William Z. Foster

William Z. Foster
Foster in 1951
General Secretary of the Communist Party USA
In office July 29, 1945 – February 12, 1957
Preceded by	Earl Browder
Succeeded by	Eugene Dennis
Chairman of the Communist Party USA
In office May 17, 1929 – July 29, 1945
Preceded by	Jay Lovestone
Succeeded by	Eugene Dennis
Personal details
Born	William Edward Foster (1881-02-25)February 25, 1881 Taunton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	September 1, 1961(1961-09-01) (aged 80) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Party	Socialist Party of America (1901–1909) Communist Party USA (1921–1961)
Other political affiliations	Wage Workers (1909–1910) Syndicalist League (1912–1914)
Occupation	Trade union leader politician

William Z. Foster^[a] (born William Edward Foster; February 25, 1881 – September 1, 1961) was a radical American labor organizer and Communist politician, whose career included serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1945 to 1957. He was previously a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, leading the drive to organize packinghouse industry workers during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.^[2]

He was born William Edward Foster in Taunton, Massachusetts, on February 24, 1881, the son of a Fenian, James Foster, who had fled County Carlow after the failure of the revolutionary Fenian Rising in Ireland and the waves of arrests that drove hundreds of others out of the country. His mother, Elizabeth McLoughlin, was an English Catholic textile worker. During his peripatetic childhood his mother had nine surviving children of 23 babies she bore.^[3]

His family moved to the Irish area of Skittereen within the Moyamensing neighborhood of South Philadelphia, where his father worked as a stableman and was part of a group of Irish-American Fenians. Foster left school at the age of ten to apprentice himself to a dye sinker. Foster left that position three years later to work at a type foundry and then in a white lead factory.^[4] Over the next ten years he worked in fertilizer plants in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Jacksonville, Florida; as a railroad construction worker and lumberman in Florida; as a streetcar motorman in New York City; as a lumberman and longshoreman in Portland, Oregon; and as a sailor.^[5] He also homesteaded in Oregon from 1904 to 1907, working various odd jobs as a miner, sheepherder, sawmill worker, and railroad employee during that time.^[6]

Foster joined the Socialist Party of America in 1901^[7] and was a member of its Oregon affiliate and later its Washington state affiliate. He left the party in the midst of a faction fight in 1909. He then joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), taking part in one of its free speech fights in Spokane, Washington.^[8]

Foster became a prominent figure in the IWW.^[7] He served as its representative at an international labor conference in Budapest in 1911 and contributed to its papers.^[9] His politics, however, were moving him away from the IWW. He became a committed syndicalist after touring Europe in 1910 and 1911, and he criticized the IWW for not working within established unions.^[10] He urged American leftists to join the relatively conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions to take control of them—a strategy called "boring from within"—instead of trying to establish rival unions, as the IWW had tried to do.^[11] Foster failed to convince the IWW to adopt this position, however, and he eventually left it and formed his own organization, the Syndicalist League of North America (SLNA).^[7]

In Foster's 1912 pamphlet Syndicalism, he argues for direct action at the shop floor level, which he believed would lead to workers governing society through "shop organizations".^[12] Foster biographer James R. Barnett argues that this pamphlet shows the influence of anarchist thought, and several members of the newly-founded SLNA—including Jay Fox and Esther Abramowitz, Foster's future wife—were anarchists.^[13] Other members of the SLNA included Earl Browder, an accountant and union activist from Kansas City; James P. Cannon, an IWW member; and Tom Mooney, a left-wing socialist activist.^[14] By 1914, however, the SLNA had broken up. Foster stated that it "crumbled away into disconnected groups of militants working here and there in the trade union movement", whereas Fox said that they had simply "decided to lay off for a while".^[15]

After the disintegration of the SLNA, Foster became vice president of the AFL-affiliated International Union of Shingle Weavers, Sawmill Workers and Woodsmen. After his appointment expired, he moved to Chicago in 1915, becoming an inspector for Swift & Company at the Union Stock Yards.^[16] That year, he was appointed as a general organizer for the AFL and founded the International Trade Union Educational League (ITUEL).^[17] He outlined his labor philosophy in his 1915 pamphlet Trade Unionism: The Road to Freedom, arguing that radicals did not need to advocate for revolution in unions because organizing workers was an inherently radical act, even if it meant compromising with conservative union leaders.^[18]

The following year, in 1916, he became a union business agent for a Chicago local of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America.^[19] Through the ITUEL, he insinuated himself into the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), a trade union federation headed by John Fitzpatrick. He also advocated for a number of major labor-related causes, including a campaign to free Mooney, who gained support from labor activists when he was imprisoned for allegedly throwing a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade in 1916.^[20] Unlike Eugene V. Debs, Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and some other socialists,^[21] he did not publicly oppose the United States's entry into World War I.^[22] He helped sell war bonds in 1918, as did many other labor advocates, including Mother Jones.^[23] However, Foster biographer Edward P. Johanningsmeier speculates that he married Abramowitz in 1918 to avoid conscription.^[24]

In 1917, Foster and the CFL turned their attention to Chicago's meat-packing industry.^[25] Unions had tried to organize the packinghouses for decades before World War I. The Knights of Labor led organizing drives among these workers in the early 1880s,^[26] and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen made gains among the industry's many diverse ethnic groups in the first decade of the 20th century.^[27] By 1904, however, union activity in the packinghouses of the Union Stock Yards had declined.^[28]

With America's entry into the World War I, the demand for meat increased tremendously while conscription and the near standstill of immigration from Europe led to labor shortages that improved workers' collective bargaining power.^[29] In addition, the federal government had an interest in maintaining production unimpeded and avoiding the disruption that a packinghouse workers' strike would entail.^[30] Before the CFL could organize these workers, it had to resolve the competing claims of the various unions that represented different segments of the industry.^[31]

Due to their ethnic and racial diversity and the high percentage of unskilled workers among them, Foster believed that organizing stockyards workers on an industrial rather than craft basis was crucial.^[32] Instead of founding a new organization to do this, Foster and the CFL planned to create a Stockyards Labor Council (SLC). Like the recently formed railroad federations, the SLC would unite all interested unions into a single body with the ability to organize the industry as a whole.^[31] Foster obtained the endorsement of his union, the Railway Carmen, for this plan, and then took the proposal to Local 87 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters, who supported it. He obtained the CFL's approval on July 15, 1917.^[33]

The SLC was formed a week later with representatives from many crafts, including machinists, electricians, carpenters, coopers, office workers, steamfitters, engineers, railway carmen, and firemen. While this body lacked the authority to negotiate grievances or propose wage scales for all the workers in the industry, it operated under a single, united executive board and employed a single, unified group of business agents and organizers. This "infused [the] whole movement with the spirit of industrial unionism" according to Foster, who was elected secretary of the council.^[34]

Another factor posed a serious obstacle to organizing packinghouse workers. As part of the Great Migration, thousands of Black Americans from the Southern United States migrated to Chicago, with many going to work in the packinghouses.^[35] Tensions were high between Black and white workers.^[36] Many of the unions in the SLC excluded Black Americans from membership, either overtly or covertly, and Black workers were wary of these unions.^[37] Meanwhile, white workers viewed Black workers as potential strikebreakers after many were employed as such during a 1904 strike.^[38] As a compromise, to give Black workers an alternative to discriminatory craft unions, the SLC offered membership in segregated, majority-Black, AFL-affiliated locals.^[39] Many Black workers were unsatisfied with this compromise, ultimately dropping out of these segregated locals.^[36] The same pattern of division prevailed among immigrant workers, who were organized along linguistic and ethnic lines.^[40]

Under these conditions, with the support of more militant union officials and rank-and-file workers, Foster pushed the unions toward a strike, arguing that conditions were ideal.^[41] While he faced opposition from more conservative union officials, he secured the votes for a strike in the fall of 1917.^[42] Fearing the effects of an impending strike, and with workers pushing the federal government to seize the packinghouses, the Wilson administration pressured the employers to agree to arbitration about wages and hours. The arbitration board, led by Judge Samuel Alschuler, ordered the companies to institute the eight-hour day, overtime pay, and paid lunches and holidays.^[43] Workers also received significant wage increases.^[44] This empowered the unions, and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters' membership doubled in the following months.^[30]

These gains proved short-lived. Real wages began to decline, and further arbitration from Alschuler in 1919 yielded only small wage increases, denying workers' demands for double-time overtime pay, a forty-hour workweek, and the abolition of piece rates at railroad car shops.^[45] Then, in July 1919, the drowning of a Black boy on the lakefront ignited a "race riot", with much of the violence taking place near the packinghouses. The SLC called on white unionists to protect their Black counterparts, but after arsonists attacked a Lithuanian neighborhood, rumors spread that the vengeful Black people were responsible. Tensions reached a boiling point. While the union was able to avert outright violence between workers, locals began to defect.^[46] Soon after the riots, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters tried to establish a competing labor council, District Council 9, breaking off relations with the SLC.^[47] A third council, the Mechanical Trades Council, also formed.^[48] By 1920, the SLC had collapsed.^[49] As soon as the arbitration agreement expired, employers cut wages, and after several failed strikes by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters, many workers switched to company unions.^[50]

While the packinghouse campaign was still underway, Foster turned his attention to another project: organizing steel workers.^[51] The problems here were even more complex. In addition to a history of failed strikes and deep ethnic divisions within the workforce, the steel mills were divided by skill level.^[52] The higher-paid, native-born skilled workers frequently looked down on their immigrant coworkers, who were often considered unskilled or semiskilled.^[53]

Foster proposed a similar strategy to his previous campaign but on a much larger scale: a mass union drive led by a federation of existing unions in every major steel production center.^[54] The goal would be to recruit enough workers that executives would be forced to negotiate.^[55] Fitzpatrick supported the project, and Foster presented the plan at the AFL's 1918 convention, which he attended as a representative of the Railway Carmen.^[56] The AFL's reception was tepid. It endorsed a special conference to create a committee to organize steel workers—the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers—but each constituent union contributed only US$100 to the committee's upkeep, leaving the committee with much less than the $250,000 Foster estimated it needed.^[57] However, some unions did contribute organizers.^[58]

Without the funds to launch a truly national campaign, Foster sent organizers to the Chicago neighborhoods of South Chicago and Indiana Harbor and to areas around Chicago, such as Gary, Indiana, and Joliet, Illinois.^[58] The Chicago area was not, however, the heart of the steel industry. The Monongahela Valley was.^[59] By the time that Foster sent organizers to this area several months into the campaign, the 1918 flu epidemic had led the authorities to ban public meetings. The announcement of the armistice ending World War I also resulted in widespread layoffs at the mills as war-related orders were cancelled.^[60] Even so, the National Committee managed to sign up more than 100,000 steel workers by early 1919. In August 1919, a strike vote was taken. The result was almost unanimous in favor. When the steel companies refused to meet with union officials, 250,000 steelworkers went on strike on September 22.^[61]

The National Committee's organizing efforts had produced mixed results. It enrolled around 350,000 steelworkers during the course of the strike, finding the most success with immigrant workers. Higher-skilled, native-born workers gave the strike only lukewarm support. Black steelworkers gave it almost none in the Pittsburgh area and less-than-enthusiastic support elsewhere.^[62]

Authorities in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, responded to the strike by instituting a ban on public assemblies of three or more people, deputizing 5,000 vigilantes to enforce it. Violence ensued, and within 10 days, 14 people had been killed, all of them strikers or strike sympathizers. Throughout the strike, vigilantes clashed with strikers in the affected regions. At one point, a group of 40 expelled Foster from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, at gunpoint. Foster was also subpoenaed as part of an inquiry initiated by the United States Senate Committee on Education and Labor to study the causes of the strike. He was interrogated about his radical background and his pamphlet Syndicalism, and the report produced by the committee concluded that organized labor "must keep men who entertain and formulate un-American doctrines out of its ranks".^[63]

Foster spent most of his time raising money and organizing material assistance for strikers and their families.^[64] In the meantime, General Leonard Wood imposed martial law in Gary while authorities in Pennsylvania harassed strikers in the streets and broke up strike meetings wherever they could be found.^[65] By November, the strike was losing steam.^[66] While organizers tried to keep it going through December, it ended on January 8, 1920.^[67] Foster resigned from the National Committee in order to allow it to continue its work "with a clean slate".^[68]

After his resignation from the National Committee, Foster was at loose ends. He resigned from his position as a Brotherhood of Railway Carmen organizer but was blacklisted from other jobs on the railroad.^[69] He maintained his friendship with John Fitzpatrick and wrote a book analyzing the steel strike.^[70] He also founded the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL)^[b] in November 1920.^[71] That year, he led a TUEL speaking tour in 1920 on behalf of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a left-led union that had contributed $100,000 to support strikers during the steel strike.^[72]

Foster had contacts with several members of the newly-formed Communist Party of America but had not joined it after its split from the Socialist Party of America in 1919.^[73] During the steel strike, the party had denounced Foster as an opportunist and class collaborator, calling him "E.Z. Foster" for the accommodations he was willing to make with the AFL leadership.^[74] However, after the strike, Foster was brought within the party's orbit when Browder, now a Communist Party member, invited him to attend a conference of the Profintern in Moscow in 1921.^[75] There, he was appointed as a Profintern special representative in the United States, joining the Communist Party upon his return.^[76] The TUEL was later made an affiliate of the Profintern in 1923.^[75]

The TUEL, like the SLNA and ITUEL, sought to encourage the development of left activists within established unions, to unite those already there around a platform of industrial unionism, and to support the militant struggle for workers' rights.^[77] It took pains to avoid accusations of dual unionism. When the Profintern requested that the TUEL start building itself as a mass membership organization, Foster demurred. Fearing expulsion from the labor movement, he argued that the TUEL should remain a network of activists with no formal membership. The TUEL was strongest in Chicago, where Foster and Communist Party member Jack Johnstone were closely connected to Fitzpatrick and many other unionists who were involved in labor radicalism. It campaigned for union amalgamation, the abolition of capitalism, the creation of a Labor Party, and recognition of the Soviet Union.^[78]

The TUEL's first test was the Railway Shopmen's strike of 1922. It leafleted and picketed in areas of major strike activity, and Foster went on a speaking tour urging unionized workers to amalgamate. In Denver, Colorado, he was arrested by the Colorado Rangers and ejected from the state. The strike was defeated in September after the Hoover administration issued an injunction prohibiting assemblies near train stations, depots, shops, terminals, and yards. It also banned picketing and the distribution of leaflets aimed at discouraging strikebreaking.^[79]

The TUEL also intervened in the internal politics of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), where workers aligned with union organizer Alexander Howat struck against the orders of UMWA president John L. Lewis after Howat was imprisoned. Lewis responded by expelling all Howat supporters from the union in 1923. This sparked a conflict between Lewis supporters and Howat supporters, backed by the TUEL, which culminated in a clash at the UMWA's 1924 convention. While the Howat faction received considerable support, its demands—including the nationalization of the mines, a six-four workday, a five-day workweek, and Howat's reinstatement—were ultimately rejected.^[80] Howat and his supporters remained outside the union, but the TUEL remained an important organizing force for the union's anti-Lewis left. Foster and Howat remained on good terms.^[81]

In 1919, Fitzpatrick, with whom Foster had a close relationship, established the Farmer-Labor Party—a broad coalition of leftist radicals and progressives.^[82] By 1923, Fitzpatrick's party had garnered considerable support from the left flank of the labor movement. With Foster's support, some Communists were able to join the Farmer-Labor Party. However, in 1922, the Communist newspaper The Worker published a flattering article about Foster that identified him as a Communist. Fitzpatrick began to distance himself from Foster when his membership in the party became public knowledge.^[83]

At a meeting of the party's Central Executive Committee, Foster debated its approach to the Farmer-Labor Party with fellow party officials John Pepper and Charles Ruthenberg. Pepper hoped that the Communists would play a significant role in the new party, but Fitzpatrick had said they should "occupy a back seat in the affair". While Foster and Ruthenberg were afraid of alienating Fitzpatrick, Pepper insisted that the Communists try to pack the convention. His plan was approved by the committee, and Foster and Ruthenberg began working to execute it.^[84]

Foster had enough influence within the CFL to pack the convention with representatives of various organizations, many of which were fictitious. When the Communists appeared to have taken over this new party, Fitzpatrick walked out, later saying that the communists had "kill[ed]" the Farmer-Labor Party. Unionists spurned the new party, and miners' and needleworkers' unions also began to campaign against the TUEL.^[85] Against Foster's wishes and at Pepper's insistence, the party soon split with the popular Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party and repudiated its candidate for the 1924 United States presidential election, Robert M. La Follette.^[86] After a disastrous showing in the election, however, the Communist-led Farmer–Labor Party collapsed in every state but Illinois.^[87]

In the wake of the Farmer-Labor Party's collapse, the Communists became isolated from the labor movement, splitting into two factions: one led by Foster and James P. Cannon and another by Ruthenberg and activist Jay Lovestone.^[88] Each vied for control of the Workers Party of America, the Communist Party's primary front organization in the United States.^[c] The Ruthenberg-Lovestone faction argued that the Communists should continue trying to establish a labor party, while the Foster-Cannon faction considered the idea to be dead.^[91] Foster became the Workers Party chairman in 1923.^[92] Meanwhile, Pepper was recalled by the Comintern after the 1924 United States presidential election.^[93]

The Comintern was disturbed by the internecine struggles between the two camps, creating a "parity commission", chaired by Soviet official Sergey Ivanovich Gusev, to oversee the party's 1925 convention. The convention voted decisively to install Foster as chairman over his opponent, Benjamin Gitlow. However, on the final day, a telegram from the Comintern indicated that it supported Ruthenberg for leadership. Furious, Foster stormed out of the convention. Over the objections of his opponents and his ally Cannon, who characterized his actions as "disloyal", he tried to appeal to the Comintern to reverse its decision. He did not succeed, but he did obtain some concessions. His supporters were given control of the party's Trade Union Committee, and the Comintern recognized trade union work as the party's most important activity. Foster mistakenly believed that he had also obtained support for the TUEL to operate independently from the party, but in fact, the party took control of its operations, firing many of its members and moving its headquarters from Chicago to New York City.^[94]

The party's trade union work in this era met with mixed results. In 1926, a strike supported by the Communist-controlled New York Joint Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union ended with wage increases and a 5-day, 40-hour workweek.^[95] However, the core demand that shops stop "reorganizing" by firing workers once a year was not met.^[96] Critics of this settlement, such as Central Strike Committee Secretary Charles S. Zimmerman, argue that there were opportunities to settle the strike in terms more favorable to the workers but that Communist infighting caused leadership to prolong the strike in order to occupy a "revolutionary high ground". Meanwhile, Foster argued that socialist strike leaders intentionally undermined the strike by sabotaging the collection of stike funds and "spread[ing] defeatism" amongst workers.^[97] Researcher John Holmes, responding to Zimmerman's account, argues that "what looked to Zimmerman like factional meddling may have seemed to the activists at this meeting more like the will of the rank and file overriding vacillation at the top". He further argues that the strike leaders' unwillingness to work with Foster, who had more experience with strikes than they did, was one of the key factors that led to the unsatisfactory settlement.^[98]

That same year, the Communists led a textile workers' strike in Passaic, New Jersey. The strike began after Botany Mills instituted a 10% wage cut.^[99] When the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) refused to contest the cut, a group of workers formed the United Front Committee (UFC) to fight it.^[100] Foster and Ruthenberg argued about the best approach to the strike. When members of the UFC tried to collect union dues and issued membership cards, Foster objected, accusing them of trying to form a dual union. Meanwhile, Ruthenberg supported the move.^[101] The strike received considerable support from workers at Botany Mills and from sympathy strikers at other mills.^[102] However, employers refused to negotiate with the UFC, the Comintern issued a policy condemning dual unions, and after ten months, Foster and the Communist leadership ordered the UFC to hand over leadership of the strike to the UTW.^[103] The UTW did not pursue the strike aggressively, and when it ended on November 11, the workers had gained little.^[104]

Foster also played a significant role in John Brophy's campaign for leadership of the UMWA. Brophy, a UMWA leader in western Pennsylvania, ran against Lewis under the slogan "Save the Union".^[105] The vote tallies indicated a landslide victory for Lewis. While there was evidence of massive electoral fraud, Brophy and his allies chose not to contest the results. The "Save the Union" campaign continued, but it struggled after the vote. Miners who supported the campaign were threatened with expulsion, and Brophy lost his union position.^[106] However, it continued to advocate for workers. During the 1927 Indiana bituminous strike, it helped maintain the strike by running its own relief program separate from the union, taking over relief distribution from the UMWA in many towns.^[107]

The campaign was beginning to resemble a dual union, which Foster opposed.^[108] However, as signals from the Comintern indicated an impending change in policy during the Third Period, the American party was directed to abandon its work within the AFL and form separate revolutionary unions.^[109] Members of the party, including Earl Browder, began criticizing him for his reluctance to establish a dual union of miners. Brophy dropped out of the movement, believing that there was not sufficient support in the mining industry for a dual union. Without his support, the Communists founded the National Miners' Union to compete with the UMWA in 1928.^[110]

Ruthenberg died in 1927, died on March 2, 1927, and Lovestone, his longtime factional ally, took over his position as leader of the party.^[111] The factional fighting between the Foster and Lovestone groups continued but now became overshadowed by the larger struggle in the Soviet Union between Joseph Stalin and his opponents.^[112] An ostensible supporter of Joseph Stalin,^[d] Foster split with Cannon in 1928 and supported his former ally's expulsion for Trotskyism.^[114] When the party shifted to its Third Period line, Lovestone also fell out of favor. This was partly due to his support for Nikolai Bukharin, who was believed to represent a "right danger" to the party. As a result, Foster was made chairman of the party with the support of the Comintern at the party's March 1929 convention.^[115]

The Third Period line also called for creation of new, revolutionary unions outside the AFL. While Foster had always denounced dual unionism, he complied with the Comintern's directive, renaming the Trade Union Education League as the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). He and the party also followed the line by denouncing social democrats as "social fascists".^[116]

After the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)'s^[e] convention in 1930, Foster was arrested and charged, without evidence, with felony assault. Because of his subsequent imprisonment, he became increasingly disconnected from party activities.^[118] Despite this, he ran for Governor of New York on the Communist ticket that year.^[119]

Foster was nominated for president for the third time in 1932 (he had been nominated previously in 1924 and 1928), but he suffered a heart attack on the campaign trail and was forced to step down as leader of the party in favor of Earl Browder.^[120] Sent to the Soviet Union for treatment, Foster's condition only grew worse. A period followed in which Foster was separated from political activity.^[121]

Foster returned to politics late in 1935, but he became a more marginal figure in the party.^[122] In the meantime, a small-scale personality cult developed around Browder as he became a supporter of the New Deal and, to a lesser extent, the Roosevelt administration. Foster was critical of both.^[123] As a result, he became the "loyal opposition" to Browder within the CPUSA.^[124]

In 1944, believing that the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union would be permanent and that a Communist revolution was unlikely in the near future, Browder dissolved the CPUSA and replaced it with the Communist Political Association (CPA)—envisioned as a Marxist advocacy group within Roosevelt's New Deal coalition rather than a traditional Communist party.^[125] Foster opposed this move, but he initially opted not to openly challenge Browder out of fear that he would be expelled from the party. However, in 1945, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union became strained, and in January of that year, Foster drafted a letter to other American Communist leaders criticizing Browder's strategy.^[126]

Foster's letter subsequently influenced an article by Jacques Duclos, the leader of the French Communist Party. This article denounced Browder, arguing that his analysis represented a revisionist interpretation of Marxism. After the article's publication, American Communist leaders also criticized Browder, calling him a class traitor. At an emergency CPA convention in July 1945, the CPA was reconstituted as the CPUSA, Browder was expelled, and a new leadership consisting of Foster, Eugene Dennis, and John Williamson was elected.^[127]

The party campaigned vigorously for third-party candidate Henry A. Wallace in the 1948 United States presidential election. However, this effort failed to produce a viable Progressive Party, which was its aim, and Wallace suffered a major defeat.^[128] The failure of this campaign and the onset of the Cold War contributed to a disastrous situation for Communist-affiliated unions and union leaders within the CIO, many of which were expelled.^[129]

In 1948 Foster was among the party leaders indicted for subversive activity under the Smith Act,^[130] but, because of his precarious health, he was not brought to trial.^[2] The party began to implode as a result of these prosecutions. Many party leaders went underground after the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of the first tier of CPUSA leaders in United States v. Dennis, 341 U.S. 494 (1951).^[131] Foster also presided over a number of internal purges.^[132]

After Stalin's death and subsequent denunciation by Nikita Khrushchev at the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress, Foster joined Khrushchev in condemning the former Soviet leader.^[133] When, under Khrushchev's leadership, the Soviet Union intervened in Hungary, Foster opposed a party resolution criticizing the move. However, the intervention sparked the growth of a reform faction within the party. At the party's 1957 convention, this faction almost removed Foster from leadership. While he remained on the National Board and was appointed "chairman emeritus"—an honorary title—his health began to decline soon after.^[134] In 1960, he traveled to the Soviet Union for treatment. Gus Hall was made party leader in his absence.^[135]

Foster died on September 1, 1961, in Moscow.^[2] The Soviet Union gave him a state funeral in Red Square and Khrushchev personally headed the honor guard.^[136] His ashes were interred with John Reed and Bill Haywood.^[137] His book Toward Soviet America remains a favorite among American communists and has been continuously republished by both leftists and anti-communists, with the latter seeing it as scandalous. One edition of the book was published with the subtitle "The Book the Communists Tried to Destroy!"^{[citation needed]} Many biographies of Foster have been published by American academics and historians.^[138]

The founding documents of the Progressive Labor Party portrayed Foster as representing the best side of the Communist Party while blaming reformist and revisionist tendencies on Earl Browder. Many of the groups of the 1970s New Communist Movement eulogized and upheld Foster as an icon.^{[citation needed]} The American Party of Labor claims descent from Foster and his secretary and aide, Jack Shulman.^[139]

• Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937)
• Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950)
• Industrial Workers of the World
• The Communist Party and African-Americans
• History of the Communist Party in America
• American Communist Party
• Toward Soviet America
• From Bryan to Stalin

• Draper, Theodore, The Roots of American Communism, New York: Viking Press, 1957.
• Draper, Theodore, American Communism and Soviet Russia, 1960.
• Johanningsmeier, Edward P. "From Haymarket to Mao? The Radicalism of William Z. Foster." in Post-Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries, and Spies (2021): 65+.
• Johanningsmeier, Edward, "Philadelphia 'Skittereen' and William Z. Foster: The Childhood of an American Communist," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 117, no. 4 (October 1993), pp. 287–308. In JSTOR.
• Murray, Robert K. "Communism and the Great Steel Strike of 1919" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 38, No. 3. (Dec., 1951), pp. 445–66. JSTOR
• Pedersen, Vernon L. The communist party on the American waterfront: Revolution, reform, and the quest for power Lexington Books, 2019.
• Storch, Randi, Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928-35, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
• Turner, Victor W. The roots of American communism. Routledge, 2018.

• William Z. Foster Writings on Marxists Internet Archive.
• Trade Union Educational League documents found at the Marxist Internet Archive.
• The Trial of William Z. Foster PDF document by Robert Minor. The Liberator, v. 6, no. 4, whole no. 60 (April 1923), pp. 8–12.
• The Question of the Unorganized William Z. Foster. 1925
• Organizational Problems of Industrial Unionism William Z. Foster.
• The Radical Pamphlet Collection at the Library of Congress contains materials relating to the presidential campaign of William Z. Foster.
• Works by William Z. Foster at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Z. Foster at the Internet Archive
• Widespread industrial unrest was the talk of Labor Day 1920 - Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois newspaper)

Party political offices
Preceded by James P. Cannon	Chairman of the Communist Party USA 1924-1957	Succeeded by William L. Patterson
Preceded by —	Communist Party USA Presidential candidate 1924 (lost), 1928 (lost), 1932 (lost)	Succeeded by Earl Browder