American Communist Party pursued contradictory reform and revolution aims
Evidence
Browder’s leadership had positioned the party in support of the New Deal and Roosevelt’s administration under the presumption that American workers were not ready to confront the issue of socialism. In effect, the party pursued the contradictory aims of reform and revolution. This was in part a consequence, as Wilhelm Reich had pointed out with respect to the German Communist movement during the Weimar Republic, of failing to distinguish between the abstraction of class consciousness and its specific, historical form. Just as critically, however, the party was committed by the instructions of the Comintern to a united front with its class enemies. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1368
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: The failure to distinguish abstract vs. historical class consciousness echoes Robinson’s broader critique of Western Marxism’s abstraction, and Reich’s analysis parallels the party’s blindness to actual working-class attitudes.
Related
- The Comintern’s united-front mandate forced the party into contradictory reform and revolution aims (similarity 0.93)
- The American Communist Party treated fascism as a capitalist ruling-class instrument alien to workers (similarity 0.81)
- Early American Communists dismissed Black racial consciousness as ideological backwardness (similarity 0.79)