page_title: Jay Lovestone
section_title: The Communist opposition years (1929–1941)
hierarchical_section_title: Jay Lovestone / Biography / The Communist opposition years (1929–1941)
caption_attribution_description: Jay Lovestone and David Dubinsky, radical American labor leaders, middle-1930s.
context_page_description: Jay Lovestone was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions within it.
context_section_description: When Stalin purged Bukharin from the Soviet Politburo in 1929, Lovestone suffered the consequences. A visiting delegation of the Comintern asked him to step down as party secretary in favor of his rival William Z. Foster. Lovestone refused and departed for the Soviet Union to argue his case.  Lovestone insisted that he had the support of the vast majority of the Communist Party and should not have to step aside. Stalin responded that he "had a majority because the American Communist Party until now regarded you as the determined supporters of the Communist International. And it was only because the Party regarded you as friends of the Comintern that you had a majority in the ranks of the American Communist Party".
  When he returned to the US, Lovestone was forced to pay for his insubordination and was expelled from the party for his support of Bukharin and the Right Opposition and for his theory of American exceptionalism, which held that capitalism was more secure in the United States and thus socialists should pursue different, more moderate strategies there than elsewhere in the world. That contradicted Stalin's views and the new Third Period policy of ultra-leftism promoted by the Comintern. Lovestone and his friends had thought that they commanded the following of the mass of party members and, once expelled, optimistically named their new party the Communist Party (Majority Group). When the new group attracted only a few hundred members they changed its name to the Communist Party (Opposition). They were aligned with the International Communist Opposition, which had sections in fifteen countries. The CP(O) later became the Independent Communist Labor League and then, in 1938, the Independent Labor League of America, before dissolving in 1941. The party published the periodical Workers' Age (originally The Revolutionary Age), which was edited by Bertram Wolfe, along with a number of pamphlets.
caption: Jay Lovestone with David Dubinsky speaking at a union rally in the 1930s
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