In this study session, we locate the Communist Party USA’s history within history of the class and democratic struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following Lenin’s insistence that Marxism demands a concrete analysis of a concrete situation, the conversation approached reviewing party history as a movement of ordinary working people confronting an extraordinary task: helping lead a movement for socialism. In other words, we avoided using a bourgeois yardstick to measure a working-class revolutionary project.

Presented on November 25, 2025.