#J139 Earl Browder, Founder of the Communist Party of America

Marc Jones does not have a time for Mr. Browder so we rectified it to 11:03 PM on May 20, 1891 in Wichita Kansas. This gives him the Ascendant of 17 Capricorn or “a boy surreptitiously bathing naked”. This suggests his irresistible desire to strip back to essentials and gain self-renewal by close intimacy with true archetype of the self. It tells of self-sacrifice to achieve a new dimensional persona. It works well for the day he was fired by the Communist Party of the USSR his ascendant had progressed to 18 Taurus and the 4th house showing how much of a blow to the ego, and payroll, this separation was to him.

What is most remarkable about Mr. Browder’s chart, is he is relatively rare configuration of Preponderance by Square that highlights his uncompromising belief in Communism and a tendency to have it envelope his whole life. He has 7 squares, that while a lot does not compare to Maestro Arturo Toscanini who had eleven. In both cases, this preponderance of the square aspect in their chart shows their dynamic individuality and ability to make a mark on the American political scene.

Who is Earl Browder?

Earl Browder was a labor union organizer in Wichita Kansas. He was so successful that he was spotted by the Communists and invited to come to the Soviet Union in 1926. Once there he met his wife, Raisa Irene Berkman, (born January 1, 1897) a Jewish lawyer from Leningrad, with whom he had so much in common it was almost kismet. They had two sons born in Moscow, Felix, in July 1927 and Andrew. Only their third, William was born in America in 1934. All three sons went on to head Ivy League mathematics departments.

Via Canada, the Browder’s settled in Yonkers, New York (on the outskirts of NYC) in 1933 which caused some turmoil twenty years later when the US Government wanted to deport her. However that happened, the Ruskies had convinced him to start up the American Communist Party and run for president. He did twice against FDR and garnered about 80,000 votes each time each focusing on the failings of capitalism to create the Great Depression.

He coined the slogan “Communism is 20th-century Americanism,” and ran against FDR in 1936, as well as his fellow Kansan, Alf Landon, the Republican nominee. Both lost in wide margins to Roosevelt. Nonetheless, Browder Roosevelt’s Vice President Henry Agard Wallace of nearby Iowa, who was of the same mind and between the two men and with some help from the Mrs as well, caused FDR’s political agenda to go leftward. Browder was such a sensation that he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1938, then a venerated US weekly, with the caption “Comrade Earl Browder.”

Alas things went south for Browder after that. In his 1940 campaign he denounced both Roosevelt and Wendell L. Willkie, the Republican candidate, as two tools of Wall Street and two warmongers. In 1941 after his third election win, FDR’s FBI arrested Browder for “passport violations” and he served four years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in George. As luck would have it, by the end of the year thanks to the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, Browder’s sentence was commuted by FDR.

After the War things did not get better. Browder was expelled from the Party in 1946 after an acrimonious debate because while “he participated in the working class movement and made contributions, he succumbed to the ideological pressures of monopoly capitalism.” The New York Times is probably right that Browder was cast out because Moscow abandoned its moderate policies in favor of a more sectarian (Browder welcomed Roman Catholics and other religious members) and revolutionary line. By September 15 1949, Browder was no longer on the Red payroll and had to close his Bryant Park office — see the yellow chart for details.

In the 1950’s he came back into the American limelight thanks to Sen. Joe McCarthy’s hearings on UnAmerican Activities.

We constantly update and vet our essays for thoroughness and accuracy. This one was reviewed on Saturday, July 20th, 2019.