Morris Iserman
speaker
82 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 5 Aug
Morris Iserman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
My name is Morris Iserman, and I'm professor of history at Hamilton College.
And I've written a number of books about the history of the American left, including a biography of DSA's founder, Michael Harrington.
Define communism for me.
Communism began as a split off from the socialist movement.
It was inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.
And it is in favor of a total transformation of capitalist society with the government, the state,
owning and operating what communists would call the means of production, factories, transportation, and so forth.
It also believes in one-party rule.
So for 75 years or so, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed no competing parties to exist within that country.
Yeah, the American Communist Party was founded in 1919, so right after the First World War.
And it was, again, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which at a time of great disillusionment for socialists around the world, because here the workers of the world were fighting each other.
French workers were fighting German workers and so forth.
It seemed to point to a way out.
The Bolsheviks came to power, remained in power.
And so communists or would-be communists in the United States, in Europe, elsewhere said, well, if they can do it, we can do it too.
So an American Communist Party was founded in 1919, small, isolated, mostly immigrants.
But it gained strength in the course of the 1930s during the Great Depression.
Well, because capitalism seemed to be failing and communism seemed to be the wave of the future.
The other factor leading to the increase in communist influence was that fascism was rising in Italy in the 1920s, in Germany in the early 1930s, and it seemed as if there was a stark choice facing the world, either fascism or communism.
Many people in the 1930s said, well, let's support the communists to beat back the threat of fascism.
Showing 1–20 of 82 · page 1 of 5
Next →