Lovestone Becomes a Lovestoneite, 1928–9

chapter 13 Lovestone Becomes a Lovestoneite, 1928–9

Late 1928 to early 1929 was Lovestone’s apex. The anti-Trotsky campaign was integral to his tenure as party leader. Many of the leaders of the campaign would soon be purged themselves. By supporting Bukharin at the same time as Stalin was preparing an attack on the head of the Comintern, Lovestone sowed the seeds of his own downfall. Lovestone had genuine affinities to Bukharin, but he also miscalculated in his attempt to position himself with the Comintern leadership. Lovestone had attacked Lozovsky, Stalin’s ally, for ‘making a muddle of nearly everything he has touched’, and at the last meet- ing of the Senioren Convent (comprising high-ranking Comintern leaders), Lovestone attacked the ‘corridor congress’ against Bukharin, compelling Stalin to deny any breach between the two Russian leaders. Meanwhile the campaign against the ‘right danger’ in the Comintern increased; Lovestone’s fixation with Cannon—and his attacks on Foster and Bittelman—left him open to criticism as a ‘rightist’.1 Engdahl, in a cable from Moscow, indicated ‘general approval here [about] Cannon expulsion’, but stressed that the ‘party must emphasize more how- ever [the] struggle against right danger while fighting Trotzkyism’. Some in the Comintern attacked the Daily Worker’s coverage of the expulsions as ‘mostly selfpraise and going [to] ridiculous extremes’. Couching himself in Comintern rhetoric, Lovestone argued that fighting Cannon and Trotskyism was part of the fight against the ‘right danger’. According to a motion by the leadership of the Young Workers’ (Communist) League: ‘In the American Party at the present time, the Right danger is represented sharply by the Trotskyists’. In response, the Anglo-American Secretariat drafted a letter, which argued that ‘such an exaggeration of the Trotsky situation as contained in the Majority resolution conceals the basic Right danger’ and ‘shows that the League majority has not yet a critical attitude towards the Right mistakes of the Party’. As Foster and Zack echoed in 1929, ‘The Majority considered Trotskyism as the crassest expression of the Right danger because it does not want and is incapable to struggle against real Right danger’. The issue was not whether Trotsky was a ‘right’ or ‘left’ danger, but if Lovestone had the confidence of Stalin.2

1 Draper 1986, p. 309. 2 Engdahl, undated [3 November 1928?] cable to WoPat [Workers’ Party], in Comintern archives, 515:1:1254; ‘Resolution of the National Executive Committee of the Young Workers’

In November 1928, the ECCI sent a letter to the American leadership, criti- cising the Daily Worker’s reporting on the Comintern’s view of the American party. It attacked the ‘interpretation that the [Sixth] Congress has expressly declared its confidence in the majority, in contrast to the minority’. The letter insisted: ‘this is not so’. It reiterated the ‘Right danger is the main danger for the American Party’, and ordered that the upcoming national convention ‘investi- gate the objective sources of the Right danger and the struggle against it’.3 In early 1929, the Comintern leadership indicated its displeasure with Lovestone through a draft ‘Open Letter’. Written by Gusev, the draft on the sur- face was directed to the party leadership to help prepare for the party’s upcoming Sixth National Convention. This was one of several sent to Communist Parties that were having conferences. According to the Communist International these conferences were to take place ‘during a time of struggle against the right- wing danger and against conciliatory attitudes of the right-tendency’. The letter reiterated the Third Period prediction of ‘a growth of a leftward trend in the masses of the American proletariat’ and ‘great class conflicts’ in the near future. The party was ‘still inadequately prepared’ for this radicalisation because of factionalism ‘devoid of any political class content’ that had degenerated into ‘a struggle without principles and at times unprincipled’. The letter underlined that ‘the existing groups must be smashed, smashed and broken at all costs’ to create a ‘mass Communist Party of the American working class’. It reiterated the Sixth Congress’s conclusion that such right-wing errors ‘cannot be ascribed to the majority leadership alone’. Still, the draft signalled the Comintern’s lack of faith in Lovestone—and Gusev’s role in writing it no doubt highlighted what happened to leaderships deemed deficient by the Comintern.4

(Communist) League of America Against the Trotskyist Danger’; Draft letter from Anglo- American Secretariat to America [December 1928], both in Comintern archives, 495:72:51; W.Z. Foster and J. Zack, ‘Statement on the Situation in the Communist Party of the United States of America’ [Spring 1929], in Comintern archives, 495:72:57. The statement that Trotskyism was the ‘crassest manifestation’ of the ‘Right danger’ is originally from the call for the sixth convention of the party, printed in Daily Worker, 10 November 1928. See also Bittelman’s ‘statement for record’ in Political Committee minutes No. 68, 14 November 1928, in Lovestone papers, box 226, folder 4. 3 Letter from Secretary of the ECCI to the CEC of the Workers’ (Communist) Party of America, 21 November 1928, attached to Political Committee minutes No. 75, 25 December 1928, in Lovestone papers, box 226, folder 5. 4 Martinov 1929. Comrade Gussiev, draft of ‘Open Letter to the Convention of the Workers’ (Communist) Party of America’, [February 1929], Lovestone papers, box 198, folder 11; also in Comintern archives, 515:1:1547. At this point, it was common for the ECCI to write ‘Open Letters’ to parties; International Press Correspondence carried several examples.