Why have "Communist" Parties peaked at 50,000, and are at 2,00 today in United States

[Le Communiste]

Literally in the 1950 census, the United States had 150,000,000, while CPUSA had 50,000 members. While today it has about 2,000ish.

Also in Britain, CPGB-ML has like a few hundred members.

Why isn't ever a decent 1% chunk or something higher?

[Brutus]

I'm confused, could you please phrase the question better?
The SWP did have the most members of any communist party in the UK, before the 'comrade Delta' incident.

[Comrade Samuel]

A better question is 'who cares?'

Most modern 'communist' parties in western countries exist for the sole purpose of collecting dues and offering up candidates who...

a) never win

b)even if they did, they could not make any meaningful change within the current system

I guess the reason their membership is so low is because they have betrayed the principals they once stood for and also due to the relative stability of capitalism today. That certainly does not mean every party or organization is bad and it sure as hell does not mean capitalism is 'working' but it does seem to place the left in an awkward position.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Literally in the 1950 census, the United States had 150,000,000, while CPUSA had 50,000 members. While today it has about 2,000ish.

Also in Britain, CPGB-ML has like a few hundred members.

Why isn't ever a decent 1% chunk or something higher?

I think the title of your thread should have rather been "Why have Communist 'Parties'" been decimated, instead of "Why have 'Communist' Parties" lost any political footing. You know, its kind of hard to have any kind of political footing if you refuse to build an actual political Party.

[Sea]

Literally in the 1950 census, the United States had 150,000,000, while CPUSA had 50,000 members. While today it has about 2,000ish.

Also in Britain, CPGB-ML has like a few hundred members.

Why isn't ever a decent 1% chunk or something higher?
I find it hard to believe that at one point 1/3 of the US were CPUSA members.

[Hiero]

I find it hard to believe that at one point 1/3 of the US were CPUSA members.

Fity thousand not fifty million.

[Sea]

Fity thousand not fifty million.Ooohh, alright.

My bad, oops!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Literally in the 1950 census, the United States had 150,000,000, while CPUSA had 50,000 members. While today it has about 2,000ish.

Also in Britain, CPGB-ML has like a few hundred members.

Why isn't ever a decent 1% chunk or something higher?

You mean specifically why the CPUSA "peaked"?

I think in broad strokes, while the US CP was able to win many militants to their organization (due IMO, to the legitimacy they could claim by identifying themselves with the Russian Revolution - though this was problematic and as time went on and the USSR betrayed revolutionaries and workers it became a problem for them - as well as actually really solid - if sometimes politically "off" - campaigns in organizing workers and anti-racist struggle). So when more people radicalized in the US due to the depression and then the rise of fascism, they were the group in place with some roots and a number of experienced members of previous generations of struggle, that could gain a wider hearing... and beyond their own members they had a sizable influence among wider groups of people.

All this, in general, helped them to become a main visible force for opposition. But they also had (inter-related) political problems. 1) a top-down approach: in a way necissary - from their view - in order to quickly convince people that changes in Moscow's views needed to be carried out by the party... i.e. liberals are "social-fascists" and then suddenly switch to fascists are fascists and liberals are our allies in defending "progress". 2) connected to this, with WWII the CP became supporters of FDR, used the political influence that they had built up in the 30s to then "ensure labor peace" during the war and in the process, rather than playing a role of helping the working class be an independant class force, they played a role in encouraging militants to support the Democrats (and consaquentally turing their back on rank and file militants as well as their anti-racist work which would have cost them support from their new Democrat allies (since the Democrats were still the party of Jim-Crow).

In return the Democrats and Republicans, once the war was over, basically threw the CP (along with a lot of other radicals) under the bus: drove them out of unions while bolstering moderates, politically repressed them, etc. By that time many people were disillusioned by both the CP and some of it's betrayals and the increasing awareness of exactly how fucked-up the USSR was, and experience with CP sectarianism towards non-CP radicals, meant that the CP was basically isolated when the repression came and people were either too scared to defend them, or just didn't want to defend them for either because they were politically bankrupt or (if they were a non-radical union beurocrat) it got rid of political competition.

So in a context of realativly amazing material gains for workers through reforms and new Keynsian policies, saying, "support the Democratic party" like the CP did just made them irrelevant as well. If vets could get a home and a stable job because of the post-war keynsian policies, why even support a (non-radical) CP? Had an organization with the connections that the CP had, kept a more independant route (assuming they are also still revolutionaries) then even with an increase in the living standards and security of SOME workers, things could have been different. Especially considering that black workers were specifically left-out of these reforms and struggled from the end of WWII to the 1970s. But instead, the mistakes of the CP led them to be defensless against ruling class McCarthyist attacks and radicals in general were marginalized until the new-left emerged.

And as far as the situation in the US today, well I think the CP had the influence it did because by the 1930s there had been a whole era of working class organizing and resistance (not an uninterrupted era, but more of a continuity anyway). From the first great depression there had been the development of unions and the more militant unionists helped make up sections of the Socialist Party, some of the better SPers then tried to counter the conservative union movement and helped form the IWW, when that was repressed and after the Russian Revolution, some of these folks went on the join/found the US CP. So even though the 1920s were a severe downturn in class struggle and a time of repression, when struggle changed again in the 1930s, there were both layers of workers who had experience with more militant ideas and strategies as well as radicals who had some connection to working class communities and groups of workers. Today there's been more than a generation of demoralization for workers - even timid conservative union tactics have been difficult - and since the post-war era mainstream unions have sought to have partnerships with business. So a weakening of already problematic unions, the collapse of reformsists, the repression of radicals, means that the US working class is starting from a very underdeveloped place in the sense of politics, tactics, and organization. This isn't to say that things can't or won't change - or that it will be a slow rebuilding of working class tradditions let alone any sort of networks or "parties" out of new militant struggles. In a way it's sort of a depressing glass half-full/half-empty because there is a sort of "clean slate" and so a new working class movement might emerge that doesn't have some of the old baggage and the lack of strong reformist and keynsian influence could also mean very rapid radicalization if people see that it's an effective way to struggle.

Sorry this was long, but even so, this is a very crude picture of a much more complicated strory.

[Lucretia]

There's also the issue that the CPUSA had the "prestige" of being connected, however loosely, with the government of one of the world's major superpowers while at least maintaining the appearance of being a progressive political force. That, combined with what JH said above, explains why acquiring 50,000 members in a CP was much easier then than it is now.

[subcp]

Some say there was a crisis in the classical workers movement starting in the late 1960's. I think it's a good sign that the noose of Stalinism has been greatly loosened from the working-class. Despite the 'death of communism' and 'end of history' propaganda from 1989-early 2000's, I'm optimistic about the decline of the left. Issue #1 of the Italian communist left in exile's paper Bilan has an article called "Towards a 2 3/4 International?" that gives 2 conditions for the return of the class party- one of which is Stalinism being exposed among the working-class and losing its influence (which was at its peak in the 1930's-1940's around when the article was written). The state of the official left, especially since 1989 to today, seems to have fulfilled this condition set by the Italian communists in the '30s- even though, as you note, there are still rump Stalinist parties (France, Greece) and sects (US, UK, Germany, Italy). But the level of their influence overall is exponentially smaller than at any time since WWII.

[ind_com]

Literally in the 1950 census, the United States had 150,000,000, while CPUSA had 50,000 members. While today it has about 2,000ish.

Also in Britain, CPGB-ML has like a few hundred members.

Why isn't ever a decent 1% chunk or something higher?

Communist movements have their ups and downs everywhere. Right now some communist parties elsewhere are very big. The Communist Party of the Philippines, for example, has more than 100,000 members.

[Ismail]

One problem is that the CPUSA actually had stuff to offer to people: it had strong influence in the trade unions (particularly the CIO), among intellectuals and artists, and among the youth. It actually made its presence felt where it existed, it didn't just say "capitalism suxx" at a protest or something. Taft-Hartley and anti-communist offensives in the unions wrecked Communist influence (and union strength in general), McCarthyism basically killed continuous ties between the CPUSA and the intelligentsia, and by the 60's the party had become revisionist and attacked any youthful endeavors, thus revolutionary youth retaliated with the "New Communist Movement" which opposed the "old Left" and embraced Maoism and other forces which, if nothing else, certainly spoke of revolution a whole lot.

The closest most parties in the USA get to offering people stuff are selling works (mostly pamphlets by present-day party leaders and reprints of books from the early-mid 20th century) and trying to help union workers organize at a time when union membership is in continuous decline.

[The Idler]

I'd be surprised if the CPGB-ML had anywhere near 50 members let alone hundreds.