The American Communist party before the 1930's had as close to zero influence and support as
one could get to. They could not even muster up a tenth of a percent and the roaring 20's would
not aid the communist's cause. The 1920s went well for the working class although many still
felt entitled to rights that they still had not achieved. The middle class had made its presence
known and the upper class held a vast amount of power and wealth. For these reasons, almost
100% of Americans believed that communism was a drastic unneeded movement. That all changed
in the '30s however. Unemployment was as high as 25% for your average American with some groups
like African Americans seeing 50% unemployment. The Stock Market crash of 1928 and hit the nation
hard and in these hard times where many were starving and out of work, people chose radical perspectives.
In the 1930s the Communist party had reached its absolute height in American history: A single percent
was made. This accounted for a few hundred thousand people in the U.S but a hundred thousand
is merely a percent of the dozens of millions in the U.S at the time. The party never saw the same
numbers after ww2 with America becoming even more powerful than its ever been under capitalism.
This disproved the need for communism as dramatic resolutions need not have been made anymore.
Also, the second Red Scare of the '50s had effectively killed the parties numbers. They still remain
today, however, they are a shell of their former selves with a membership count at the 5,000 mark(x).
Many in the party had seen a lot of persecution and bias threw their way. Of course with an ideology
as damaging as communism and a climate as that of the cold war, it would be very detrimental
to call oneself an open communist. Many communists saw themselves being deported or facing
criminal charges worse than if they had not been a commie.
Despite this, the American Communist party was a very forward one when it came to civil liberties
such as Gay, African American, and workers rights. So they weren't all bad.
Sources:
Communist Party Votes by States and Counties 1922-1946
Early American Marxism
Manifesto to the workers of America
I found this post to be very informative. It proves that during bad times, people to take more drastic actions such as supporting communism. I think that it is also interesting that the Communist party cared about the rights of others. I guess it sort of goes in line with their "equality" theme.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I think about this radical Communist-favoring response to the Great Depression similar to the radical Hitler-favoring response to Germany's huge recession at that time. I am not equating communism to Nazism, but I do find the parallel of radical solutions to economic depression interesting. It seems that when people are at the very bottom, they will do the unusual in hopes that doing anything different will get them back to the top, and they do not need to worry about security no matter how radical the solution because there is no way to go downhill from there in their eyes.
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