Earl Russell Browder Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Earl Russell Browder

Earl Browder is most widely known as the leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) during the years in which the Party enjoyed its greatest influence and recognition, from the early years of the Great Depression to the U.S. involvement in World War II. During the course of his CPUSA leadership and the years following his expulsion from the Party, Browder devoted his energies to the promotion of socialism in the United States, publishing more than one hundred pamphlets, hundreds of editorials, and eleven books. Unlike many other radicals of the era, however, Browder was concerned with adapting Karl Marx's theories to the particular circumstances of the United States. As such, he devoted his career to attempting a reconciliation of his Midwestern populism and the dogmatic Marxism of the Communist International. Although evident in nearly all of Browder's writings, this ideological struggle manifests itself most clearly in his texts after the mid 1930s and has been identified by some scholars as his most important contribution to American radicalism and by others as his most prominent intellectual and political weakness.

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