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description: In 1929 Communist leader Jay Lovestone informed Stalin in Moscow that the American proletariat wasn't interested in revolution. Stalin responded by demanding that he end this heresy of American exceptionalism. And just like that this expression was born. What Lovestone meant and how Stalin understood it... Neither Lovestone or Stalin felt that the United States was superior to other nations -- actually the opposite. Stalin ridiculed America for its abnormalities which he cast under the banner of exceptionalism Daniel Rodgers a professor of history at Princeton said in an interview.Stalin to say the least wasn't happy with Lovestone's news. Who do you think you are? he shouted according to Ted Morgan's biography of Lovestone. (Leon) Trotsky defied me. Where is he? (Grigory) Zinoviev defied me. Where is he? (Nikolai) Bukharin defied me. Where is he? And you! Who are you? Yes you will go back to America. But when you get back there nobody will know you except your wives.As the Great Depression enveloped the United States Stalin's argument -- if not his bluster -- seemed well grounded. Exceptionalism was a disease a chronic disease wrote communist S. Milgrom of Chicago in 1930. The storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism the American Communist Party declared at its convention in April 1930.Of course the predictions failed: with the help of war and despite Franklin Roosevelt's new welfare state the U.S. economy stayed on the capitalist track. As American communism receded so did talk of exceptionalism in leftist circles. Terrence McCoy an excerpt from The Atlantic'How Joseph Stalin Invented Exceptionalism' Mar 15 2012
language: English
title: Stalin's speeches on the American Communist Party: Delivered in the American commission of the presidium of the Executive committee of the Communist International, May 6, 1929
publisher: New York: Central Committee, Communist Party, U.S.A., 1931