ABSTRACT
The success of Leninism in tsarist Russia seemed to argue that one could never afford to underestimate the militancy of a working class. The Lovestoneite theory of American exceptionalism was firmly bounded by Leninist premises. Downgrading the prospects for crippling domestic class conflicts, they had insisted on the primacy of the external, imperial istic contradictions of American capitalism. The only hint of differences in principles came from Foster, who complained about the stress on external contradictions at the expense of internal conflicts. This criticism, however, should more properly have been directed at Leninism than at Lovestoneism, for it was Lenin who had insisted that in the final stage of capitalism imperial istic conflict would play a key role. Lovestone became the Secretary of the American Communist Party in March 1927 and retained that position until his ouster for the heresy of exceptionalism in May 1929.
