To Comrade Foster

(July 29, 1945)

Comrade Foster and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States:

We are delighted to learn that the special convention of the Communist Political Association of the United States has decided to cast aside Browder’s revisionist, that is, capitulationist, line [1], re-established the leadership of Marxism, and restored the Communist Party of the United States. We extend our warm congratulations on this great victory of the American working class and the Marxist movement. The entire revisionist-capitulationist line of Browder’s (a line fully expressed in his book Teheran) in essence reflects the influence of the reactionary American capital clique within the American workers’ movement. This reactionary capital clique is now also trying its utmost to extend its influence into China, abetting the anti-national and anti-popular erroneous policies of the reactionary clique within the Chinese Kuomintang, thereby confronting the Chinese people with the grave danger of civil war and jeopardizing the interests of the people of both China and the United States. The victory of the American working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party of the United States, in opposing Browder’s revisionist-capitulationist line will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the anti-Japanese war currently being waged by the people of both China and the United States, as well as to the great cause of post-war construction and the building of a peaceful and democratic world.

Mao Zedong

July 29

[1] Earl Browder (1891-1973) was formerly General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States. During the Second World War, the rightist thinking within the Communist Party of the United States, represented by Browder, had formed an anti-Marxist revisionist-capitulationist line. In April 1944, he published his programmatic book Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace. Browder “revised” the basic Leninist theory that imperialism is monopoly, decaying and moribund capitalism, denied the imperialist nature of American capitalism, held that it still “retains some of the characteristics of a youthful capitalist system,” maintained that there were “common interests” between the American proletariat and the big bourgeoisie, advocated protecting the trust system and avoiding, through “class conciliation,” the crisis that is inevitable for American capitalism. In May 1944, Browder presided over the dissolution of the political party of the American proletariat, the Communist Party of the United States, and organized the non-party Communist Political Association of the United States in its place. This erroneous line of Browder’s met with opposition from the very beginning from many members of the Communist Party of the United States headed by Foster. In June 1945, under Foster’s leadership, the Communist Political Association adopted a resolution criticizing Browder’s line. In July of the same year, the special national convention of the Communist Political Association decided to rebuild the Communist Party of the United States. Later, Browder still clung to his erroneous views, openly supported the imperialist policies of the Truman administration, and engaged in anti-party factional activities, for which he was expelled from the Party in February 1946.