AHC: Have the New Left produce a stable mass based communist party

Not by your definition they didn't. At their height the CPUSA and all their fronts had about 200,000 members
That's actually the cusp of a true mass based party.

One is not a member of a communist party or aligned organization the same way one registers as Democrat or Republican in a primary election. It entails active involvement in political work, paying dues, going to meetings, and adherence to the party line.
 
What do people think of the POD I posed upthread?

I don't think its a bad idea, but I think you put together three very well thought out points and then rushed the last one.

I'm not convinced that that sort of outrage would result in mass sympathy for a New Left party. I mean, the Detroit Riots saw 43 dead, over 1000 injured, and significant property damage in 1967 and failed to really spark any lasting movement.

I think one of the issues you'd need to address in this timeline is to somehow check or reverse the rise of blue-collar suburbia. Because at the moment your Rainbow Coalition is, frankly, a little too ethnic to attract the vast swathe of white working class men you'd want for this to evolve beyond being dismissed as a "Black Inner City" party in the mainstream media that did, whatever outreach programs might occur, have huge influence over the working-class in America. Keeping the white workers in the city centre changes the dynamic of the movement - although it also potentially butterflies the ethnic communities that created Black Panthers, Young Lords etc.

I had a question, from ignorance, which is how much did Hampton know about COINTELPRO? I mean, how much can he spill on the organisation beyond being simply seen as a dangerous leftie whiner?

Also, why no love for the countryside? You're neglecting important groups like Chavez's United Farm Workers. Talk about a man who could build a broad coalition. The whole "back to the land" culture of the 60s counter-culture might be of use to your timeline here....
 
Avoiding the purging of *communists from the CIO might be a reasonable POD.

Three things made this impossible IMO:

(1) The worsening of the Cold War--and especially its eruption into hot war in Korea. If the CIO had refused to expel its left-wing unions under those circumstances, the government and in particular the NLRB would tilt against the CIO and toward employers or the AFL, and many "right-wing" CIO unions might defect to the AFL. (People sometimes forget that the AFL was *always* larger than the CIO and exerted a constant temptation for CIO unions dissatisfied with the CIO to return to. Among the one-time CIO leaders who had returned to the AFL were David Dubinsky--and for a while John L. Lewis, who even after he had again exited the AFL never returned to the CIO.) Even in OTL, Dave McDonald of the Steelworkers was threatening to pull his union out of the CIO unless it got busy with unity negotiations with the AFL. And of course the AFL would insist on ousting the left as a condition for such negotiations.

(2) Even if there had been less antagonism in US-Soviet relations, the CIO would have gone after the leftists for their support of Henry Wallace in 1948. To non-leftist CIO unions, this was an outrage--the leftists were willing to split the labor vote and risk putting the "Taft-Hartley Republicans" in the White House, just because Truman's foreign policy didn't please Moscow.

(3) Finally, even before the 1949 expulsions, the left wing of the CIO had already been gravely wounded by Reuther's victory in the UAW and by the defections of Joe Curran of the National Maritime Union and Mike Quill of the Transport Workers Union.

I discussed the case of Quill some years ago in soc.history.what-if:

***

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/9DXvwSeczjE/zUi1N_JkiC0J

"Red Mike" Quill's break with the Communists in 1948 is indicative of the
way the Communist Party in the postwar years mishandled and lost its
greatest asset, the one powerful social institution where it had a real
foothold--the left-wing unions of the CIO. (I suspect that had Earl
Browder been retained as Party leader in 1945, he would not have been
quite as dismal a failure in this field as his successor William Z. Foster
was--even granted all the "objective conditions" working against Communist
influence in the unions.) The Party insisted that Quill oppose any
increase in the nickel subway fare until after 1949, because defense of
the nickel fare was going to be a key issue in party-aligned Congressman
Vito Marcantonio's mayoral campaign that year. This, even though everyone
knew that the subway lines were losing money and that there was no way
they could afford a substantial wage increase for the workers without a
fare increase. The Party also insisted the TWU support Henry Wallace's
quixotic presidential candidacy; when Quill warned that this could split
the TWU, Foster told him (according to Quill's later account) that the
Party insisted on having the left-wing unions support Wallace even if it
meant splitting every union in the CIO. Quill adopted the motto "Wages
before Wallace" and with his rank-and-file popularity defeated the
Communist majority on the TWU's executive council. He was helped by Mayor
O'Dwyer "who, thanks to a fare increase to ten cents, was able to grant
the union a wage increase that more than satisfied most of the membership.
Moreover, adopting a pattern that would characterize New York transit
negotiations until the mid-1960s, O'Dwyer went through the charade of
appearing to make painful concessions to Quill and allowed Quill to take
all the credit for the wage increase." (Harvey A. Levenstein, *Communism,
Anti-Communism and the CIO*, p. 263)

Quill was also aided by John Santo's voluntarily accepting deportation to
Hungary in 1948. (Santo had previously resisted attempts to deport him,
but now that Hungary was a People's Republic, he imagined a bright future
for himself there, which indeed he seemed to be realizing--until 1956.)
"The union constitution which Santo had drawn up gave extraordinary power
to the secretary-treasurer, the position that he held. His legal problems
forced him to relinquish the position to Gustav Farber, who sided with
Quill and helped to compensate for Quill's lack of a majority on the union
Executive Board." Levenstein, p. 262. The Communists thought that they
could undermine Quill's support among the Catholic transit workers by
proving that Quill himself had been a Communist. Unfortunately for them,
Quill had anticipated them, and had had his membership records stolen from
Party headquarters, even dramatically offering to resign as president if
his CP membership could be proven. (Levenstein, p. 263)

Quill's break with the Communists, coming soon after that of Joe Curran of
the National Maritime Union, was devastating for the left wing of the CIO,
and helped ease the way for the CIO's 1949 purge of the left-wingers...
 
Last edited:
Three things made this impossible IMO:

(1) The worsening of the Cold War--and especially its eruption into hot war in Korea. If the CIO had refused to expel its left-wing unions under those circumstances, the government and in particular the NLRB would tilt against the CIO and toward employers or the AFL, and many "right-wing" CIO unions might defect to the AFL. (People sometimes forget that the AFL was *always* larger than the CIO and exerted a constant temptation for CIO unions dissatisfied with the CIO to return to. Among the one-time CIO leaders who had returned to the AFL were David Dubinsky--and for a while John L. Lewis, who even after he had again exited the AFL never returned to the CIO.) Even in OTL, Dave McDonald of the Steelworkers was threatening to pull his union out of the CIO unless it got busy with unity negotiations with the AFL. And of course the AFL would insist on ousting the left as a conditions for such negotiations.

Yes, pretty much this. What you are lacking from your timeline POD (which, for the record, I think is quite exciting) is more of a recognition that all this takes place against the backdrop of one of the more tense periods of the Cold War. How are you going to stop your mass platform party being seen as quintessentially un-American? You can't, as David T points out, just handwave organised labour into being more left-wing, but without attracting some heavy support from unions your mass party is going to struggle to reach blue-collar whites.
 
Last edited:

E. Burke

Banned
I had a question, from ignorance, which is how much did Hampton know about COINTELPRO? I mean, how much can he spill on the organisation beyond being simply seen as a dangerous leftie whiner?

The POD I had in mind was that he realized that his bodyguard was going to drug him, and that he gets the guy to talk. The idea I had was that the guy is able to give evidence on the Chicago area activities, and that the FBI paints it as an isolated action by rogue elements in Chicago. They basically cut off that hand to save the body, and the Daley Machine destroyed. The New Left argues that it was the entire FBI, but can't prove anything decisively. Most people believe the official story, but it is still a major national scandal and damages the government's credibility.

On the Farmworkers: I wanted to add them, but I'm super ignorant of them. I don't know what they did.
 

E. Burke

Banned
I don't think its a bad idea, but I think you put together three very well thought out points and then rushed the last one.

I'm not convinced that that sort of outrage would result in mass sympathy for a New Left party. I mean, the Detroit Riots saw 43 dead, over 1000 injured, and significant property damage in 1967 and failed to really spark any lasting movement.

I think one of the issues you'd need to address in this timeline is to somehow check or reverse the rise of blue-collar suburbia. Because at the moment your Rainbow Coalition is, frankly, a little too ethnic to attract the vast swathe of white working class men you'd want for this to evolve beyond being dismissed as a "Black Inner City" party in the mainstream media that did, whatever outreach programs might occur, have huge influence over the working-class in America. Keeping the white workers in the city centre changes the dynamic of the movement - although it also potentially butterflies the ethnic communities that created Black Panthers, Young Lords etc.

The Detroit rioters were mostly young black men, and could be easily dismissed because of that. This is the US army mowing down mixed race strikers, and during a time when the nation is gripped by a major national strike that has been organized by a radical union group.
 
For large, organized far-left or far-right movements you need two things-military defeat coupled with economic disarray.
Or subversion.
By the 60s mass discontent gives rise to a mass-based, organized communist movement. I'm not saying this is particularly plausible and I know that this isn't even remotely like OTL 1960s,
Not just "Discontent" were the reason, but mainly targeted subversion and coordinated by the Soviet Union.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASbmBsE7mU0
 
Last edited:

E. Burke

Banned
The Students did end up moving into the factories, it was called industrialization. They helped found Teamsters for a Democratic Union, I believe. There were also New Left groups that were part of the labor movement, such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.


There were allot of militant strikes towards the end of the 60s, these were mostly wildcats. The most famous is the postal workers strike. It almost became a general government workers strike, which would have threatened the ability of the state to prosecute Vietnam.

That could actually be the POD, have the Postal workers strike spread. The army is brought in to put it down and things get really ugly. It serve as America's Bloody Sunday, which basically doomed the Tsar. It would certainly damage American capitalism's credibility to allot of people. That might have been the seed from which a mass communist party could grow.

Here's one idea:

1. Fred Hampton escapes assassination, and exposes parts of COINTELPRO. He works to spread his Rainbow Coalition model to other cities and becomes the Panther's Minister of Diplomacy. He is charged with organizing alliances with various radical movements across the country. This results in the formation of the American Liberation Front consisting primarily of ethnic communist groups allied with the Panthers. The ALF includes the American Indian Movement, Young Patriots Organization (which, with Hampton's support is able to gain a foothold in many Appalachian enclaves in the North) and the Young Lords as its principle members. They agree to support eachother's organizing, hold joint annual conferences and create an integrated leadership structure.

2. Hampton meets with several radical labor organizations, especially the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, with the intent of creating a unified radical voice in the Labor Movement. This meeting results in the formation of the Revolutionary Worker's Movement, a multiethnic labor organization that operates in a manner similar to the League. It seeks to operate as a radical alternative to the traditional unions, and operates by setting up Revolutionary Union Movements in various workplaces.

3. Hampton is able to significantly democratize and systemitize the Black Panthers, the most important aspect of his reforms is the writing of a constitution and developing coherent membership requirements. The rulers are largely based on the Young Lords and help limit the power of the Oakland based leadership. The new constitution creates a Central Committee that consists of elected representatives from each Party local based and 50 members elected by the Annual Party Congress.

4. When the Postal Workers strike the RWM is able to spread it to many other branches of government, acting as an alternative to the official union structures. The strike cripples the ability of the government to run the war in Vietnam, and it is declared a national emergency. The army is sent in break the strike, beginning to at the New York Post Office. Unknown to the public many soldiers refuse orders, and begin a "silent strike". When the soldiers that agreed to scab on the postal workers arrive at the post office, they are met by militant picket supplemented by armed ALF members. The confrontation gets really ugly, and eventually a brief gun battle breaks out. No one is sure who fired the first shot, but at the end 100 picketers and 3 soldiers are dead. Riots and strikes spread across the country, including the army. The anti war movement that had been simmering throughout Vietnam boils over with many soldiers actively supporting the riots. Ultimately the police and loyal military units are able to restore order, but America is irreversibly polarized. The Northern white working class has been won over to anti racist communism wholesale, and even the Solid South is starting to crack. The Young Patriots charter there first local in the south, the 12 member Birmingham Young Patriots.

5. At an emergency congress toward the end of the riots the ALF, RWM and smaller several left wing parties and organizations agree to merge and form the American Revolutionary Communist Worker's Party, with the Revolutionary Worker's Movement renamed the Worker's and Youth Revolutionary Union (following its merger with SDS and some radicalized street gangs) as it's primary mass organization. The constituent groups of the ALF are dissolved, with several new programs and groups replacing them. The Serve the People programs are combined, becoming the Revolutionary Service Society. The armed activities are likewise centralized and unified into the People's Revolutionary Militia Movement. The actual ethnic organizations remain, becoming National Sections of the ARCWP. The National Sections are essentially glorified caucuses, acting to organize minority communities within the party.

I edited my post to make it more plausible
 
Last edited:
Thats a conspiracy theory right?
Most of the information from the video are verifiable and when to add historical experience in Europe (documents from the countries of Eastern Bloc), therefore this video (only video and not author of this video) is very true.
 
Last edited:
Top