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Loss of "Rootedness" Explains Demise of U.S. Communism
When William Z. Foster died in a Russian sanitarium in 1961, only a handful of people gathered at his grave outside of Chicago to mourn his passing even though he had built steel and meat-packing unions and thrice ran for U.S. president. Foster's undoing, says LAS history professor James Barrett, was his staunch support of Soviet leadership—even after it suppressed the Hungarian Revolution—in the face of severe political repression during the McCarthy Era. Says Barrett: "Foster's radicalism lost its rooted-ness in the reality of everyday American life."
To Barrett, Foster's life provides a new basis for understanding radicalism among 20th-century American workers. This son of poor, working class parents was a manual laborer who later crisscrossed the country as a hobo. He became an ardent labor organizer and rose to national prominence during the bloody steel strike of 1919. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, Foster joined the American Communist Party, and as its leader after World War II, insisted on total loyalty to the Soviet Union. "He suppressed his initiatives and those of two generations of political activists in the name of Communist discipline," argues Barrett. This support in the face of McCarthyism in the U.S. led to the marginalization of his party.
Winter 2001