ABSTRACT
It is possible to say many true things about the American Communist movement and yet not the whole truth. After almost forty years, the Communist movement is like a museum of radical politics. In its various stages, it has virtually been all things to all men. All kinds of men and women have been able to find in it almost anything they have wanted to find. The historical problem is not merely to establish what position the American Communists have held at any particular time but to seek out the dynamic forces that drove them from one position to another —and back again. For almost twenty years, two men, Jay Lovestone and Earl Browder, were dominant figures on the American Communist scene one after the other, the former until 1929, the latter until 1945. Historians also have some reason to give thanks that so many early American Communist leaders were expelled from the party.
