American exceptionalism theory was invented to excuse the party’s weak working-class appeal
Evidence
The notion of American exceptionalism or “Americanism” emerged in the American Communist Party in the late 1920s as an explanation for the party’s failures to attract a large following among American workers. The weakness of the party was attributed to the fact that unlike European capitalism, as Eugen Varga termed it, American capitalism was “still healthy.” Since the “United States was an exception to the rule of capitalist decline,” the Communist International’s Eighth Plenum in 1927 suggested it “expected no great rise of the revolutionary labor movement ‘in the nearest future.’” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2194
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘American exceptionalism’ was a Communist Party apologetic construct born in the late 1920s, not merely a patriotic idea.