily-white AFL,” that “shift[ed], as did the Party, to a great emphasis on independent organization of the unorganized.”⁴⁵ The YCL perfected the means of solidifying political camaraderie among the children of American radicals in a way similar to how the Boy Scouts of America, or the military itself, instilled nationalism and patriotism among American youths.  The TUUL as well took political camaraderie into unionism and defined organization of the unorganized as a key to success.⁴⁶

Unknowingly, the Comintern put forth the perspective on organization that would ultimately become the standard Party line during the would-be Popular Front Era.  Lenin’s perspective, and its continuance by Kuusinen and men like Lozovsky, demanded flexibility of Party functioning that allowed the development of camaraderie outside political work. The Party had a dual functioning role. On the one hand, it had to remain united in its efforts to organize methodologically, but also had to “become more sensitive to the fighting moods of the masses.”⁴⁷ These words, made by the head editor to The Communist in August of 1932, linked political camaraderie to social camaraderie, in that the social bonds strengthened the political ones.  The political camaraderie that solidified Party policy among constituent members responded to the social camaraderie in society. It reflected the Party’s utility of Leninism by trying to remain responsive to the general public, but as the 1930s rolled on, the Party experienced increasing confusion over the application of this theory.  Stalin’s theoretical restructuring and political consolidation in Russia caused a reassessment of theory done at the international level that was pushed down to the CPUSA through the Comintern.

The issue of confusion over Comintern policy in terms of how to ensure internal Party camaraderie became complicated when the Party began publishing and emphasizing the works of Stalin in the mid-1930s. The “negative side” of political camaraderie under the auspices of the Comintern, was working with “the Trotskyists.”⁴⁸ Since the late 1920s, Stalin’s program for Russia included an effort to liquidate opposition to the Stalinist minority, including those in the Comintern. Followers and admirers of Trotsky, such as James Cannon, were labeled the “organizers of terror,” thereby creating an internal division within the international communist movement, and thus the CPUSA itself.⁴⁹ Discussing the isolation created by the Comintern, Cannon stated that “the enhanced prestige of the USSR, and of Stalinism which appeared to be its legitimate representative in the eyes of uncritical people…made our oppositionist movement appear bizarre.”⁵⁰ “Bizarre” in the Stalinist world was also a word for counter-revolutionary or rebellious. Stalin’s publications on loyalty policies to the Comintern and against the Trotsky movement compounded the inconsistencies between the organization’s emphasis on the practical methodology set forth by Lenin and political loyalty demanded by Stalinists. In this way the Party’s work in the early Popular Front era embodied political camaraderie but contained abrasive limits that excluded and isolated many existing members.

While CPUSA members who cited Lenin in 1929 or 1933 found themselves emphasizing a model based on practicality, members who later cited Stalin in 1934 found themselves condemning their Leninist comrades for failing to display sufficient loyalty to the Comintern. This political division among comrades deserves examination, especially considering that the CPUSA survived it. Kenez argued that Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, utilized the Comintern to respond to their growing concerns over anti-Bolshevism throughout Europe, particularly in Germany after the election of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship in 1932 (which began a year later).⁵¹ Often the Party’s support for Stalinism created blind acceptance among Party members, as Dorothy Healey recollected in her interviews. “All you ever heard was the one position which the majority had agreed upon,” she explained, “you did what I did…simply accept that, of course, it’s right.”⁵²

Despite their contributions to sectarianism, within the workplace the Party’s use of political camaraderie among workers had its periods of advantage. When Walter Reuther and Homer Martin indicted Local 600’s lawyer, Maurice Sugar, for being a Communist, the workers of the Local and the CPUSA flocked to his defense. The Union president condemned Sugar in 1939, although Sugar’s membership was fairly well known throughout the Local’s existence, including by Reuther. Reuther failed, however, to see the unity of strength behind Sugar, represented by the Local’s staunch resistance to Reuther’s attempts to complain about “reds.” Reuther’s accusations were meaningless, claimed the Local, because “under [Reuther’s] administration our union and members have been led closer and closer to company unionism.”⁵³ Party General Secretary Earl Browder was in attendance of the meeting where Sugar was charged. He asserted that the Party’s efforts “must continue,” referring to the “hold[ing] of member meetings in various locals of the UAW.”⁵⁴ Browder recognized the Party’s presence in the union and its importance to it. His goal was to “avoid a split in the UAW.” The irony of Sugar’s accusation was that it highlighted the Party’s involvement with the local and the Union as a whole, but no negative aspects of their involvement were determined. It was merely the presence of the CPUSA that warranted condemnation. By the end of the month, the UAW newspaper United Auto Worker published a further condemnation of the Party’s alleged attempt to “capture control of the UAW.” A further connection to Moscow made the article as well, although no evidence to substantiate it was referenced. The political solidarity shared by the workers of Local 600 with their Party influences, exemplified by their resounding support for Sugar despite his Party affiliation, showed the effectiveness of camaraderie when poised against strong political barriers.

For the most part, political camaraderie remained an internal element to the Party. It solidified the identity by which the Party isolated itself from other political organizations such as the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as other labor organizations such as the AFL. The labor unions that reflected the political camaraderie of the Party, such as locals of the UAW and the United Mining Workers (UMW) ended up in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Political camaraderie, however, builds off social camaraderie. It is a response to political barriers that prevent social camaraderie from extending. There must exist some element of cohesion among a group before an abstract ideal of organization and methodology can be achieved. It was this cohesion between individuals that allowed the Party to utilize its political camaraderie with focused action and practical activism.  

Political camaraderie also contains the seeds of its own destruction. As Ted Hughes’ poem suggests, in the darkness of power, even camaraderie cannot hold on.  Ultimately, Party members relied on the social camaraderie of individuals and communities to continue the activism across broader and less political organizations. It was the more humanistic element of solidarity that kept political camaraderie under control, and occasionally capitalized on the unity it created.

Valorizing Comradeship

Both the social and political elements of camaraderie provide an explanation for the relationships shared between individuals of various social contexts, and the political context of American Marxism.  Understanding the political side of solidarity and comradeship allows the researcher to see the limits of social activism and the transformative nature of solidarity when placed under the pressure of pre-existing political barriers. Similarly, understanding the social side of solidarity illuminates the smaller connecting elements that keep a movement of people together despite overwhelming political divisions and difficulties. Men like William Foster and Maurice Sugar could not have succeeded in their efforts without the power of their political spirit of comradeship among those they represented. In a similar manner, women like Beatrice Lumpkin and men like Danny Rubin would never have looked up to men like Foster and Sugar had they lacked a social understanding of unity and solidarity through the association of concerns and interests.

Dr. Rego showed the importance of understanding solidarity within the workplace, but solidarity is much more than just a workplace trait, or an expectation among fellow employees: it is rooted in familial upbringing, the early social relationships we experience, and the moments in our development where we gain a sense of self. It can be simple and unrestricted, as well as complex and idealistic. The same qualities fit the history of the CPUSA: simple and unrestricted in the form of a justice-seeking solution to social problems, as well as complex and idealistic in the form of international committees and idolatrized leaders.  It is no wonder that words like brotherhood, comrade, and red found themselves on the lips and fingers of every communist: they embodied the symptom of solidarity that activists hoped to uncover among the rest of society. The CPUSA took solidarity to another level, fusing the social bond between community members with a strong political solidarity for social change. These two elements, political and social, worked together to support basic needs of organization, espoused ideological tenets, and prevented the Party from dominating the lives of workers in the way that other Communist Parties, such as the CPSU, did.  At the same time, the political element carried a natural tendency for factionalism, a quality that limited the solidarity between two politically opposed communists to the social camaraderie of simply being communists.

Understanding camaraderie as a social and political glue that both worked for and against itself illuminates the complexity of the CPUSA in the 20th century, as well as helping to break down the romanticizing of Party effectiveness throughout labor, civil rights, and politics, a memory that is quite strong among the existing Party membership. While the CPUSA had, and still does have, many members spread out throughout the various social organizations of the United States, including some political parties, it never operated with the full authoritarianism and unified singularity as that of the CPSU. It simply couldn’t do so, as the internal divisions created by the Comintern forced members like Lumpkin, Rubin, Sugar, and Healey to rely on the social camaraderie of the workshop and the community, while the Party gave them the background political unity for them to all call each other “comrades.” The task at hand now is to examine these elements individually in a more vigorous manner, and to understand which element is more palatable for the average American laborer. Perhaps such a study can unveil further the connections human beings find with each other through political and social means, and how those means ultimately come to define us culturally.