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Randall Webster
Senior Thesis

Research Proposal

For my thesis paper, Ive chosen to examine Communist Party activity during the FDR

administration. The Communist Partys original stance was to decry New Deal reforms as a form

of social-fascism. Within a decade, the party had an ideological about face, deciding to support

FDR and pressure him to enact more radical reforms. I feel this topic is important because it

touches on one of the more deeply contested and contentious aspects of the far-lefts legacy in

the United States. The historiography on why this change in line occurred is mostly centered on

the Partys loyalty to the Comintern, looking at it from the context of the Seventh Congress

abandonment of Third Period ideas in favor of forming Popular Fronts to defend against fascism.

The major alternative to this narrative exists mostly to distance the American Communist Party

from the Comintern, by suggesting that move from the first to second phases of the New Deal

were enough to catch the eye of the Communist Party.

The purpose of my paper will be to reinterpret the post-1935 change in party line as an

attempt to root themselves in the American political scene while carefully justifying their actions

to the Comintern by exploiting the ideas developed in the Seventh Congress. For this paper, I

will have to examine the varying factions and trends at work within the Communist party as Earl

Browder steps up as leader. Furthermore, I will have to examine his actions in the context of

personal ideology, Comintern pressure, and political context.

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Bibliography

Primary

Browder, Earl. The Communist Election Platform. 1936

Browder, Earl. The Mike Wallace Interview. 1957

Oneal, James. Communist Rah-Rah Convention Hoaxes Country on Principles. New York.

The New Leader, 1938.

Secondary

Draper, Theodore. The Roots of American Communism. Communism in American Life. New

York,: Viking Press, 1957.

Klehr, Harvey. The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade. New York: Basic

Books, 1984.

Klehr, Harvey, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. The Secret World of American

Communism. Annals of Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Lloyd, Brian. Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism,

1890-1922. New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History. Baltimore, MD:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Coming of the New Deal. The American Heritage Library. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Politics of Upheaval. The American Heritage Library. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1988.