ABSTRACT
American Communists have periodically ventured to engage in "reconsiderations" and "re-evaluations". Paradoxically Lovestone made himself the foremost exponent of both Bolshevization and Americanization. For the time being, the Russians encouraged both trends, and Lovestone was not compelled to choose between Bolshevization and Americanization. The Russian party's Fifteenth Congress, at which Stalin had committed himself to the end of capitalist stabilization, met only about three months after the American party's Fifth Convention, at which Lovestone had committed himself to the extreme American version of capitalist stabilization. For Lovestone, as for every Communist leader in the world, a falling out between Stalin and Bukharin posed the same problems as those which the Stalin-Trotsky conflict had presented. There existed between Lovestone and Bukharin a close personal relationship that had never existed between Lovestone and Trotsky. Bukharin's policies in the Comintern propped up Lovestone's policies in the American party.
