Back in 1948, I was a member of Communist Party (CP) and an active participant in the Young Progressive organization in Boston.

When the former vice president and still popular national figure Henry Wallace decided to run for president under the Progressive Party banner, the CP was an important participant. But far from being a postwar sectarian swing from the Earl Browder Popular Front years, the effort that I was involved with seemed to me motivated by an attempt to build meaningful alliances with non-Communist progressives in a last-ditch effort to save the once powerful left-wing movement of the 1930s and early 1940s.

That period had been characterized (under Communist participation and leadership to a great extent) by the creation of powerful unions for automakers, steelworkers, electrical workers, black and white cigarette makers, fur and leather workers, longshoremen, and maritime unions, pushed the New Deal towards the creation of Social Security and other advances in social welfare, took big steps in combating racism and, despite the complex ups and downs of the FDR years, assumed a strong antifascist position until his death.