Critique: American Communists Did a Lot Right and a Lot Wrong

Source: jacobin
Authors: ByDavid Duhalde
URL: https://jacobin.com/2026/06/communist-party-usa-democracy-lessons

What the article reports

David Duhalde reviews Red Lives: Our Years in the US Communist Party (1950–2000), an anthology of memoirs by former CPUSA members. The piece summarizes key themes from the book — labor organizing, racial justice work, internal antidemocratic practices, the Soviet funding relationship, and the party's electoral strategy — drawing on individual contributors' recollections. Duhalde frames the book as a useful resource for contemporary socialists seeking to learn from the CPUSA's successes and failures.

Factual accuracy — Adequate

Most specific claims are verifiable and appear accurate. Former CIA director John Brennan has publicly acknowledged voting Communist in 1976; the 1991 CPUSA split that formed Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) is well-documented; Gus Hall's tenure as general secretary from 1959 until his death in 2000 is correct; Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 are accurately dated; Local 1199SEIU is correctly described as a major hospital workers' union. Dorothy Healey's departure from the party is attributed to "the party's actions in Prague in 1956," though the Prague Spring crisis was 1968, not 1956 — 1956 saw the Hungarian uprising and Khrushchev's "Secret Speech," which did prompt significant departures. This ambiguity is a minor but notable imprecision. The article also states Hall "abolish[ed] the chairman position held by beloved party leader Henry Winston after his death in 1986" — the phrasing is slightly garbled (it's unclear whether "after his death" modifies abolishing or holding) but the underlying fact appears grounded. No other outright errors are visible, though many claims rest solely on the book's contributors and cannot be independently verified from the article alone.

Framing — Tilted

1. Opening anecdote as credentialing move. The piece opens with a childhood memory at a Communist-affiliated retreat and the author's mother saying "Lincoln freed the slaves" — immediately positioning the CPUSA as misunderstood rather than examined. This is framing, not reporting, and is never marked as such.

2. "Much more nuanced than their enemies would want to admit." This phrase, attributed editorially to Duhalde rather than a source, characterizes critics of the CPUSA as motivated bad-faith actors, preemptively delegitimizing skeptical readings.

3. "A welcome addition to the canon of left-wing self-criticism." This evaluative judgment appears as authorial voice, not attributed opinion. A reviewer at a neutral outlet would attribute such verdicts; here they are stated as fact.

4. Personal relationships disclosed but not distanced. Duhalde writes "I know a quarter of the writers from decades of movement work" and names specific organizational affiliations (DSA, Local 1199SEIU). This is a transparency strength — but the disclosure is immediately followed by warm characterizations ("patron for long-lost socialist literature," "mentor to me") that color how the reader receives the book's voices. The disclosures function more as bonafides than as conflict-of-interest flagging.

5. "Party members did real work for social justice under terrible repression by state and capital." The phrase "by state and capital" is an ideological formulation presented as settled description, not contested framing. A reader unfamiliar with left lexicon may not notice it is a political claim, not a neutral historical summary.

6. Critical voices are structural, not external. Every critical point about the CPUSA — sectarianism, Soviet dependence, Hall's authoritarianism — is sourced to former party members who remain socialists. The critique is entirely internal to the tradition being reviewed, which shapes what kinds of failures are legible.

Source balance

Ratio: All substantive voices are former CPUSA members who remain anti-capitalists. Zero historians of American communism, zero critics from outside the socialist tradition, zero representatives of groups the CPUSA antagonized (Trotskyists, Socialist Party, AFL-CIO leadership), zero victims of party sectarianism quoted in their own words. The supportive-to-skeptical ratio within the article is roughly 3:1, but all skeptics share the same ideological premises. External balance: 0 voices outside the reviewed book's contributor pool.

Omissions

1. No scholarly historiography cited. Books like Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes's archival work on Soviet funding of the CPUSA, or Ellen Schrecker's labor-sympathetic histories, would contextualize the claims — instead the reader gets only the contributors' self-assessments.

2. The Venona/Soviet archive evidence. The article mentions Soviet funding as a self-reported organizing problem but omits that post-Cold War archival evidence confirmed significant Soviet direction of CPUSA operations — material context that would affect how readers weigh the "rank-and-file were well-meaning" framing.

3. Victims of CPUSA sectarianism given no voice. The article acknowledges the party "propagated hostility" toward other leftists and that "the other leftist groups happily directed right back" — but only CPUSA figures are quoted. The Trotskyists, Socialist Party members, and non-Communist labor leaders who experienced that hostility are invoked but never heard from.

4. Contemporary CPUSA not addressed. The party still exists. A reader would reasonably want to know whether the organization drew the same lessons the book's former members did, or whether it disputes them.

5. The author's own organizational stake. Duhalde discloses DSA membership and caucus affiliation (Socialist Majority) but does not address whether his current political work in DSA — which competes for some of the same constituency as CPUSA successor organizations — shapes his reading of the book's lessons.

What it does well

• Conflict-of-interest disclosure is attempted. The author names his personal relationships with contributors ("I know a quarter of the writers") and his organizational affiliations upfront, which is more than many advocacy-adjacent reviews provide.
• The David Cohen anecdote — "the union members weren't bought in. At that point, it was just his agenda, not theirs" — is genuinely illustrative of the tension between vanguardism and democratic organizing, and the article lets it breathe rather than over-editorializing.
• The Soviet funding / dues dependency argument is rendered concretely: "the lost dues would be supplemented by other income from Moscow" links an abstract political problem to a practical organizational mechanism, making it useful for readers thinking about movement-building today.
• The democratic centralism definition is quoted directly from the book ("fullest discussion in the ranks of the membership"), giving readers a primary-source standard against which to evaluate the failures described — good analytical structure.
• The Gus Hall Labor Today anecdote — "Hall killed the piece" about Victor Reuther — is a specific, consequential example rather than a vague claim of sectarianism, and the follow-up ("the magazine folded anyway when Soviet subsidies ceased") ties it neatly to the structural argument.

Rating

Overall: 5/10 — An earnest and internally detailed book review that functions more as movement literature than journalism, with near-total source homogeneity and recurring unattributed advocacy framing.