What activities did the Communist Party of the United States engage in?
What effect did the leftist groups have on the politics of the decade? For a relatively small but important group of Americans intellectuals, artists, workers, blacks, and others who became disenchanted for various reasons with the prevailing values of American life the Depression meant a commitment, for a time at least, to radical politics. The Great Depression marked the greatest economic crisis in the countrys history, and perhaps it is only logical that many Americans showed an interest in capitalisms strongest critic, the ideology of communism. Some became members of the American Communist Party, which achieved a size and visibility in the 1930s it had never attained before and would never attain again. Others expressed sympathy for the party and its ideas without actually becoming members. The United States has always been distinctive for the weakness of radicalism in its political tradition. Even during the Depression the political left remained, by the standards of other countr
