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X. 1950s REPRESSION &<br />
THE DECLINE OF THE<br />
COMMUNIST PARTY U.S.A.<br />
1. The End of the Euro-Amerikan "Left"<br />
The post-World War 11 collapse of the Communist<br />
Party U.S.A., the main organization of the Euro-<br />
Amerikan "left," was an important indicator of disappearing<br />
working class consciousness in the oppressor nation.<br />
It is not true that the Euro-Amerikan "left" was<br />
destroyed by the McCarthyite repression of the 1950s.<br />
What was true that the anti-Communist repression effortlessly<br />
shattered the decaying, hollow shell of the '30s<br />
"old left" - hollow because the white workers who once<br />
gave it at least a limited vitality had left. The class struggle<br />
within the oppressor nation had once again effectively ended.<br />
Mass settler unity in service of the U.S. Empire was<br />
heightened.<br />
Looking back we can see the Communist Party<br />
U.S.A. in that period as a mass party for reformism that<br />
penetrated every sector of Euro-American life. At its<br />
numerical peak in 1944-1945 the CPUSA had close to<br />
100,000 members. Approximately one-quarter of the entire<br />
CIO union membership was within those industrial unions<br />
that it directly led. Thousands of Communist Party trade<br />
union activists and officials were present throughout the<br />
union movement, from shop stewards up to the CIO Executive<br />
Council.<br />
The Party's influence among the liberal intelligentsia<br />
in the '30s was just as large. Nathan Witt, chief executive<br />
officer of the Federal National Labor Relations<br />
Board during 1937-1940, was a CPUSA member. Tens of<br />
thousands of administrators, school teachers, scientists,<br />
social workers, writers and officials belonged to the<br />
CPUSA. That was a period in which writers as prominent<br />
as Ernest Hemingway and artists such as Rockwell Kent<br />
and Ben Shahn contributed to CPUSA publications. Prominent<br />
modern dancers gave benefit performances in<br />
Greenwich Village for the Daily Worker. Maxim Lieber,<br />
one of the most exclusive Madison Avenue literary agents<br />
(with clients like John Cheever, Carson McCullers, John<br />
O'Hara and Langston Hughes), was not only a CPUSA<br />
member, but was using his business as a cover to send<br />
clandestine communications between New York and<br />
Eastern Europe. The CPUSA, then, was a common<br />
presence in Euro-American life, from the textile mills to<br />
Hollywood. (1)<br />
This seeming success story only concealed the<br />
growing alienation from the CPUSA by the white workers