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LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD  
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Jay Schaffner
July 28, 2026
Democratic Left
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_ Why did thousands seek out this socialist organization; why did
they join it; what did they accomplish; what movements did they build;
what mistakes did they make; what might today’s generation of
activists and socialists learn from them? _

Angela Davis campaigned for Communist Party candidates Gus Hall and
Jarvis Tyner in the 1976 presidential election,

 

Most histories of the Communist Party end in 1956–1957 with the
Khrushchev revelations about the Stalin period in the Soviet Union,
the Soviet Union’s intervention in Hungary, and the resulting
division in the ranks of the CPUSA. The press and “public opinion”
proclaimed that the CPUSA was dead.

Books have been written about the movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and
even through the 1990s and up to Obama’s election. Participants in
these movements wrote some. Yet other than Angela Davis’s writings,
nothing has been published about the roles and contributions of the
Communist Party members or the various youth organizations that were
allied and affiliated with the Party: the Labor Youth League, the
W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs, the Young Workers Liberation League, or the
Young Communist League during these decades.

_Red Lives_: _Our Years in the U.S. Communist Party_ fills that gap in
the historical record with first-person accounts of 16 former CPUSA
members. My contribution, “Born Red: Pages from a Socialist’s
Life,” recounts experiences from my 23 years in the Party, which I
joined in 1968. 

The Sixties were a time of hope. The aspirations and struggles of
people shaped the consciousness of U.S. society and of the world. The
Sixties were a time of social unrest that made this country what it is
today and what the MAGAites are trying desperately to undo. 

It was when the African American people of the United States regained
the right to vote and won a century-long fight against segregation and
Jim Crow inequality, while the anti-draft and anti-war movements were
in their ascendancy. 

Growing up at this time, one would wonder what was happening in that
part of the world where the economic, political, and social systems
were entirely different from those in the United States. It was not a
matter of agreeing with those countries, but rather of acknowledging
that they were different from ours and offering an alternative. No
matter what the Cold War threw at the Soviet Union, it remained. The
USSR was the first country to put a human being in orbit. And then, as
the 1960s began, there was a new and different country — socialist
Cuba — just 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Our generation was in motion. Like so many others, I protested and
sought an alternative to the system that had brought about the crisis
that we faced. We explored many socialist publications and
organizations, the largest of which was the Communist Party. It was
also the most multi-racial, the most multi-generational, and the most
working-class.

As a high school student, I wanted to join a large, national, militant
student movement and a multi-racial national socialist organization.
So I joined  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Du Bois
Clubs. I joined the Communist Party in 1968. I was elected to the
CPUSA national committee in 1975 and reelected at every convention
until 1991, when I left the Party.

Like so many others in the Party from working-class families, I went
to work, following in our parents’ footsteps. In Chicago, I worked
in a small machine shop. On the job, we Communists were able to join
with other workers– young, middle-aged, and older–to build a
rank-and-file movement and to recruit workers into the Party.

In Chicago, I was a leader of the Young Workers Liberation League and
also a Communist Party district leader. I represented the League in
coalitions and was a leader of the citywide anti-war movement through
the Chicago Peace Council. In 1974, I was a Communist Party candidate
for statewide office and a co-convener of the first Young Voters state
conference. I share this because, for me, building and participating
in the socialist and communist movement was not a contradiction to
involvement in and building of the broader democratic people’s
movement.

I then became part of the national leadership of the Young Workers
Liberation League. From 1975 to 1983, the YWL had a membership of
upwards of 15,000 nationwide over this period, but no more than 3,000
in any one year. I estimate that there were many thousands more who
joined the Party between 1960 and 1990, especially during movements
like the campaign to Free Angela Davis and all political prisoners;
the anti-Vietnam war movement; the numerous labor rank-and-file
upsurge campaigns and movements; the movement to end apartheid in
South Africa and free Nelson Mandela and others imprisoned; the
movement in solidarity with the people and government of socialist
Cuba; the campaign against the fascist junta in Chile; and the
numerous Party election campaigns.

This is the story that several of us felt needed to be told. Why did
thousands seek out this socialist organization; why did they join it;
what did they do; what did they accomplish; what movements did they
build; how did they work; what mistakes did they make; what might
today’s generation of activists and socialists learn from them?

A group began meeting to discuss how we could proceed. We assembled a
list of about five hundred of our friends and former comrades and
began contacting them. Fifty agreed to write, and we are producing
three volumes. The first is _Red Lives: Our Years in the U.S.
Communist Party_ (1950–2000); _Vol. 1: Coming of Age in the
Communist and Labor Movements. _
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_The Romance of American Communism,_ by Vivian Gornick, was published
in 1977. Gornick interviewed 40 former Communists about their
membership and activities. They felt that their time in either the
Communist Party or the Young Communist League was the best years of
their lives. They left, no matter when, at the right time. They were
not bitter about those years; they were bitter about the period after
they left — the McCarthy era.

The 16 writers in _Red Lives_ are also not bitter. They are writing
about young people whose lives are full of activity and excitement,
lives in struggle for a better life for themselves, their generation,
their class, and the generations that would follow. As during the
McCarthy era (1947–1954), there is today a danger of fascism and the
erosion of our basic democratic rights and liberties, but resistance
to that is developing and growing daily. 

In my opinion, a socialist movement must include several pillars:

• A commitment to democracy and to the struggle for the fullest
expansion of democratic rights, both in the United States and
worldwide.

• A fight for equality, against racism, sexism, misogyny,
homophobia, and for transgender rights.

• Socialism is a political and economic process, not a finished
product that can be declared achieved. Further, there needs to be a
recognition that both socialist democracy and a socialist economy
require pluralism and a multitiered economy.

• The preservation of the earth must be a primary focus for
everyone: dealing with climate change, getting rid of nuclear energy
and nuclear weapons, and protecting the food we eat.

• The working class is diverse and not static. The working class is
multinational and multiracial.

• Peace and the prevention of nuclear war are not tactical but
fundamental issues that should underlie everything we do.

• Democracy must be extended to a socialist organization itself with
full discussion and debate.

Beginning in the mid-Eighties, the Party leadership developed a
political position that counterposed the building of the mass movement
with the building of the Communist Party. This position intensified
after the death of National Chairman Henry Winston in 1986. The Party
promoted the ideological concept of the “Communist-plus” to define
the unique role of Communists within broader democratic people’s
movements.

This approach prioritized the Party’s public role over building and
participating in popular movements. It included growing the
circulation of the Party press (the _Daily World _and later the_ Daily
People’s World), _pushing its own speakers and candidates within
coalitional movements,  and Party members being public about being
Communists_._ Running Party candidates for public office required
collecting thousands of signatures to get them on the ballot, and all
members were required to participate in these signature drives,
including members who were not publicly known as Communists.

Communists who were leaders of mass organizations but not known
publicly as Communists and who had not recruited new members were
criticized and characterized as “not-real-Communists.” The
Party’s attitude toward the McGovern campaign in 1972, that “the
only vote that counted was a vote for Gus Hall and Jarvis Tyner,”
was a preview of “Communist-plus.” Then came Gus Hall’s report
to the Central Committee after the 1972 election, “A Lame Duck in
Turbulent Waters: The Next 4 Years of Nixon,” which prioritized
running Communist candidates over an electoral approach that included
participation in Democratic Party campaigns. 

I believe the primary catalyst for change is the broad people’s
democratic movement, whatever form it takes, with the socialist
movement as a component, agitating for more advanced positions within
the larger people’s movement.

The height of the Party’s mass influence and membership was not in
the Thirties, as some might think, but in the period right after World
War II, after the Party was reconstituted following its dissolution
under Earl Browder in 1944. The start of the Cold War at home in 1947
and the traveling HUAC hearings and roadshow were no accident. Much of
the history written about the Cold War and the McCarthyite purge of
the U.S. Left was tied to postwar developments in Europe, the
“loss” of China, and the Korean War. But the goal of McCarthyism
was to roll back New Deal policies and the influence of the Left,
especially after the massive strike wave and unionization after World
War II and the rise of the Civil Rights movement.

From the CPUSA to DSA

Today, I am proud to be a member of the largest socialist organization
that the United States has ever seen, an organization that is growing,
that is part of today’s movements for social change, and that is
electing democratic socialists to city councils, county governments,
state legislatures, and to the halls of Congress. That organization is
Democratic Socialists of America, and it boasts more than a thousand
members holding elective office from one end of the country to the
other.

In fact, I have now been a member of DSA for more years (33) than I
was a member of the Communist Party (23). In fact, I joined DSA about
two years after I left the CPUSA.

There is a huge difference between joining DSA and joining the
Communist Party or joining any of the other communist-type parties
that existed from the Sixties to the Nineties.

One just joins DSA, either at a meeting or event, or individually
online. During the period when I was a Communist Party member, one had
to be recruited, sponsored by two members, vetted, and then voted on
by a Party collective (club or district organization) that the
prospective member would join. DSA members are usually assigned to a
chapter closest to their geographic area. Party members belonged to
either a neighborhood, a shop, or an industry club.

Larger DSA chapters today are simply not physically able to hold
chapter meetings, given their membership size. They send out activity
notices and have working groups and committees, and members
participate in many activities and campaigns, especially elections.
They are welcomed into membership and told about educational
activities. However, it is up to the individual member to determine
their level of involvement and participation. In larger chapters,
there may not even be a follow-up phone call to find out why a member
is not participating.

I pay dues to the national organization, pay a national sustainer fee,
and receive regular monthly email receipts. I also pay local dues and
a sustainer to my local chapter. I have signed up for a couple of
working groups. I have participated in some electoral campaigns. I get
emails and texts. But I have never once received a phone call to find
out why I did not participate in an activity, why I pay as a
sustainer, or what I think.

My experience during my years in the Communist Party was completely
different. An individual was part of a collective, a club, which met
regularly, usually every two weeks. The collective discussed the
overall political situation and the Party’s immediate tasks, the
specific tasks in our community, industry/union (or shop), and how
each of us could fit into that work. Club members were generally
familiar with the political work of other members and would often
discuss specific problems individual members were encountering.
Contrary to the public perception, the club could not discuss in
advance how members should vote at a particular meeting because it did
not know in advance what others in a given mass organization or union
might, in fact, say and do.

The experience of the Communist Party organizational form cannot be
repeated or replicated. It fell apart because the politics — “the
science of Marxism-Leninism,” democratic centralism, the
infallibility of existing socialism — did. I came to reject
democratic centralism, one of the bedrock principles of the world
Communist movement, as it was practiced. It has no place in today’s
world in the struggle to expand and develop full democratic rights. 

Democratic centralism was supposed to mean the fullest discussion in
the ranks of the membership with the elected leadership at all levels,
then making decisions based on such discussion, including full debate
of positions and alternatives, which would then be binding on all
members. 

In reality, the membership lacked access to information, knowledge of
events elsewhere, or awareness of which resources might be available
to implement policies and decisions, and therefore could not fully
participate in discussions of policy and programs. Instead of
resolutions that could be debated in leadership bodies, omnibus
reports were presented, and a “general line” was voted on. As a
result, the membership, including members of those leading bodies,
never really knew what the actual issues or various policies were.

The reality today is that individuals respond to events much faster
than at any other time. Our task is to organize that response. How do
we make it not individual but collective? How do we affect change and
policy? This project requires both ever-larger democratic movements
for reform and, within them and alongside them, ever-larger democratic
socialist organizations whose politics go beyond patching and
band-aiding capitalism.

And then, as an organization, how do we find ways to be better and
more regularly in touch with our members, not just our active and
involved members, but our full membership, including those members who
just pay their annual membership dues? How do we raise the level of
socialist understanding among our membership, both in general and on
all issues where we take a position or issue a statement? These are
tasks that our growing and developing democratic socialist
organization needs to take on and grapple with.

_This article is based on opening remarks at a Book Talk Conversation
at Busboys and Poets Books, Washington, DC, May 21, 2026, with _Red
Lives_ co-editor and contributing author Jay Schaffner and Chris
Townsend, contributing author. The event was co-sponsored by the Labor
Heritage Foundation and Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America
(DSA)._

 

_[JAY SCHAFFNER, was born in 1952 and grew up in Skokie, a Chicago
suburb. He was in Students for a Democratic Society, the socialist,
multiracial W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs and was a founding member of Young
Workers Liberation League. In 1975, was elected to the CPUSA national
committee, and then at every convention until 1991, when he left the
Communist Party. In 1990 he became a clerical worker for Local 802 of
the American Federation of Musicians; and then later the head of the
local's Recording Department. He was later elected to the Executive
Board. A founding moderator of __xxxxxx_
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he continues collaborating with the progressive news website. In
retirement, he co-chairs a tenant committee in his housing
cooperative. He is an elected member of the New York State Committee
of the Working Families Party and is a member of DSA.]_

 

_Democratic Left is the official magazine of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), run by the Democratic Left subcommittee
of the National Editorial Board. The National Political Committee
appoints the Editorial Board every two years in accordance with a 2023
National Convention Resolution. _

* Communist Party
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* Young Workers Liberation League
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* DuBois Clubs
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* DSA
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* Left History
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* memoir
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