A British Version of "Browderism": British Communiste and the Teheran Conference of 1943

In the wake of the Teheran Conference of 1943, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) adopted the political line that later became known as "Browderism." The Party dissolved itself in favor of a loose Communist Political Association, declared an effective end to the class struggle and argued that the war-time alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States could continue into the postwar era. The political content of "Browderism" scarcely changed until the eruption of the Cold War later in the 1940s. The British Communist Party, no less than that of the USA, had seen Teheran as an indication that in the postwar world there need be no return to the fierce class struggle characteristic of the prewar decades. It abandoned the insurrectionary model provided by the Bolsheviks, and set out to provide mettle for the wider labor movement rather than act as a vanguard party. Though some elements on the Party's left sternly criticized the leadership's post-Teheran policies, their comprehensive defeat at the Party's 18th Congress showed that the vast majority of the membership had been seduced by the allied powers' promises.