Why Can't The Small Sparkle Initiate A Large Flame

Since Marxism was introduced into the United States in the 1850s, the development of proletarian revolution movement has been in a lagging state all along. Although Bolshevistic victory in 1917 made the wave of communist revolution sweep Europe and Asia, communists in North America continent could not start a huge "Red Storm". After its establishment in 1919, American Communist Party couldn't mobilize American people to join the struggle against the rule of the bourgeoisie. Instead, it was even difficult for the organization to find a foothold in the American society itself. In the more than 80 years' history of American Communist Party, the communist movement it has promoted has long been declining, except for some short-lived thriving in the second half of 1930s and the middle 1940s.For the mighty capacity of immunity and withstanding to the threat of "communism" that American society possesses, lots of Chinese and foreign scholars have made wide research and deep analyses from different points of view. On the basis of the academic findings in this field, this paper, through a study on the history of American communist movement from 1919 to 1947, tries to find out the even deeper reasons why the communist movement has been so difficult to develop in America.The whole paper is composed of six chapters plus the preface and epilogue:Chapter One is a narration of the hardships the American communist movement suffered in the first ten years. Under the influence of the October Revolution of Russia, the left wing in American Socialist Party split out from this party, and founded the American Communist Party. They decided to follow the road of Bolshevik to establish a proletarian government in America through a social revolution. However, American communist movement fell into a difficult situation at the very start because of the strike from the US Department of Justice. Then, due to such factors as the continuing boom of American economy, the wrong policy guidance of Comintern and the lack of struggle experience, American communist movement was in a low tide all through the 1920s. As a result, American communists achieved little, either in the united front movement in politics or in the work of labor union within the American Federation of Labor.Chapter Two mainly discusses the slow development of American communist movement in the period of Great Depression. Although the big crisis of Americaneconomy started in 1929 provided a good opportunity for the communists to win over the workers and develop the revolution, the "extreme left policies" of the Comintern that directed the American communists at the time didn't bring a thriving boom to the American communist movement In the main fields of their work, American communists only got a little achievement with so great efforts. In their effort to win over the unemployed, communists could neither mobilize them to join the revolution, nor rally them under the leadership of the American Communist Party. During this period, the dual labor union movement the American communists developed also failed in the end because of the lack of the support from the labors. Although communists expanded its influence in Black community by working hard for the advantage of the black people in the South, only a few blacks joined the American Communist Party. As a whole, the vast majority of the American people didn't lose their confidence in the two big bourgeoisie parties because of this crisis, and still chose to preserve the existing capitalist system, in stead of establishing a new Soviet society under the leadership of the American communists. Up to the early days of New Deal, American Communist Party had yet improved their state of solitude in American society, and both its power of organization and its social influence were still very limited.Chapter Three is an account of the thriving of American communist movement in the period of People's Front. Along with the rising of fascist countries in the middle 1930s, Soviet Union's foreign policy shifted from promoting world proletarian revolutio...