On 2010-07-29, at 9:29 PM, SA wrote:
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> By the way - and I'm not trying to suggest any unmerited, ennobling equivalence - the SEIU and NAACP are scheduled to have a big demo in DC in October for jobs. It may well be as big as the combined March 1930 demos. Sadly, it will almost certainly not be as militant. On the other hand - and I think this is an important point - the participants at this demo will be, on average, much more integrated into the social mainstream than the participants at the March 1930 demo, in part because America has become a much more pluralistic society. The social distance between the average 1930 American in Middletown and the people at Union Square was staggering.
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> For some, that's a bug, for others a feature.
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> SA
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I'm genuinely curious as to how "Jewish" and New York-centric was the CPUSA in 1930.
Offhand, I know that members from East European immigrant families, notably Jews and Ukranians, were disproprotionately represented in the Canadian and American parties. So were Finns. This isn't surprising since all came from national minority groups who had strongly contributed to the revolutionary overthrow of Tsarism.
But my understanding is that the party from its inception also had a strong base in those regions of the country and in those industries where the IWW and Socialist Party had sunk roots - among native-born American workers in working in the mines, on the docks, in transportation and shipping, and in the growing number of auto, steel, electrical, and rubber plants in the Midwest, the South, the Rocky Mountain states, and Pacific Coast - all of which later positioned it to play a leading role in the formation of the CIO in the late 30's. Between 1929-32, the period under discussion, it led strikes of textile workers in Gastonia, SC and of miners in Harlan County, KY, and other locales outside of New York City with its preponderantly Jewish unionized garment industry. The founding leaders of the CPUSA - William Foster, James Cannon, Emil Ruthenberg, and Earl Browder - all came out of this native-born American socialist milieu; the only well-known leader from the Jewish immigrant community was Jay Lovestone.
Nevertheless, it remains true that the disproportionate representation of the foreign language groups within the base of the party was perceived as sufficiently harmful to its growth prospects as to prompt party leaders like Foster and Cannon to stress the need for its "Americanization". But I don't have any statistics on the demographics of the party in the period leading up to the New Deal. Perhaps SA or someone else does.