The communists in the people's front, report delivered to the Plenary meeting of the Central committee of the Communist party, U.S.A. held June 17-20, 1937.

EARL BROWDER

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THE COMMUNISTS IN THE
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ALSO BY EARL BROWDER

The Results of the Elections and the People's

Front

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1

M

EARL BROWDER

THE COMMUNISTS

IN THE
PEOPLE'S FRONT

Report delivered to the Plenary Meet-
ing o£ the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, U.S.A., held June
17-20, 1937

New Steps in the United Front

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pity

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WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS

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z

Contents

PUBLISHED BY

WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, INC.

P. O. BOX 1 48, STA. D, NEW YORK CITY

JULY, I937

Introduction .... 7

I. Factors and Problems of the

Developing People's Front . 13

The Foundations of the Old Two-
Party System Shattered.

The Path of Struggle Before Us.

Thomas' " Super-Revolutionary "
Argument Against the People's
Front.

Sustained Attention to Develop-
ing the United Front.

II. The Trade Union Question

and the Fight for Unity . . 58

III. Let Us Broaden the Organ-
ized Struggle for Peace . . 77

IV. Building the Party and the
Daily Worker . 89

The Special Qualities of Bolshevik
Leadership.

Overcoming the Red Scare.

Marxist-Leninist Theory to Illum-
inate Our Political Work.

Our Approach to Special Strata
and Groups.

Let Us Extend the Circulation of
Our Press.

955

Introduction

The swift rise in activity of a broad
progressive and democratic move-
ment in the U.S.A, in which first place
is played by the Committee for Indus-
trial Organization and its organizing
drives realized, even soon than we
had thought, those perspectives which
we set at the December Plenum of our
Central Committee. This fact becomes
of major world importance in the set-
ting of the world struggle between the
forces of fascism and war on the one
hand, and those of democracy and
peace on the other, because it gives
grounds for belief that the U.S.A. can
be made one of the strongholds against
world reaction, along with the People's
Front movements in Fiance, Spain,
and China, and in cooperation with

the greatest fortress of progress, democ-
racy, and peace, the Soviet Union.

Reaction and fascism have received
a series of defeats which, if followed up
on a world scale, create the precondi-
tions for its downfall everywhere. The
smashing of the Trotskyite wrecking
and espionage agencies in the Soviet
Union, the halting of the fascist offen-
sive before Madrid, the inauguration
of the new Soviet Constitution— high
mark of democracy in world history—
the smashing of Mussolini's brigands
at Brihuega in March, the advance
toward a national anti-Japanese front
in China, the stamping out of the nest
of traitors in the Red Army in the
Soviet Union, the new cabinet con-
solidating the People's Front govern-
ment in Spain and its quick suppres-
sion of the counter-revolutionary Trot-
skyite insurrection— each of these ma-
jor developments was a body blow to
the fascist conspirators of the world.
Not the least important front in this

8

■

world struggle is the United States,
where it is upon our still numerically
small Party that responsibility rests
in the first place to ensure the halting
of the forces of reaction, fascism, and
war. These forces in the United States
are gathering, preparing a counter-
offensive against the rising movement
of the democratic elements in this
country.

The Central Committee Plenum,
meeting in the midst of events of
world-historical importance, both
abroad and at home, has the special
task of concentrating the attention of
our Party upon a few key questions,
which, through our correct and ener-
getic orientation, will place the Party
in a position to meet its responsibilities
most effectively in all fields. We have
chosen four such points of concentra-
tion: (i) the next tasks in building the
People's Front in the U.S.A.; (2) the
struggle for progressive industrial
unionism, and for labor unity; (3) or-

9

ganizing the mass movement for an
effective peace policy; and (4) build-
ing the Communist Party and the
Daily Worker.

To concentrate upon these key ques-
tions, it will be necessary for this re-
port to forego treatment of many of the
most important world questions, which
have been fully and correctly dealt
with by our brother Parties in other
lands, and by the speeches and articles
of our International leadership, in the
first place of Comrade Dimitroff, that
have been transmitted regularly
through the Daily Worker. There is
such complete proof in life of the cor-
rectness of this line, and such unani-
mous confidence and enthusiasm with-
in our Party for its international lead-
ership, that discussion is required in
this meeting only for clarifying the
application of the general line to the
changing situation and to the tasks
coming directly within our own hands.

A few words on the economic trend

and outlook may usefully preface a
direct examination of our problems of
concentration. The draft resolution
presented to you notes that "the eco-
nomic recovery, already approaching
pre-crisis levels, although showing in-
creasing signs of accumulating factors
making for another crash, is on the
whole continuing upward, and serves
to further stimulate the organization
and struggle of the workers." In this
brief formulation are all the chief eco-
nomic factors influencing our political
problems. We are not in a position to
estimate how long the upward trend of
economy will continue, whether the
next big change will come through
economic crisis of general war; or
would any useful purpose be achieved
by speculations on snch questions.
That increased production even above
1929 levels would still leave mass un-
employment as a permanent problem
is a fact accepted even by the Wash-
ington administration. Mounting ex-

10

1 1

rt - r — - RARY

IIDNIVERSI TY O-
Al

penditures for war preparations be-
come increasingly an economic factor,
even in the United States, where it is
proportionally the smallest among the
big capitalist powers. Rising prices and
living costs, always features of eco-
nomic recovery, are accentuated by the
increased influence of monopoly and
the world tendency to inflation, fur-
ther emphasizing the necessity for or-
ganization and struggle among the
masses whose living conditions are thus
undermined. The economic factors are
strengthening steadily the political
radicalization of the people.

12

i. Factors and Problems

of the Developing

People's Front

The movement for a Farmer-Labor
Party in the United States repre-
sents those same social and political
currents which in France and Spain
have been crystallized in the People's
Front.

Many are puzzled by an apparent
contradiction between the clearly es-
tablished growth of the People's Front

itiment in the United States, and
the slowing up of the organizational
i ealization of a national Farmer-Labor
Party. Some even begin to spin new
theories, to explain this contradiction,
thinking that the tempo of develop-

iii had been previously overesti-

Lted, or that the whole conception

13

955 i

of the Farmer-Labor Party has been
artificially forced upon a movement
which will take another direction in
real life. It is my opinion that we must
reject all such superficial theorizing,
that we must reaffirm the perspective
of a Farmer-Labor Party on a national
scale which has for the past two years
dominated the thought of the broad
camp of the Left in American politics.

It is necessary, however, to give the
gravest attention to the problem of the
slow rise of the Farmer-Labor organ-
ization. This is not something to be
dismissed. It must be analyzed and ex-
plained, and far-reaching conclusions
must be drawn affecting the immediate
tactical problems of the movement.

It may shock some persons to hear it
said that, far from overestimating the
tempo of development of the Farmer-
Labor movement, we seriously under-
estimated it. Actually the rise of the
new political current has been so great
that many eyes lost sight of the big

H

wave and were fastened instead on
some of the small ripples in the cur-
rent. It is precisely because of the ex-
ceptional breadth and speed of the
rise of the Farmer-Labor movement
l hat there has occurred what seems
like a pause in organizing the na-
tional Farmer-Labor Party.

Take, as a prime example, the emer-
gence of progressive industrial union-
ism as the dominant force among the
workers. Surely the sweep of the C.I.O.
has exceeded the expectations of most
people. And this movement is the es-
sential foundation and driving force
of any successful Farmer-Labor Party.
Its role is decisive, and becomes more
so every day. If the national Farmer-
Labor Party is not already in process
of organization, it is, first of all, be-
cause the C.I.O. is notVeady for such a
step, even though it is clearly moving
in that direction.

Can it be said that the present un-
willingness of the C.LO, to take the

*5

lead for a Farmer-Labor Party is a sign
of political backwardness? I think that
would be a false answer, one that
would distort most dangerously the
whole problem and create a false re-
lationship between the political van-
guard on the one hand and the leader-
ship of the great mass organizations on
the other. The leaders of the C.I.O.
have shown great alertness to the main
political problems of the day, and a
growing readiness to act upon these
problems, in which they faithfully re-
flect the rising political consciousness
of the masses whom they lead. The
C.I.O. has become, not only a great
force in economic life, but also simul-
taneously in politics. It expresses in all
fields a process which may be described
as the birth of the American working
class as an independent and conscious
force. Of course, it political role is far
from being fully developed; it is only
taking shape. But to describe this lack
of full maturity as "political back-

16

wardness" would lead to absurd and
dangerous errors. The essential fact is
the tremendous "forwardness" of the
mass movement and of its leaders, com-
pared to anything in our past history.

To what, then, must we turn to find
the reason for the reluctance of the
C.I.O. to step forward boldly toward a
national Farmer-Labor Party? We can
find the key to understand this, first,
in certain immediate practical con-
siderations, which, upon examination,
lead us, in turn, to a new tactical prob-
lem created by the unprecedented
scope and power of the mass movement
which requires us to learn from the
masses before we can teach them.

First, the immediate practical con-
siderations. The C.I.O. is already in
politics, with achievements which it
does not want to endanger by any hasty
and ill-considered moves. We can illus-
trate this by comparing the experience
of the steel workers in Pennsylvania,
where the C.I.O. is deeply in politics,

17

to the experience in Illinois, where it is
not. In both states there are Demo-
cratic Party administrations, both of
which supported Roosevelt in the 1936
elections. In Pennsylvania, when the
steel workers went on strike to force
recognition of the union from the in-
dependent steel companies (Jones &
Laughlin), the state administration
supported the workers, and the gov-
ernor went personally on the picket
line to be photographed by the news-
papers shaking hands with the pickets;
the strike was won in a few days. But in
Illinois the state administration and
the Chicago city administration
worked as auxiliaries of the steel cor-
porations, typified in the Memorial
Day massacre of pickets at the Repub-
lic plant, the most brazen anti-labor
blow struck in America lor many years.
An enormous gulf exists between these
two examples, both occurring under
the Mag of the Democratic Party.
Steel workers will not listen to any-

18

one who wants to deliver a lecture
proving that the state, as the executive
committee of the capitalist class, must
always be a strike-breaker until it is
taken over completely by the working
class; that therefore the apparent dif-
ference between Pennsylvania and
Illinois is a pure illusion; that the
workers should abandon their support
of the liberal Pennsylvania administra-
tion which they brought into power
and come out with their own Fanner-
Labor Party. Steel workers will answer
that while they may know little about
theory, they have learned on their own
skins the difference between a liberal
government with labor sympathies and
participation and an openly reaction-
ary one. They will waive all theoreti-
cal objections for the practical ad-
vantages of winning a few more strikes
and consolidating their unions. We
will be utterly unrealistic if we expect
a Farmer-Labor Party of serious con-
sequence in Pennsylvania until the

19

C.I.O. is convinced that such a party
will immediately exert as much politi-
cal power as the C.I.O. already exerts
through the Democratic Party. And,
further, in Illinois the first conclusion
of the main body of the steel workers
and miners to be drawn from the ex-
perience of the Republic massacre is
not to flock into the little Illinois
Labor Party, but to demand a liberal
overturn within the Democratic Party
on the lines of Pennsylvania.

In this example we have the imme-
diate practical considerations which
have determined that the C.I.O. work
in the political field for the immediate
future on the lines of Labor's Non-
partisan League and not of a new
Farmer-Labor Party.

Every proponent of the Farmer-
Labor Party, whether he likes it or not,
is forced to recognize this stubborn
lact. The masses will change from this
position, not at the call of a small po-
litical vanguard, but ony through their

20

own experience, which furnishes
"round for the teaching of the van-
guard.

Let us now for a moment examine
a situation where the C.I.O. has not as
yet been so decisive, where the move-
ment is rising but is more hetero-
geneous, namely, the State of Wash-
ington. Last year a broad progressive-
liberal-labor movement arose in that
siate under the name of the Common-
wealth Federation. Many of us thought

is movement was immediately des-
tined to come out as a state Farmer-
Labor Party. It chose* however, to
work through the Democratic Party,
and it gained immediately such results
1 hat only the peculiar Washington bal-
lot, which enabled reactionary Repub-
licans to vote for reactionary
1 )emocrats in the primaries, prevented
the Commonwealth Federation from
getting a measure of control of the
Mate administration. As a result of its

perience, the Commonwealth Fcd-

21

oration is less inclined now than before
the 1936 elections to launch a new
party.

In these examples are expressed a
general tendency throughout the
country to strengthen the line of
Labor's Non-Partisan League against
that of the immediate formation of the
national Farmer-Labor Party. Two
factors in this development deserve a
deeper examination. First is the ex-
treme and growing legal obstacles in
the various states to the launching of
a new party (in Illinois this goes to the
extreme of arbitrarily ruling off parties
in violation of the law and without re-
dress from the courts, while in Florida
this even results in legally excluding
the Republican Party from the ballot).
Second is the primary election, where-
by the governmental machinery of
elections is the medium of selecting the
candidates of the major parties, and
even to some extent the official party
committees, providing a mechanism

through which the masses can and do
influence these parties when they are
aroused with sufficient breadth and in-
tensity.

The present role and future poten-
tialities of these two peculiarities of
the American electoral system, the dif-
ficulties of getting new parties on the
ballot and the possibilities of work in
the direct primaries, have been insuf-
ficiently considered and studied by
the vanguard of political radicalism
in the United States. Both are being
intensified by the present currents in
political life. Everyone who wants to
influence the political actions of mil-
lions in the immediate future will have
to take these factors increasingly into
account.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OLD
TWO-PARTY SYSTEM SHATTERED

For generations in America it has
been an unquestioned axiom of politi-

22

23

cal radicalism that progress begins with
the organizational break with the old
two-party system. The Republican
and Democratic Parties were Tweddle-
dum and Tweedledee, the Gold-Dust
Twins of Wall Street. So long as the
traditional party structure remained
intact, that axiom was valid. The old
two-party system, based upon regional
interests of the main sectors of the
bourgeoisie, accentuated by the federal
structure based on forty-eight sover-
eign states and the incomplete national
unification of the country, effectively
prevented the class division among the
population from intruding its influ-
ence in a dominating way into the
upper reaches of the political life of
the country. That axiom is no longer
valid, because the foundation of the
old two-party system was shattered by
the crisis. The Gold-Dust Twins are
dead. In their place there emerge the
clear outlines of two new parties, carry-
ing over much debris of the old, but

24

representing something new— a politi-
cal alignment dominated, not by re-
gional differences among the bour-
geoisie, but by class stratification
among the masses of the population.
There is no longer any fixed party
structure in our land. Everything is in
flux. Everything is changing. Every in-
dividual, every group is in motion,
trying with more or less success to find
its correct position in the realignment,
the dominant feature of which is class
alignment.

It is in the light of this larger view of
the political scene that we must esti-
mate all the immediate factors and
problems of the Farmer-Labor Party.
I cannot take the time here to repeat
all the evidence that validates this re-
orientation toward the,whole political
situation in the United States. For the
main features of this you must reread
my report to the December session of
the Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party, published as a pamphlet

2 5

under the title of The Results of the
Elections and the People's Front,*

Now we are at the point where more
far-reaching conclusions must be
drawn from our estimate that the
whole country, the main mass of the
population, is engaged in a fundamen-
tal political re-grouping.

The Farmer-Labor Party, conceived
as the American equivalent of the
People's Front in France, is taking
shape and growing within the womb
of the disintegrating two old parties.
It will be born as a national party at
the moment when it already replaces
in the main one of the old traditional
parties, contesting and possibly win-
ning control of the federal government
from the hour of its birth. What par-
ticular name the caprice of history may
baptize it with is immaterial to us.
This new party that is beginning to
take shape before our eyes, involving

* Published by Workers Library Publishers,
New York. 10 cents.

26

;t majority of the population, is what
we Communists have in mind when we
speak of a national Farmer-Labor
Party, the American expression of the
People's Front.

In the light of this understanding,
much of the underbrush which ob-
scures a clear view of the political
forest is cleared away, or at least we
rise above it. To turn to a new meta-
phor, we can say that the wavelets of
the relatively small Farmer-Labor
Party movements are only apparently
falling, that in reality they are merg-
ing with a great tidal wave of complete
reconstruction of American politics.
That apparent paradox, with which we
began our examination, the contradic-
t ion of a rising movement and a reces-
sion of the minority attempts at estab-
lishing a Farmer-Labor Party, is para-
doxically resolved into a higher unity.

If this view is approximately and
substantially correct, as we maintain,
it follows that all subordinate ques-

27

lions of tactics of organization, of re-
lations between various groupings and
individuals, require a substantial over-
hauling and re-evaluation; that they
must all be adjusted to the great his-
torical process which is going on
around us, in which we are living fac-
tors, and to which it is our special role
to give consciousness, self-understand-
ing, and sustained guidance. The de-
velopment of the People's Front can
proceed only along the line of combin-
ing the existing Farmer-Labor Party
forms with the simultaneously devel-
oping progressive movements inside
the Democratic Party (in some locali-
ties also the Republican Party), in the
elections as well as in all other expres-
sions of political and economic mass
movements.

These are the main considerations
that determine all the chief issues of
the day involved in establishing a full
guarantee against the victory of fas-
cism in America. These considerations

28

determine the form of the broadest
i niggle for the maintenance of democ-
racy and its extension. Their deter-
mining force must be equally great for
all those whose chief aim for America
is socialism, a new society without ex-
I • loitation of man by man and without
(lasses. The fullest defense of even the
limited and undeveloped democracy
of today in America, and of its best
Emits in the cultural and material
Status of the population, coincides
fully with the most direct and least
difficult path to socialism.

Does this broadening out of the ap-
proach to building the People's Front
change in any fundamental way our
conception of the Farmer-Labor Party
as we elaborated it during and after the
Seventh World Congress? No, it does
not. The prospects of realizing the na-
tional Farmer-Labor Party as a major
party in the country are better than
we saw before, but this speeding up of
developments certainly does not call

29

for any fundamental change in our
whole conception. The changes needed
are tactical, in the field of methods and
approach, above all by a broadening
out to wider horizons.

In Minnesota, the Farmer-Labor
Party, by now the major party con-
trolling the state, found it necessary
already in 1936 to establish this broad
approach to the national situation.
The Progressive Party in Wisconsin
has, on the whole, the same orienta-
tion, although it is not so mature as
the Minnesota party. The Washington
movement is rapidly catching up with
these two vanguard states. It is where
the Farmer-Labor Party organizations
are still decisively minority groupings,
especially where the C.I.O. unions are
a major factor in the region, that a tac-
tical reorientation is required.

Insofar as the mass trade unions and
other progressive groups are moving
in the direction of a People's Front
platform, but are not yet ready to join

30

in the Farmer-Labor Party, the Farmer-
Labor Party forces should move to-
ward a common political front with
i hem. They should encourage them to
systematic and organized activity with-
in the Democratic Party (in some
places, the Republican Party), making
the fullest possible use of the demo-
cratic possibilities of the primary elec-
tion machinery to name decisively
anti-fascist and progressive candidates,
and formulating a clear program of
progressive social and labor legislation.
The broad forces available for such
movements have already been dis-
closed in the state conferences for so-
cial and labor legislation, held in
about twenty states since our Decem-
ber Plenum. They are also revealed in
the moving of the class forces towards
the municipal elections now in prepa-
ration throughout the country, out-
standingly we know in New York, in
Detroit, in Cleveland, in Akron, and
in many other cities, where the pos-

sibility already exists for a People's
Front ticket.

Where the progressive forces gain
the nomination of candidates and de-
termine their platforms, there the
Farmer-Labor Party minority forces,
including the Communists and other
Left-wing elements, can and must sup-
port such candidates in the elections.

In the municipal elections in prepa-
ration this year throughout the coun-
try, there must be a decided effort to-
ward achieving such a common front
of all progressive and truly democratic
forces. What occurs in these municipal
elections may well become a deciding
influence upon the course of the Con-
gressional elections that take place
everywhere in 1938.

THE PATH OF STRUGGLE BEFORE US

There must, of course, be no illu-
sions that thereby we are entering
upon a broad, smooth highway with a
downhill course, on which we must

32

only coast to our destination. This
policy is taking us on a path of strug-
gle, more complicated and in many
ways more difficult, with greater dan-
gers along the way than any we have
ever traveled before. Every inch of the
road will be contested by the enemy,
and by the inertia of the past. The
complications of the daily problems
will be multiplied. From all those who
are influenced by Trotskyism and op-
position in principle to the People's
Front, there will come a chorus of
super-revolutionary wails about our
betrayal of the class struggle, etc. But
we, and with us all the best forces of
the labor and people's movements, by
a decisive course, and by constant vigi-
lance, will prove the correctness of this
policy in life, by its achievements in
the organization of the masses and the
improvement of their position in all
respects.

Not everywhere will the success of
the People's Front forces be uniform

33

or immediate. Where the efforts to
achieve such a common front fail, or
where its ticket loses in the primaries,
the very effort which failed must al-
ready have laid the foundation for the
fullest possible use of independent
tickets, Farmer-Labor tickets, and even
of individual independent candida-
cies, to register the growing progres-
sive forces in the elections. And where
even this proves impossible, the Com-
munist Party may put up its own can-
didates. The governing consideration
in each case must be— to secure the
most rapid and permanent growth and
unity among the forces making for the
People's Front, and at all costs not to
let the reactionary forces monopolize
the elections. In this connection it has
been shown innumerable times what
constitutes the organizing center of the
enemies that we have to fight. It is that
small group recently popularized as
the economic royalists that dominate
the United States, otherwise known as

34

the upper "400," also identified as
Gerard's list of 59 rulers of America.

This group is hostile to the national
1 1 1 1 crests, it is they who equip the po-
Lential enemies of America with mili-
tary supplies— their huge shipments of
steel, scrap iron, gunpowder, and mili-
tary equipment to Japan. All of our
work in driving towards the People's
Front must be directed towards iden-
tifying these enemies, giving concrete
names and addresses, nationally and in
every locality. We must make a thor-
ough survey of who these economic
royalists are and identify them before
the masses in the local elections, in the
I (reparations for the Congressional
elections, in the whole drive towards
1 he People's Front in America.

Confusionists and enemies of the
People's Front will try to turn the
discussion of this tactic around the
question of what should be the attitude
toward "the Democratic Party." But
the Democratic Party is not a unity

35

which can be so discussed with any
value at all. In the main this party is
moving in a progressive direction,
though very unevenly, under the in-
fluence of large desertions of its Right-
wing leadership and upper-class sup-
porters, and its growing support from
the oppressed classes— that process
which we call a "regrouping of classes."
Thus, there is being formed within the
formal limits of the Democratic Party
a progressive wing; this wing embraces
growing sections and strata of the
party and its organizations. In a few
cases, not yet many, these democratic
progressive forces already come close
to the People's Front movement. In
their majority they will be allies of the
working class in this movement in the
near future. Strong reactionary forces
within the Democratic Party fight this
process tooth and nail. Others reflect
it only in a distorted way, in parts, and
with hesitations and relapses.
It is necessary to distinguish clearly

§6

between these conflicting forces, to
have a sharply different attitude to
each, to encourage the progressive ele-
ments and their proposals, to criticize
the unclear and hesitating ones, and
i ( i fight uncompromisingly against the
reactionaries. With such an approach,
there is no question of any uniform
attitude toward "the Democratic
Party," considered as a whole. We
Communists have, for example, criti-
cized with full sharpness such harmful
policies of the Roosevelt administra-
tion as it retrenchment on relief, its
failure to shift the tax burdens to the
rich, and its shameful capitulation to
the reactionaries on the Spanish ques-
tion. At the same time we support all
measures and proposals which have a
progressive character (such as the
wages, hours bill; the reform of the
Supreme Court; and the inquiry on
rich tax-dodgers), everything which
promotes the democratic rights and
economic interests of the mass of the

3

people, which is directed against reac-
tion, fascism, and war. In this way we
will exert the strongest influence upon
the masses, and through the masses in-
fluence the reconstruction of the
political life of the country now go-
ing on.

The issue between Roosevelt and the
reactionary coalition opposing him,
the issue of the relation of the national
to the state governments, is of far-
reaching significance. As against the re-
actionaries we are, of course, support-
ing the Roosevelt course of more power
to the federal government to deal with
national questions. But the issue is very
narrowly posed, as yet, between the
two major groupings. For us this issue
is much deeper and more far-reaching.
That this issue can exist at all is a sign
of the incomplete national unification
of the country. The American bour-
geoisie was never able fully to unite
our country into one nation; it com-
promised with all sorts of localisms

38

and particularisms which divide the
people. These divisions, originating
under the influence of pre-capitalist
forces (slavery, landlordism, colonial-
ism), have now been taken over by the
upper bourgeoisie as its strongholds
in the fight against the people. That is
why the Republican Party, originally
a party of national unity, has been
iransformed into the party of localism
against the nation.

This setting of the locality against
the nation, the part against the whole,
is used to paralyze all efforts at social
legislation, and to prevent further de-
mocratization. Only by fuller, more
complete national unification can the
economic problems of the masses be
even approached; only thus can effec-
live democracy be established.
Through breaking down the judicial
dictatorship and by setting up a na-
i ional electoral system that guarantees
in life the rights of citizenship, prom-
ised in the Constitution, can we abolish

39

all restrictions on the franchise and
provide direct and proportional rep-
resentation in each state. It is toward
this more complete conception of na-
tional unity that we Communists must
direct the thought of the broad peo-
ple's movement. In doing this we will
continue under the conditions of today
that democratic work begun by Wash-
ington, Jefferson, and Paine, and con-
tinued by Lincoln. We Communists
must become known as the most ener-
getic champions of the full national
unification of our country.

Upon this foundation we will direct
our influence within the people's move-
ment in the formulating of its pro-
gram. That program arises out of the
life of the masses; its character was
fully indicated in the electoral pro-
gram of the Communist Party in the
presidential elections; it was further
detailed in the state conferences for
social and labor legislation. It is a pro-
gressive and democratic program capa-

40

ble of uniting in the near future the
majority of the population.

THOMAS' "SUPER-REVOLUTIONARY"
ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE

people's FRONT

Here let us turn our attention again
for a moment to the arguments of those
who oppose the People's Front on sup-
posedly "revolutionary" ground. Our
friend Norman Thomas, for example,
has just returned from a few weeks in
Europe, where he spent a week or
1 hereabouts in England, in the Soviet
Union, in Scandinavia, in Spain, and
in France. Such a trip should be highly
educational, especially since it was re-
inforced by a fascist bomb dropping a
I mndred yards from his hotel in Va-
icia. Still he brought back most of his
judices intact, unshaken by what he
\- and heard or by that bomb. We
must be thankful for small gains; so
it must be recorded that Thomas did
understand, and so declared, that the

41

Trotskyite uprising in Barcelona was
a crime. He said on June 10 (at the
Hippodrome meeting), that "to con-
done this uprising is to aid fascism
today." So far, so good. We can only
hope that he will convince his party
that those who thus aid fascism should
not be allowed in its ranks. But how
stubbornly Thomas clings to the Trot-
skyite-inspired prejudice against the
People's Front which he took to
Europe with him! This is shown by
two more quotations from the same
speech: "I would not say that Popular
Fronts have aided education for so-
cialism " "By what transition do we

bridge the gap between the defensive
fight against fascism and the triumph
over capitalism?" At the same time
Thomas admits that the People's Front
has "stopped fascism."

In these quotations Thomas is re-
peating the same false contraposing of
two parts of the one task of the party
of socialism which marked the history

4 2

ul Trotsky's struggle against Lenin
from the foundations of the Russian
Bolshevik Party. Thomas has rejected
i lie poison-fruit of Trotskyism when it
appeared in the Barcelona uprising,
but he continues to defend the funda-
mental falsity upon which it was based.
Fascism, which threatens to bring all
Western Europe down in ruins; which
plots a war to destroy the country of
socialism, the Soviet Union; which is
already becoming a serious menace in
the United States; which wages every-
where a war of extermination against
all Socialists and against the labor
movement— the progress of this fascism
has been "stopped" by the People's
Front, according to Thomas' own ad-
mission, but still he can deny that the
People's Front which did the stopping
has aided education for socialism; he
still demands the immediate "transi-
tion" to socialism before he has even
decided to join the People's Front to
stop fascism.

43

The worst aspect of the doubts and
confusion of Thomas is that he has
never himself, in his own program-
matic pronouncements, faced the prob-
lem of "transition" to socialism. The
People's Front program is not social-
ism. It has the great merit of making
no pretensions to that effect. It is open-
ly and frankly a joint platform of non-
Sociaiists together with Socialists. But
the realization of this program creates
the most favorable conditions for gath-
ering and organizing the forces of so-
cialism. No one can seriously pretend
to fight for socialism, without fighting
stubbornly by all means to create those
most favorable conditions. But
Thomas wants the "transition" before
he will help create the conditions for it.
Friedrich Engels, confronted with a
similar demand from the Blanquists,*

* Sectarian, Utopian revolutionaries, follow-
ers of Auguste Blanqui, who lacked the faith
m the revolutionary capacities of the masses,
believing that revolutions arc made, under the
form of a coup d'etat, by a detachment of

44

exclaimed shortly after the experiences
of the Paris Commune: "What child-
ish naivete to put forward one's own
impatience as a theoretically convinc-
ing argument."

One may be permitted to suspect
that "super-revolutionary" arguments
here, as in past times, cover a disin-
clination to participate in the difficult
and arduous tasks of building a serious
revolutionary movement, and of
taking responsibilities upon one's
shoulders.

Since the foundation of scientific
socialism, all its greatest teachers have
been forced to struggle constantly
against the phrasemongers of the "no
compromise" school of thought, that
hallmark of petty-bourgeois radical-
ism. Every generation must continue
that struggle, for such empty bombast
is constantly being generated in the
minds of those who are unable or un-

professional conspirators in the interests of
the workers.— The Editors.

45

willing to learn from the past. The
great polemics of Marx and Engels had
to be supplemented by Lenin (as in
that great example, Left-Wing Com-
munism: An Infantile Disorder*)
while after Lenin it was necessary for
Stalin towage the epic struggle against
Trotskyism which refused "on prin-
ciple" to admit the possibility of "so-
cialism in one country," demanding
the whole world at once or nothing.

The People's Front, the defensive
gathering of all oppressed and suffer-
ing people against the most immediate
and general menace to their well-being,
is a conception inherent in all the
classic literature of scientific socialism.
Lenin gave it its central thought, as
long ago as 1902, in his magnificent
slogan: "The Social-Democrat's [the
revolutionary Socialist's or Commu-
nist's] ideal should not be a trade

* Published by International Publishers,
New York. 25 cents.

46

union secretary, but a tribune of the
people."

Certainly, we are not indifferent to
the problem of "transition" from a vic-
tory over fascism to victory over the
whole capitalist system, "transition" to
socialism. But the transition does not
come from empty slogans, disconnected
from everyday life. This transition
arises upon the basis of the growing
strength, organization, discipline,
fighting power, and understanding of
the working class, which gathers
around itself as allies all other op-
pressed strata of the population— a
working class which has learned how
10 meet in battle its worst enemies, to-
day the fascists and monopoly capi-
talists, and to defeat them on the im-
mediate issues of the day. It is not a
discouraged, defeated and demoralized
working class that will take up and
realize the great program of socialism;
it is the enthusiastic, victorious, and
organized workers who will move for-

47

ward from victories in the defensive
struggle to the offensive, and finally to
socialism. Every strong defense passes
insensibly to the offensive. To stop the
retreat means already to prepare the
advance. The defeat of fascism is the
first precondition for the victory of
socialism.

Norman Thomas and those who
think like him would reverse this
formulation; they would say that the
victory of socialism is the first precon-
dition for the defeat of fascism. Thus,
they would demand in the United
States that no one be admitted into
the anti-fascist front unless he first
commits himself to socialism. The
results of this in life were shown
in the elections, when Thomas by
this policy reduced the Socialist vote
to 20 per cent of the 1932 figure,
and to a fraction of Debs' vote of
32 years before, when the total
electorate was less than one-third of the
present. That road is surely not one of

48

ransition to socialism. I want to give
you a quotation from Lenin, and
recommend it to the attention of
Norman Thomas, from Left-Wing
Com?nunism. Lenin said:

"To tie one's hands beforehand, openly to
tell the enemy, who is now better armed than
we are, whether and when we shall fight him
is being stupid, not revolutionary. To accept
battle at a time when it is obviously advan-
tageous to the enemy and not to us is a crime;
and those politicians of the revolutionary class
1 are unable 'to maneuver, to compromise*
in order to avoid an obviously disadvantageous
battle are good for nothing."

When we reject the "extremism" of
►rman Thomas (an extremism in
>rds, we hasten to add, for we would
never accuse him of being extreme in
ds), we are not recommending him
to return to his former playmates of
the Old Guard with its opportunism in
l-iinciple and its compromise of the
1 y name of socialism. The choice is
t between Old Guardism and Trot-
skyism, as Thomas seems to think. It is

49

not even between Old Guardism and
the Communist position, although we
would be pleased to see Thomas come
closer to the position of Marxism. The
choice before the Socialist Party, which
has already left its Old Guard behind
forever, is whether it shall be disrupted
and disgraced by counter-revolution-
ary Trotskyism, or whether it shall pass
on to loyal and honorable cooperation
in a People's Front with all the pro-
gressive and democratic forces in the
country, and to collaboration with the
Communist Party in that front for
the common defense and advance of
socialism.

The Communist Party works on the
basis of the democratic People's Front
platform. But in no way do we lose
our own identity, or forget the task of
strengthening our Party's role in the
movement, as the most advanced and
revolutionary sector of it. Working in
the midst of the mass movement, the
Communist Party has the task of build-

5°

Ing itself into a mass party, of edu-
cating the masses in their final aims of
working class power and socialism, of
acting as vanguard in the movement
by pointing out the next steps in the
struggle, of initiating and supporting
the progressive and democratic de-
mands and movements. By its fully in-
dependent political position, in which
it speaks frankly on all issues, on all
groups and parties, in which it cri-
ticizes all measures and manifestations
that are harmful to the cause of de-
mocracy, our Communist Party shall
vigilantly guard itself against the dan-
ger of dissolving into the general mass
movement, both ideologically and or-
ganizationally. The Communist Party,
by becoming more and more the re-
cruiting center of the most advanced
elements of the movement, at the same
time becomes the initiative and or-
ganizing force.

Comrade Dimitroff thus summar-
izes this task:

5 1

working peo pIe g enerall ^ f" a " d of the

This role must be expressed in our
mass agnation, in independent activ-

J«fy WW. Such strengthening of
he lnitlatlve and ind ndem g

-ty of our Party wffl directly con-
mbute : to the successful development

of the People's Front. I„ turn, only the
most powerful development of the
people s mass movement can create the

avorable conditions for strengthening
the Communist Party.

We fully and completely reject all
ideas winch place the working class in
opposition to the other da* "groups,

c^Z^ZX^ United Front/ ' Th *

farmers, petty bourgeoisie, moving to-
ward the People's Front. Such ideas are
the basic stock-in-trade of the Trotsky-
ite disrupters and wreckers, but they
also influence many, especially among
the recently radicalized intellectuals,
who become the most ardent cham-
pions of the workers against the bour-
geoisie. This does not mean that we
leave out of sight the decisive leading
role of the workers. The main strategic
task of our Party is the economic and
political organization and unification
of the working class of the United
States. This is the basic, the most im-
portant, factor in the People's Front
for struggle against war and fascism.
Only the degree of accomplishing this
task measures the possibilities of the
broader People's Front.

SUSTAINED ATTENTION TO DEVELOPING
THE UNITED FRONT

From this angle we emphasize again
the need for sustained attention to

53

developing the proper relations with
the Socialist Party. We continue to call
our Party everywhere to active work in
establishing the united front with local
organizations and all honest elements
in the Socialist Party. We must help
them to clean their Socialist Party
ranks of all helpers of fascism, of
counter-revolutionary Trotskyism. We
bring forward the establishment of the
united front between the Socialist Par-
ty and Communist Party as one of the
most important prerequisites for unity
of the working class. Any underestima-
tion of this task can only be harmful
to the cause of working class unity.
Every district and locality of our Party
must give this task untiring attention.
This plenum must review the prob-
lems of the united front with the
Socialist Party which makes progress in
spite of all obstacles. A real upsurge of
the Socialist Party membership to
cleanse itself of Trotskyism is in the
making now. We must give it sympa-

54

thetic assistance. The latest events, in
which the Second International has
agreed to a conference with die Com-
munist International on the question
of aid to Spain, must serve as the
means to intensify and strengthen our
relations with the Socialists.

Among the manifold organized ex-
pressions of the growing moves toward
unity, the International Labor De-
fense is coming forward more and more
to an important role. Its historic vic-
tories in the De Jonge and Herndon
cases, the innumerable local victories
and instances of valuable local work,
i lie protracted battle for the Scottsboro
hoys, the strengthening of the Mooney-
Mllings campaign, the fight for Mc-
Namara, to mention only a few factors,
have really anchored the LL.D. firmly
in the affections of literally millions of
people. We tend to underestimate the
. nergetic help by the LL.D. to the steel
nikers. The aid of the I.L.D. to the
irikers, assaulted in the courts of

55

Chicago, as a sequel to the Memorial
Day massacre, was warmly received,
and shows how the I.L.D. everywhere
can rapidly become a major help to the
trade unions as well as the general pro-
gressive movement.

Unfortunately, we must say that the
Communists do not properly appreci-
ate the I.L.D. or the work it is doing
as keenly as the non-Communists.
The LL.D, is being mainly carried on
everywhere by the non-Communists,
which is very good on one side; but it
becomes very bad when these non-
Communists feel that we of the Com-
munist Party are not interested and not
helping them as we should. While help-
ing more and more to establish the
LL.D. as a united front defense and
solidarity organization overwhelming-
ly non-Communist, we must deem it
absolutely necessary that our Party
strengthen its help to the LL.D. which
in many places is shamefully neglected.
The Washington Conference of the

56

LL.D. now going on marks a big step
forward for this organization, and
must be widely popularized in the
Party ranks as well as among the
masses. Comrade Anna Damon, as
Acting Secretary of that organization,
has done really commendable work.
It must now be more energetically ex-
tended. The I.L.D.'s relations with all
organizations interested in civil rights
and help to victims of oppression must
be developed and consolidated as a
major task of our Party.

57

ii. The Trade Union

Question and the Fight

for Unity

In our December Plenum we al-
ready made a basic estimate of the
historic importance of the rise of the
Committee for Industrial Organiza-
tion under the leadership of John L.
Lewis. An estimate of the recent events
further emphasized this. We said:

"The fight for genuine trade union unity
is the fight for the triumph within the labor
movement of the principles enunciated and
supported in action by the Committee for
Industrial Organization. The establishment
of this principle is an absolute necessity for
the further growth, for the very existence,
finally, of the trade union movement. It is a
necessary condition for the preservation of
democracy in the United States, for the salva-
tion of our country from reaction, fascism, and
war. That is why we must say, without the

58

slightest equivocation, that die struggle to
realize the principles of the C.I.O. is the first
demand upon every progressive worker as
well as every revolutionary worker. It is the
Mruggle for the unity of the working class."*

The rise of the C.I.O. and the strug-
gles led by it fully justify us in adding
10 this basic estimate that the C.I.O.
marks the emerging of a conscious
working class in American life. This
I .ictor, the absence of which in the past
was the central factor in the slow ma-
nning of the basic political realign-
ments of the country, is of central im-
jinrtance in all fields, All the more de-
< isive is it, therefore, in its direct field
• if work, the economic organization
of the workers, especially in the basic
and mass production industries that
were so long the unchallenged strong-
hold of monopoly capital and political

reaction.
The shameful and stubborn resis-

* Earl Browder, The Results of the Elec-
tions and the People's Front, p. 37. Workers
Library Publishers, New York, 10 cents.

59

tance to this most progressive develop-
ment on che part of the Executive
Council of the American Federation of
Labor has now passed over to open
splitting all along the line, to strike-
breaking and sabotage, and to open
collaboration with the employers
against the C.LO.

It is the direct responsibility of Wil-
liam Green and the Executive Coun-
cil, against the stubborn opposition of
all progressive workers, that the unity
of the labor movement has been
broken, that there have appeared two
opposing centers of the labor move-
ment, one progressive, the other reac-
tionary. The attitude of the Commu-
nist Party has been at all times clear,
and remains so, to combat by all means
the splitting policy of the Executive
Council, to maintain the unity of the
trade unions and their councils, and
to support by all forces the organiza-
tion of millions of workers into the
unions of the C.I.O, as the main or-

60

mg

ganizing center of the American work-
class. We continue to give the

strictest attention to winning the A,
F, of L. unions to this position.

We Communists are a small, though
important, part of this great mass
movement. We are giving all our best
forces and mobilizing all our organiza-
1 ions to assist the work of the C.I.O. We
call upon the whole working class to
do the same. Efforts of the employers
to divide this movement by the old
familiar Red herring, which they at-
tempt to use even against Roosevelt,
have failed dismally. The leaders of
1 he C.I.O. have firmly taken their stand
on the basis of full utilization of all
progressive forces without exception,
and without discrimination as to po-
1 1 1 ical opinions outside the scope of the
tasks of the C.I.O. We can expect that
experience has confirmed them fully
in this stand, and that the loyal and
rlfective collaboration of the Commu-
nists has fully won our position as per-

61

manent collaborators in the great task
of building a powerful trade union
movement. Red baiting is becoming
less effective every day, and will soon
be recognized everywhere as the in-
fallible sign of the Liberty Leaguer and
the fascist.

The whole future of the movement
requires from all advanced and mili-
tant workers to consolidate this unity,
to win the confidence and trust of the
millions of workers being drawn into
it, by means of their loyal, effective,
and self-sacrificing devotion to its suc-
cess.

It is necessary to do everything to
help develop inner-union democracy
which will serve to promote to the
leading bodies of the unions the best,
most loyal, and capable elements,
which will provide the best guarantee
for the development of these unions
along policies of the class struggle.

Every Communist, from the Central
Committee to the units, should be en-

62

gaged every day in coming into close
and intimate contact with the new
militant and honest activists in the
trade unions, who are coming forward
by the hundreds and thousands. What
is needed here is the most comradely
and painstaking educational work, our
Party comrades learning from them
and in turn helping them in their
practical work, developing their class-
consciousness and political maturity,
giving them the benefit of the collect-
ive experience of the whole movement.
This must be the decisive dominating
feature of our Party's contacts and
work within the trade union move-
ment.

On the whole our Party is working
well along this line. But we must not
have the illusion that all is well every-
where and at all times. On occasion we
see developments which give rise to
great uneasiness, when comrades rush
into snap judgements on big questions
of trade union policy, consider that

63

I

the trade union leaders have been mis-
taken or have unnecessarily compro-
mised the workers 1 demands, and from
this conclusion pass immediately into
a head-on collision with those leaders
and those workers who follow them.
There were dangerous moments of this
sort in the Detroit district in connec-
tion with the Chrysler strike. We gave
unstinted recognition to the work of
our Party forces in that strike. They
did excellent work. But we must speak
openly of some mistakes. We must
speak openly of this, as a lesson to the
entire Party to avoid such dangers. We
are a fully responsible Party, and our
sub-divisions and fractions do not in-
dependently take any actions which
threaten to change our whole national
relationship with a great and growing
mass movement. As it happens, in this
particular instance, some comrades
were entirely in error in thinking they
saw intolerable compromises and
wrong methods in the settlement of

64

the Chrysler strike. There was no situ-
ation of that kind. There was merely
ccondary problem of the impatience
of certain leaders in dealing with the
rank and file. But even if their fears
had more solid foundation, it was
necessary to proceed with much more
tact, foresight, and consideration in
establishing an attitude toward such
questions. We do not attempt to esti-
mate such difficult and complicated

I I ade union problems by ourselves, in
isolation; but only on the basis of the
fullest and frankest discussion with our
1 omrades-in-arms of the general trade
union activities, on the basis of trade
union democracy.

Our country is now in the midst of
;i rising wave of battles for the rights
of labor organization and collective
bargaining, such as has never been

in before. The course of this cam-
paign will be decisive for the whole

I II lure of labor and of our country.
Our attitude and our work in the

65

midst of this struggle must be the most
sober and responsible.

Labor generally, including us Com-
munists who approach this question
with our own standards, have every
reason to proceed totheparticular tasks
and problems facing us, with great
confidence in the strategical line of the
C.I.O. leadership and of John L. Lewis.
The incident of the Chrysler strike il-
lustrates and emphasizes this fact. That
was one of the preparatory battles lead-
ing up to the great campaign in which
we are now engaged. If we should ap-
proach that or any other individual
conflict by itself, isolated from the gen-
eral course of events, trying to judge it
from an ideal picture of what we would
like to see and not what the relation of
forces requires in the whole national
set-up, then we would have a distorted
view which would inevitably bring
serious errors in its train. The strategy
of the C.I.O. has proved itself in life
to be basically sound and correct. We

66

find that it coincides with what we in-
dependently estimated as correct stra-
tegy. There is plenty of room for
legitimate differences of opinion on
detailed tactics and execution; but it
is not our business to fall into any ten-
dency of sniping on non-essential ques-
tions, and thereby contribute to
creating an atmosphere of fault-finding
and bickering. The whole line of the
Communist Party has been, must re-
main, and must become universal, one
of confidence and wholehearted colla-
boration in the work with all the re-
sponsible leading elements and with
the rank-and-file activists who make up
the core of this great historical move-
ment of the C.I.O. An example of the
opposite approach to this question is
the tendency of the Socialist Party,
under the influence of the Trotskyites,
more and more to isolate the Socialists
in the trade union movement. I just
received this morning a trade union
resolution that was put through at the

6 7

Socialist Party Convention in the State
of Massachusetts on the trade union
question. Let me read it to you as a
horrible example of what we should
avoid in the trade union line. The reso-
lution says:

"The party must seek to inoculate the
workers against reliance on the reactionary
trade union bureaucracy. It must be remem-
bered that the officials of the CIO. cannot
be relied upon to provide correct leadership
for the progressive forces in the trade unions.
It is only through accident of history that
John L. Lewis and his associates appear tem-
porarily as nominal representatives of the pro-
gressive forces by advocating what is at present
progressive policies. This accident is not at all
permanent. We must understand that this
bureaucracy is dedicated above all to the
maintenance of capitalism and the suppression
of the revolutionary development of the labor
movement."

The great battles to unionize steel
are the very center of American life
today. In these battles there is being
fought out the destiny of our country,
of our democracy. So long as the reac-

68

tionary steel barons, those prototypes
of the economic royalists, these twen-
tieth-century feudalists, can defy the
law that confirms the right of collect-
ive bargaining, can maintain their own
armies and arsenals and subordinate
the local authorities and police, can
recruit and arm fascist vigilante bands
—all to smash by force and violence the
simple demands for organization and
collective contracts in the steel indus-
try—just so long is every civil and po-
litical liberty in permanent and immi-
nent danger in America. This struggle
is not a simple trade union struggle of
the steel workers. It is a battle of all
progressive and democratic people to
insure the future of democracy in
America. It is among our tasks to mobi-
lize all such people around and in
support of the steel strike.

To what lengths of fascist despera-
tion the steel barons are prepared to
go was illustrated in Chicago in the
Memorial Day massacre. The police

69

and armed guards simply opened fire
upon an unarmed procession of steel
pickets marching with their wives and
children. The list of the dead is now
nine, with hundreds wounded, includ-
ing women and children. The spirit
which prepared those guns and gave
the order to fire is exactly the same as
that of the barbarities of Franco in
Spain, of Italian submarines sinking
Spanish boats, of Nazi battleships bom-
barding Almeria, of Hitler's airplanes
destroying Guernica. The steel barons
are rousing, organizing, and financing
all the anti-social, criminal, under-
world elements, and are fusing them
with the reactionary adventurers from
the bourgeoisie in that amalgam typ-
ical of fascism the world over.

To the support of the steel workers
in their battle all the living forces of
democracy in America today must
therefore be rallied. The whole popu-
lation must be roused and organized
as allies and helpers. Every assistance

70

must be given to the efforts of the
C.I.O. leaders to bring reserves into
.»( Lion, in the coal and ore fields, and
in transportation. All workers' organ-
1 nations of every kind must make their
voices heard and their hands felt in
jupport of the steel workers. Every
1 I mrch and civic organization must be
urged to speak up and act against the
hiwless royalists of steel. The steel
workers are fighting the battle of the
people; a people's movement must
come to the support.

Great responsibilities lie upon the
Communist Party in this fight. We are
1 small party, but we play a great and
growing role. What we think, what we
say, and especially what we do, have an
influence a hundredfold, five hundred-
fold, beyond our membership. Large
strata of the population guide them-
selves by what they see our Party doing.
If we sit back and leave the task to
others, many of these others will con-
dude that if the Communists do not

7 1

find this important, then they also can
safely pass the matter up for other
things. Our example is a big and grow-
ing influence among broad masses. We
must set a good and better example in
the steel industry today.

At our last Plenum we spoke of the
C.l.O. as bearing the future of the la-
bor movement. Today we can already
speak of it as realizing it. The C.l.O,
not only embraces the most important
sectors of organized labor, but is al-
ready the absolute numerical majority.
The sweep of the unorganized into the
C.l.O. has been joined, since the Ex-
ecutive Council of the A, F. of L.
issued its final splitting orders, by
a sweep of former A. F. of L. unions
into C.l.O. ranks. During the past
six weeks alone, through the direct
influence of our Party's careful and
systematic preparations for this event,
unions involving over half a million
members have decided, with a unanim-
ity which has astounded the reaction-

's

aries, to move over into the C.l.O.
( imp, which is now in every sense the
chief representative of organized labor.
This complete support which we are
giving the C.l.O. does not contradict
or change our fundamental line in the
fight for unity of the trade union move-
ment. On the contrary, only through
such support does the unification of
the labor movement become a practical
task. We continue uncompromising
opposition to all the splitting efforts
of 1 he American Federation of Labor
Executive Council, whether of sepa-
rate national unions, of locals, of city
Or state federations. Where splits are
carried through in spite of all, we con-
tinue to help to consolidate all ex-
jh lied unions, and continue the fight
lor unity and for realizing the C.l.O.
1 >i ganizing program, striving to win the
\- F. of L. locals to support and par-
1 U ipation in that fight. We will never
t case to demand the unification of the
American trade union movement.

73

With the Executive Council carry-
ing through its splitting work, the
question will arise of the convocation
of a unity congress. To such a congress,
when the time comes, all unions should
be invited— C.I.O. and A. F. of L., as
well as those unaffiliated to either. To
such a congress let all come who stand
for unity and solidarity. As for those
who refuse unity, they only place them-
selves thereby outside the movement;
but the unity congress should expel
no organization of workers and should
stand against expulsions and splits, but
for the unification of the trade unions
into a single federation. Our position
on the question of unity is clear. We
want everyone to know it. We hope it
will help to influence the course of
events toward the widest possible uni-
fication on the basis of progressive in-
dustrial unionism.

In connection with the trade union
questions, the problems of the unem-
ployed and of their organizations, the

74

Workers Alliance, continues to hold a
y important place. I shall not speak
of the problerns facing the Workers
Alliance and its Convention which
« '| >ens next weekend in Milwaukee. We
shall have a special report to this Ple-
num on this question. I shall now
ak about organizing the mass strug-
for peace.

7.i

III. Let Us Broaden the

Organized Struggle

for Peace

Two days ago came the news that
the Second International has agreed
to meet with the Communist Interna-
tional to discuss united action on be-
half of Spain. This is a belated recog-
nition of almost universal sentiment
among the workers everywhere de-
manding a common front and common
action, if peace is to be preserved, if
Spanish and world democracy are to
be protected against the murderous
assaults of fascism. How stubbornly
the leaders of the Second International
resisted this demand for a united front
is a measure of the energy with which
this demand must be pushed now, if

the negotiations are to result in real
unity of action. It is a step forward,
wever, even to have such discussions,
and this can be made the occasion for a
new effort toward broadening the or-
: mized struggle for peace also in the
"ni ted States.

Since our December Plenum the la-
bor and progressive movement in the
United States has proved its solidarity
with Spanish democracy by sending
■<>oo of its best representatives to
Spam in the famous Lincoln Battalion
to take their place in the front
lines. Several hundred of our xom-
les have given their lives or suf-
1 1 I ed major casualties. The Lincoln
Battalion has stood in the most serious
battle, has held trenches for four
months without relief, has been trans-
turned into a unit of seasoned vete-
rans, has been a model of discipline
ftnd political morale-in short, it has
written a glorious page in the history
Of American democracy, of which we

77

can all justly be proud. And not the
least source of our pride is the fact that
over sixty per cent of the Lincoln Bat-
talion members are members of the
Communist Party, There is now being
organized among the Americans in
Spain a second, the George Washing-
ton, battalion.

All the more must we who remain
on the American front redouble our
efforts for Spain, which means for de-
mocracy and peace everywhere. The
work of the North American Com-
mittee for Support to Spanish Democ-
racy must be increased and made more
efficient; the Medical Bureau must be
helped to enlist ever wider support.
The Friends of the Lincoln Battalion
must provide more of those little neces-
sities and comforts for our boys in
Spain, and popularize much wider the
knowledge of their heroic deeds. The
campaign for support to the Spanish
children's homes in France and Spain
must be organized on the broad scale

78

that this issue demands, really in-
volving the American people and rais-
ing millions of dollars.

Above all, we must rouse the con-
science of America to the crimes of
fascism in Spain. It is an indelible blot
of shame upon our country that our
government rushed to apply the in-
famous "neutrality" law to martyred
Spain; but when German and Italian
warships openly bombard Spanish
cities and sink Spanish ships we sud-
denly find that it would be "interven-
tion 1 ' to apply the same law to the
fascist murderers. We can never rest
until that shameful blot is wiped out.
America must not be allowed to act
the role of the accomplice of fascist
murder and destruction.

More serious attention must now be
turned toward the broader problem of
organizing the overwhelming peace
sentiment of Americans into a mass
struggle for peace for an effective peace

79

policy on the part of the United States
government.

The most serious effort in this direc-
tion is the American League Against
War and Fascism, which has three to
four million adherents. This impor-
tant beginning must be supported and
strengthened in every way. The Amer-
ican League is now planning its Fourth
Congress to be held in Pittsburgh on
the Thanksgiving weekend, toward
the end of November. The months
leading up to this Congress must wit-
ness the strengthening of the Ameri-
can League, the rallying of new forces
to it, the enlistment of the best active
workers, the revival of local League
Councils, the rallying especially of the
trade unions, the establishment of rela-
tions with other peace organizations,
the widening of the circulation of the
League's excellent magazine. The
Fight, a magazine which is unique in
the whole world for its quality and
effectiveness— effectiveness largely due

80

10

1 he high quality of the work of its
editor, Joseph Pass, and his ability to
organize the widest cooperative efforts
in its production. The American
I .(ague is composed, in its active mem-

s hip— some 8,000-9,000— of fully go
pel cent non-Communists, which is a
Very good thing, except that there has
been a distinct falling off of the sup-
port given to the League in an organ-
ized way by the Communist Party in
the districts— a defect that must be
• hanged. We demand of every state
and city organization of the Party that
ii shall seriously discuss and act upon
i he problem of giving practical help
I forces to the American League,
especially in the coming months before
Fourth Congress.

The problem which we set for our-

Ives, and toward which we worked
1 1 1 the American League and elsewhere,
1 how to embrace the majority of the
American people, who sincerely desire
peace, into an effective movement to

81

end. This problem, in the first
place, is how to break up the false con-
ception of isolation and neutrality as
the road to peace. It is the problem of
preparing the masses for active collabo-
ration with the peace forces of the
whole world upon a real international
peace policy.

We have been given intimations of a
policy of peace by the Washington ad-
ministration, notably by Roosevelt and
Hull, in the Buenos Aires Conference.
But these are nullified in practice by
Congress and the State Department.
The reactionary camp is able to
manipulate the very peace sentiments
of the masses to reactionary and war-
supporting ends, through the neutral-
ity slogan, applied to Spain but not to
the fascist invaders of Spain.

The false neutrality policy, despite
its appearance of strength, is in a crisis.
It is under heavy criticism from many
sides. There is growing recognition
that it is unrealizable, that its at-

82

lompted application makes more for
war than peace. But there is as yet no
generally accepted alternative clear
policy of peace. The chief task in or-
ganizing a mass struggle for peace is to
secure the general acceptance of such
an alternative policy.

This cannot be achieved by a head-
on collision with the existing mass
prejudices against the League of Na-
tions, although it must be explained
1 hat the present League is not what it
once was, that the present League can
and must be used for the cause of peace
and democracy. But the United States

outside the League of Nations, and
to advocate its entry is unrealistic.

There is, however, an established
Eeature of American foreign policy,

ainst which there is no mass preju-
dice, which provides an effective peace

1 1 icy without the obstacles presented

by the League of Nations. This is the

so-called Kellogg Pact, the Kellogg-

iand Pact, the Pact of Paris, signed

85

by more than 50 nations on the initia-
tive of the United States, outlawing
the use of war as an instrument of na-
tional policy. With provisions for im-
plementing the Kellogg Pact in the
international relations of the United
States, a full program of international
collaboration of the peace forces of the
world would be given. Upon the de-
mand for such a policy the broadest
peace movement can be built. The
basis made possible a policy along the
following lines we proposed in our
Party's Legislative Letter at the time
the Legislative bill was before Con-
gress. We stated then that an effective
peace policy for the United States
could be worked out on the basis of
established covenants already signed
between the United States and the rest
of the world, by a law with the follow-
ing simple points:

"1. Require that the President shall take
notice when any nation signatory to the

84

logg Pact shall violate the provisions of
thai pact by making war, whether officially
lared or not, and shall call it to the atten-
n of Congress

That when the violation of this treaty

1 the United States is established, an em-

bargo shall be placed against all economic

uuisactions with the guilty power until the

;icssion is stopped and reparation made;

"3. That any government, not itself an

1 essor in violation of the Kellogg Pact, but

•uilfcring from an attack by enemies from

iiin or without, shall not be hindered in its

rinuance of normal commercial relations

1I1 the United States;

"4. That a violator of the Kellogg Pact
nhould be considered to be that state which
|i 1 he first to declare war upon another state;
'.vhich uses its armed land, naval, or air
forces, with or without a declaration of war,
to mvade the territory, or to attack the vessels,
10 blockade the ports of another state;
"5. That a state should also be considered
ih. aggressor, in violation of the Kellogg Pact,
en it gives support to armed parties or
In lions engaged in insurrection against the
d< mocratically established government of an-
Other nation;

"6. That in accordance with the principles
l.i id down in the Buenos Aires Conference,
Ihe United States shall consult with other

85

counLries in case of war or the imminent

danger of war/'

All efforts must be turned in this
direction of merging the movement of
the American people for peace together
with the international movement,
against the instigators of war-which
means German and Italian fascism and
the Japanese militarists— and toward
the creation of a united front of the
democratic states against fascist ag-
gressors.

We must use every event in the in-
ternational field, especially the fascist
invasion of Spain and the Japanese
intervention in the Far East, for prov-
ing the true nature of the neutrality
policy as an aid to fascism, as leading
to war, as driving America with the
whole world toward a new world war.
We must arouse the masses to the na-
ture of the work of agents of German,
Italian, and Spanish fascism in Amer- 1
ica, and stimulate an effective demand
for the expulsion of these rats.

86

This movement for an effective
peace policy must penetrate into every
mass organization. Strangely enough,
< unetimes our comrades think that in
our peace movement we should go into
i he trade unions that are under reac-
lionary leadership and fight to win
these unions to our program, but that
in a union which is under Left and
( ommunist leadership, we don't need
to do anything about itl We therefore
often have this strange picture of
unions far away from us becoming ac-
live in the American League, but of
unions very close to us paying no atten-
non to it whatever. Why is this? Be-
use we don't understand that this
peace movement must involve the
membership of every organization. It
means nothing to us so far as building
B mass peace movement is concerned
1 1 the leaders of the movement give
nlherence to this program, if they do
nothing to involve their membership
in it. We must get every mass organ-

8 7

ization, every trade union, every
church, every lodge, every peace group;
and these must be given organizational
form in the American League Against
War and Fascism and its coming na-
tional congress in November. If, with
certain organizations, this is not pos-
sible, let these then be brought into
cooperative relations with the League.

S8

IV. Building the Party
iind the Daily Worker

The essential instrument for carry-
ing out every task is our own Party
organization and its main mouthpiece,
the Daily Worker and Sunday Worker.
What is the organizational condition
Of our Party? Are its methods of work

isfactory? What is happening in the
recruitment of new members and in

panding the circulation of the Daily
Worker} Here we must say very sharply
i hat all is not well. A most serious situ-
ation exists in the slow growth of the
membership and, for a time, until the
last weeks, even a decline in the circu-
lation of the Daily Worker and Sunday
[ Vorker.

This situation is particularly alarm-
ing because it arises in a period of

89

1

greatest activity of the workers, the
growth of the responsibility and influ-
ence of our Party as a result of its high-
ly successful activities. A frank recog-
nition of this intolerable situation is
the first condition for remedying it.
As I said in February, in the special
conference that we held to awaken the
Party to this question, our Party elabo-
rated certain measures required for
remedying this situation. We must
mention, especially, the decisions of
the Ninth Convention of our Party,
of our last Plenum in December, and of
the special Party conference on this
problem in February. With favorable
conditions among the masses, with the
Party already armed with adequate
policies, the answer to this serious con-
dition therefore must be found, first
of all, in the fact that the Party leader-
ship and the Party organizations do
not give adequate, systematic, and con-
stant attention to those tasks. This
work is systematically neglected. Only

90

since the February conference do we
see some sign of a serious turn to this
question throughout the Party.

This beginning is still entirely in-
sufficient. Without the thorough solu-
tion of this problem the Party cannot
move forward and perform the grow-
ing tasks with which it is faced.

The problem of Party growth is,
first, to recruit increasing numbers of
new members and, second, to keep
them actively engaged in Party work
so that they will not drop out after a
few weeks or months.

Does a favorable situation exist for
recruiting? Unquestionably, yes. Con-
ditions have never been so favorable.
The potential members around our
Party are tenfold the number a few
years ago. They feel our Party as a
guiding force more than they ever did
before. Our Party's authority among
them has never been so high. Only
these potential members do not receive
from the Party that final impetus

9 1

I

which carried them over the line that
separates sympathizers from Party
members. The Party members, units,
committees, and fractions are not con-
scious of their tasks as recruiting agents
for the Party. It is a very serious step
for an individual to join the Commu-
nist Party. Such a serious event does
not take place spontaneously or auto-
matically. It only takes place when it
is prepared and organized by the con-
scious work of our Party and its
members.

Who must solve this problem? The
entire Party without exception, from
the units to the Central Committee.
The problems must be concretely ex-
amined in each place and everywhere.
All the imagination and initiative of
the members must be brought into play
to find the concrete solution. No
formula worked out here can fit the
thousand variations of the problem.
The Central Committee can give only
a general guidance, stimulate the

92

Party,

encourage its initiative. The
whole Party must be creatively engaged
in finding the practical solution.

How must we work? Team-work,
plans, check-up, and control, with
socialist competition— these are the
means that must be used to organize
the initiative and enthusiasm of the
members, and direct their efforts to
definite goals. Without resorting to as-
signment of quotas from above, which
is too mechanical, and will not work,
we must stimulate every unit and frac-
tion of the Party to set for itself a defi-
nite number of new members which
it engages to recruit within a definite
time. This should not be the assign-
ment of quotas. It should be the volun-
tary assumption of a task of a decision
of the unit itself.

How shall the old members intro-
duce the new ones into Party work?
First of all, the old members must
abandon all airs of superiority, all
remnants of that attitude of the old

93

priest who is initiating a novice into
the mysteries of a religion. If the old
members want to educate the new ones
—and they should want to— they must
begin by learning from the new mem-
bers. We shall not keep our new mem-
bers unless we wipe out all traces of
arrogance and know-it-all snobbish-
ness in our approach to them. Any
trace of that will only drive them out
of the Party faster than we can recruit
them. Modesty is demanded from old
members especially. We can forgive
new members for lacking this essential
quality of Bolshevik modesty, we can-
not forgive the old ones. The first task
of the Party is to teach its members
modesty. The relations of old and new
members must be those of teacher and
pupil on both sides, not teacher on the
one side and pupil on the other. It is
the new members who often have the
most to contribute in this combination.
In this connection, how often we
find that units composed of old mem-

94

bers have learned that "it can't be
done," learned it so thoroughly, that
it requires a unit of new members to
ime along and show in practice that
it can be done. In such cases it would
be just too bad if the old members had
caught the new ones in time to "edu-
cate" them in their higher wisdom of
passivity. This is especially true in re-
gard to recruiting. New members re-
cruit ten times as much as the old ones.
It is especially our old members who
need education in recruiting, and the
new members can educate them best.
How to assign work to new mem-
bers? Two widely-prevailing errors
must be avoided. First, there is the
error of mechanically loading up the
new members with a dozen tasks of a
purely routine and mechanical charac-
ter, monopolizing his free time with-
out giving him anything that engages
his interest or gives play to his initia-
tive. That means to drive the new
members away, away from the whole

95

Party's life. Secondly, there is the
error of neglecting the new member
and giving him no part at all in the
Party life, or so little that he is not
drawn into this life and absorbed by it.
That means to allow him to drift
away from the Party. The new mem-
ber should be officially welcomed into
the Party; made to feel at home as an
equal among equals, given his share of
the wort and of the responsibility; and
given attention to engage his special
knowledge, his special abilities or his
special contacts, to advance the Party
tasks in such a way that he can see his
own contribution.

How to assist the new members in
their tasks in the trade unions or other
mass organizations? This is a most
vital question. How many thousands of
cases we have found of sympathizers of
many years' standing who, when asked
why they do not join the Party which
they follow so faithfully, answer that
they are afraid the unit discipline and

96

work assignments might destroy their
effective work in the trade unions or
other mass organizations where they
find cooperation with the Party so
valuable in their work. In order to be
able to continue cooperation with the
Party they stay outside of it. What does
that mean? The first task of a Party
unit in relation to a new member is
to learn to make use of, not to hinder
or destroy, his connections in all kinds
of mass organizations. The greatest
crime that can be committed against
the Party is to restrict the mass activi-
ties of the new members. The Party
unit must find the way to help the new
member in this respect, but never on
any account put any obstacles in his
way.

THE SPECIAL QUALITIES OF BOLSHEVIK
LEADERSHIP

How shall we develop the leading
role of higher committees and the sec-

97

1

and district secretaries? Leader-
ship is an art which every Communist
Party member must learn; but he must
learn the special qualities of Bolshevik
leadership. Weaknesses in leadership
inevitably reflect themselves in poor
and weak inner-Party life, weak re-
cruiting, and loss of members. Exam-
ining the work of our district and sec-
tion secretaries, for example, we find
two wrong methods appearing time
and time again. One is the method of
the "strong man" who goes into his
committee with his mind already made
up on everything without consultation,
brushes aside all discussion except by
"yes-men" on the committee; who does
not even bother to take a vote on dis-
puted questions, but asserts his "higher
authority" over the committee; who
achieves unity of direction by what
could be called intellectual "strong-
arm" methods, the overriding of all
critical examination of his proposals.
The other wrong method is just the op-

98

posite; here there is plenty of freedom
of discussion, but it is not directed
toward welding together a real unity
of opinion, so that every one goes out
of the committee not with a united
opinion but with exactly the views he
brought in; divergencies are not ironed
out, every one goes his own way, and
the iron unity of a Communist Party
gradually disappears in a swamp of
unrelated individual approaches to
different questions. Neither of these
methods has anything in common with
the Bolshevik conception of leader-
ship; this is always collective, the gath-
ering and welding together of the va-
ried and supplementing qualifications
of many individuals, the aiming of
each one of them with the strength of
all others, the elimination from each
of his weak points, the development
of self-criticism and mutual criticism
as a system and method, and thereby
the multiplication of the leading
powers of the Party, a thousandfold

99

over that which any individual, even
a genius, is capable of giving.

Occasionally we still find examples,
though they are now rare, of leading
committees being allowed to lapse into
inactivity, their places being taken by
the individual "strong comrades" who
assume all the duties of the committee,
and, so far from calling the committee
together, actually discourage it from
meeting. We were recently shocked to
learn that in one of our most impor-
tant districts, in a period of a great
strike struggle in which the Party was
very active, and did very good work in
some respects, the District Bureau had
not met for six weeks. Comrades, has
that happened in your district? I am
looking around for guilty faces. We
were doubly shocked to learn that the
District Secretary had not found time
to make a political report on these rich
experiences for his membership. We
were triply shocked to learn that this
Secretary had found time, however, to

. 100

travel several hundred miles to report
to another district. With such methods,
comrades, surely the Party will not be
built. We must have responsible and
collective leadership; without that it
is no use talking about recruiting. We
are a Bolshevik Party.

How shall we select, train, and pro-
mote new leading personnel? In this
matter we still have many abuses in our
methods of work. We find districts
where this question is the personal
property of a single leading comrade,
instead of the collective work of the
leading committees with the partici-
pation of the membership. We usually
find in such places the complaint of
shortage of forces, everybody at hand,
we find, is "no good" for one reason or
another. Personal caprice means dis-
aster to the direction of the work. In-
dividuals are pushed from one post to
another with no regard to their own
interests or the opinions of those with
whom they must work. All such carry-

101

overs from the system of capitalist fac-
tory management or from bourgeois
political life must be combated and
eliminated from our methods of work,
if we want to build the Communist
Party.

OVERCOMING THE RED SCARE

How shall we dissipate the Red scare
from among the Reds? It is a fact that
much of our weakness in recruiting is
due to the Red scare, not among the
workers but among our own comrades,
specially some of those recently
emerged as mass leaders. Some of these
comrades hide as a shameful secret
their Communist opinion and affili-
ations; they hysterically beg the Party
to keep as far away from their work as
possible. It must be admitted that very
often this is only a wrong answer to cer-
tain wrong methods of work on the
part of the Party and the fault is not al-
ways on the part of the comrade who

102

has the Red scare; perhaps the Party
has created the Red scare by wrong
methods of work, or some of its leading
people have brought it about. This
often happens by making excessive de-
mands and mechanical assignment of
tasks, by an inconsiderate approach to
the problems of the mass organizations
—the idea, for example, that mass or-
ganization problems can be settled off-
hand in the Party office by a decision
of the Party organizer. It is such things
that create the Red scare among the
comrades. On the basis of a careful
and considerate approach to the prob-
lems of the individual leading com-
rades and their mass organizations, we
must now begin to demand more from
such comrades on behalf of the Party,
We must work out with them how to
"legalize" the position of the Commu-
nists as known Communists, and how
to make their prestige contribute to the
growth and authority of their Party-
how to make the authority of the Party

103

trengthen their position as mass lead-
ers. This can be done with full effec-
tiveness only when the Party helps in
a decisive way to solve the problems
of such comrades, and the problems of
their organizations.

All these questions involved in Party
growth are detailed aspects of the de-
velopment of a healthy inner-Party
democracy. We can already say that the
Party has learned much in this respect.
We are without question the most
democratic organization in the United
States; there is no other organization
o£ forty to fifty thousand members
which has even a small fraction of that
active participation in the decisive
questions by the entire membership as
we have. But from the viewpoint of
what we should be, to realize our vast
opportunities of growth, we are only
beginning. We must, above all, learn
in this respect from our great brother
Party of the Soviet Union. We must
learn especially from Comrade Stalin's

104

speech and summary at the March
Plenum of the Central Committee of
the C.P.S.U.* This will greatly help to
raise the initiative and activity of our
lower organizations; stimulate and
promote healthy self-criticism; and
bring forward new, reliable, trusted
and capable comrades into the leading
work. We must make ours also the
slogan of Mastering Bolshevism, which
Comrade Stalin raised. If this is neces-
sary for the great Party of Lenin and
Stalin how much more necessary it is
for us. And if we must have political
alertness to see the influence of the
enemies in the Soviet Union, after al-
most 20 years of Soviet power, if we
have to remember that in the Soviet
Union there is capitalist encirclement,
how much more in America do we have
to remember, not our capitalist encir-
clement, but our capitalist environ-
ment in every respect. We must bring

* Joseph Stalin, Mastering Bolshevism,
Workers Library Publishers, N. Y. 5 cents.

105

I

these lessons to our Party and apply
under our conditions the Stalin slogan,
Mastering Bolshevism.

MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY TO ILLUMIN-
ATE OUR POLITICAL WORK

Our practical work must be more
illuminated by the theory of Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Stalin, those great-
est educators of the people known to
history, the leaders of the realization of
socialism. This can be achieved only
by systematic educational work, edu-
cation for the masses, and especially
intensified education for the most re-
sponsible leading people.

Education must become a charac-
teristic feature of all Party life. The
process of education must be continu-
ous, never-ending. It begins with self-
study and self-education in which the
individual organizes his own system-
atic course of reading in connection
with his practical work. The process of
education is the process of transforma-

106

tion to higher capacities; the sloughing
off from the past of everything that
hinders this development; the radical
reconstruction of the human personal-
ity; the ruthless searching out of every
bad influence of the past in one's po-
litical and personal life, the burning
out of such influences with a red-hot
iron, and their replacement, with the
living contact of the constantly grow-
ing Bolshevik. That is what we mean
by education; not just the mechanical
learning of repeated formulas, not the
accumulation of a body of knowledge;
but the reconstruction of the individ-
ual from the bottom up, his transform-
ation into an entirely new and different
kind of human being. This under-
standing of education must be created
throughout our Party. The process of
education, beginning with the con-
scious activity of the individual, is con-
tinued by every responsible worker
establishing an educational contact
with one or more others for some joint

107

work in this field, with periodical joint
discussions on related questions, even
if only across the lunch table or while
waiting for meetings to open. Every
responsible worker roust at all costs
conduct such systematic mastering of
the current problems of world and na-
tional politics, buttressed by reading of
the classics of socialism.

Such joint work should be planned,
not left to chance, and should be con-
tinuous, as much as possible, with the
same persons. Such educational prepa-
rations should immediately be re-
flected in the improved quality of unit
discussions, speeches in mass organiza-
tions and street meetings, leaflet prepa-
ration, shop bulletins, and all expres-
sions of mass educational work. Study
classes should be planned and organ-
ized, which bring larger groups to-
gether, through the medium of units,
fractions, section committees, meeting
in homes or available meeting rcoms.
The question of systematic educational

108

work should be raised in every union,
and the demand made for its organ-
ization as an integral part of the union
life. It must be organized as a part of
the union life and the union appara-
tus. The most important field of mass
education is today the unions of the
C.I.O- In the I.W.O. and similar
bodies, the p:esent neglect of educa-
tional work of high quality should be
overcome by creating an irresistible de-
mand for it. All these measures will lay
the basis for lifting the whole ideologi-
cal level of the daily life of the move-
ment, and for raising higher the Party
training schools, district and national,
to which the Party is now going to give
major attention.

In the selection of students for the
full-time training schools, our districts
have in the past proceeded on the prin-
ciple of choosing "those who can be
spared." In the future that rule must
be abolished. It is precisely "those who
cannot be spared" that we are going to

109

choose; for we do not want anybody
who can be spared. The Central Com-
mittee has been too weak in capitulat-
ing before "practical" consideration in
the districts on this question. Our latest
National Training School, with its six
month course for sixty people, proved
its enormous value to the whole Party;
but it would have been much stronger
if the districts had taken the selection
of students in a more serious manner.
The training schools are the "heavy
industry" sector of our educational
work; they produce the means of pro-
duction in this field. You know what
happens in industry if all sources are
thrown into the production of con-
sumption goods? It means production
itself dies. Neglect of our training
schools gives us exactly the same re-
sults. We can only expand our mass
work and improve its quality by the
most serious attention to the selection
of our best material for the training
schools. These schools are not for be-

110

ginners; they are for the leading per-
sonnel of the Party.

In all the work of building the Party,
concentration upon the most impor-
tant points, the decisive factories and
industries, must be used to produce
examples which by socialist emulation
shall set the standard for the whole
Party- We have good examples and bad
ones. We have such contrasts as the
following: the auto industry, the regu-
lar functioning of an auto unit in
Cleveland during the strike resulted
in its growth by fourfold and in the
strengthening of its ties with the
masses; in Flint we witnessed the cessa-
tion of unit meetings during the strike,
and the consequent lack of its growth
and the weakening of its mass ties.
In spite of good union work, good
union work will not replace the work
of the Party unit. We have the same
sort of contrasts in steel; we have it as
between districts and within districts;
examples of good and bad. In our dis-

111

cussions here, every comrade should
oive us a picture of good and bad ex-
amples within his direct experience,
and thereby enrich our understanding
of the best methods to be encouraged
and the worst ones to be combated.
The main industrial centers are the
first points of concentration, with key
plants chosen for special attention.
From this basis we must now more and
more systematically take up the ques-
tion o£ spreading our organization into
every small industrial city and town,
hundreds of which have not yet a single
Party unit. We must discover the in-
dustrial hinterland of America long
neglected by us, which the C.I.O. is
opening up with such dramatic sweep,
bring the breath of democracy into the
stifling atmosphere of the company
towns, where our units could not live

before.

Our Party must be more alert to

take up every new issue that stirs the
masses. At this moment in hundreds
of cities the swift rise of the cost of

112

living and rent is coming to the fore.
We must be the ones to organize the
struggle against the high cost of living
and rents, because these are serious
issues to millions of people. We must
not allow Communists to consider
themselves above these issues.

OUR APPROACH TO SPECIAL STRATA
AND GROUPS

For many years we have spoken of
the need of a special approach to the
problems of various strata and groups
of the population, if we want to build
our Party among them. A uniform,
stereotyped propaganda and agitation
will always miss the mark with the ma-
jority of people, because the majority
is made of special groups. The general
program must be linked up with the
particular problems of particular
groups. But in practice we seriously
neglect this; even in the broadest and
most obvious cases in which it is called
for.

113

For example, it cannot be denied
that the women are a rather important
sector o£ the population; some people
say an absolute majority. They have
special problems, but how often do we
make these special problems the cen-
ter of broad mass appeals, of political
demands and organized actions? We
direct our whole political work to the
male adult, white section of the pop-
ulation, with only an occasional ex-
cursion, by the way, into these special
groups. In all too few cases do we seri-
ously take up this special approach.

In too many cases, we find even the
progressive union leaders resisting the
organization of women's auxiliaries,
and we find in our Party, too often, the
attitude of "postpone this question to
a more favorable moment," which

never comes.

How much attention is given to the
housewives? Why do we recruit so few
women-why are women still fewer in
our leading committees? These que*

114

tions are for you to answer, comrades,
with regard to your district. I think all
the answers will boil down to one word
—neglect. Let us realize Lenin's slogan
that "every housewife must take an
active part in political work."

Among the young people there is not
the problem of neglect and stagnation
of work. A tremendous youth move-
ment is sweeping America. Our young
Communists are in the heart of it and
doing nobly effective work. I do not
need to give our youth any special ad
vice today. They are already on the
high road to mass work. But I do need
to advise our Party to learn from the
youth, at the same time to help edu-
cate the youth; to give more concrete
help to the youth, to establish closer
relations between the youth and the
Party, In hundreds of towns where
there are Party organizations there is
not yet any Y.C.L. unit.

Where the Y.C.L. is absent there the
youth movement is absent or falls into

"5

the hands of doubtful leadership. The
youth is our greatest reserve. More
attention to the youth!

The next largest special group re-
quiring special approach is the Negro
people. We have many outstanding
achievements in our work among them.
The single fact that Angelo Herndon
is with us in this hall is recognized by
the whole Negro people; the fact that
the Scottsboro boys still fight for free-
dom instead of being a memory and
a tradition, like Sacco and Vanzetti, is
a partial victory; that the CJ.O. helps
the National Negro Congress to gather
representative Negroes from all walks
of life to bring their people into the
unions-all these thing show the ad-
vance of the Negroes towards equality,
an advance that penetrates and affects
the political life of our country.

But every one knows that it was the
Communist Party that inaugurated
this renaissance of the Negro people.
Why it has lagged behind so sharply

116

in our Party is one of the problems
which every district must take up most
seriously, the struggles for equality and
civil rights; and one key is to reach the
Negro women. It is an outstanding ex-
ception that we can speak of a Negro
woman who has been in our Party for
ten years and is a member of the Cen-
tral Committee, Comrade Maud
White. We are glad to register Com-
rade White's ten years in our Party,
but let us determine that we will not
allow her to be an exception, along
with Bonita Williams, Helen Holman,
Louise Thompson, and a few dozen
other active Negro women comrades.
We will bring hundreds, thousands of
Negro women into our ranks. We will
help them to make our Party their per-
manent political home. As one Negro
comrade said at a meeting, "If you get
the Negro women into the Party, the
men will come into the Party too." I
read recently some excellent proposals
on how to build the movement of the

117

Negroes in the locality, by a group of
Detroit Negro comrades. We must
learn to listen most carefully to such
voices on the issues and on methods
and forms of work.

Nor can we allow the farmers to
continue to be forgotten in our Party.
In every state there is a great agrarian
population. We must anchor our Party
among them. I am leaving all detailed
problems of farm policy to the Agra-
rian Committee; but there must be de-
manded more attention to farm or-
ganization in every district and the re-
cruiting of farmers into the Party.

Finally, we have those many na-
tional groups in the communities
-what we have been accustomed
to call our language work, thus
stressing only one side of a complicated
problem. Our press and organization
work among these national commu-
nities is stagnant. This is giving rise to
false theories about the dying out of
the communities due to lack of new

118

immigration and the Americanization
of the second and third generations.
But we find that Americanization does
not disperse these communities. The
second generation of Italian-Ameri-
cans, for example, are just as proud of
the first part of that hyphenated name
as of the second. A glaring light is
thrown on this question when nation-
alist and fascist propaganda from their
home countries grips the second gen-
eration deeper than the original immi-
grants; nor is it enough to say that we
must engage them in the American
class struggle. That is necessary, but it
is not enough and does not answer the
question as to how to engage them in
the American class struggle. To do that
effectively it is necessary to smash
through the sectarian isolation of our
national bureaus and national press;
to throw them into the center of the
community life; to utilize its national
traditions, issues, and pecularities; to
appeal to its national pride and cul-

119

r*

ture, to find thus the road to Ameri-
canization, Americanization in our
understanding of the word; and, es-
pecially, to utilize the lessons of the
blossoming of the nationalities under
socialism in the Soviet Union. We must
have a decided change and turn to the
masses in this field. We must refresh
the leadership of this work by a thor-
oughgoing return to the elective prin-
ciple in its selection, making the lead-
ership directly responsible to the
masses. Our special committee on this
question at this Plenum must give us
material for directing a far-reaching
change, the beginning of a forward
march among the national group,
especially among the largest and most
important ones, the Italians, Germans,
Jews, Poles and Irish.

Our Party's legality is now estab-
lished before the country as never be-
fore. This was illustrated to me, for
example, in an interesting fashion not
long ago when I spoke to a meeting in

120

one of the public halls of Harvard
University, with a prominent faculty
member as chairman, a man without a
suspicion of Communist sympathies,
but of liberal democratic views. This
chairman opened my meeting by citing
a series of most respectable precedents,
culminating in Supreme Court de-
cisions, to establish beyond all question
that the Comunist Party is a legally
recognized Party whose full right to be
heard and have its views considered
on their merits is a necessary part of
the democratic tradition of America.
When we are legalized before the Su-
preme Court and Harvard University,
it should surely not be a difficult task
to wipe out all the remnants of an il-
legal status of our Party within the
labor movement, to do away with the
idea that the Communist Party is
something which must be shoved into
the background, as being a little em-
barrassing to the "best people"; that its
cooperation, though valuable, should

121

i

be kept in the background. We must
be modest, we must not try to shove
our noses into every public photo-
graph, we must not make undue claims
for ourselves-but, at the same time,
we know and we must let the world
know, that the Communists are not
poor relations who come into the dem-
ocratic house only through the back
door. We want the relationship of
equals among equals, to be judged on
our merits the same as everyone else
should be; and for this relationship we
will work and we will fight. This is a
foundation-stone in the building of
the People's Front, and in the building
of our own Party.

LET US EXTEND THE CIRCULATION
OF OUR PRESS

About the circulation of the Daily
Worker and Sunday Worker, we are
gaining some excellent experience,
which at the same time shows how
most effectively to bring forward the

122

.1..

role of the Party. In the steel areas,
significant increases in circulation are
seen; outstanding examples being
Chicago, which, at the same time, by
its publication of a one-sheet Chicago
supplement every day in 20,000 copies,
has greatly helped solidify the strike,
while simultaneously laying a solid
basis for building our Party. In the
Minneapolis city elections, a special
edition of the Sunday Worker of 50,-
000 copies was a model of correct
united front work combined with
Party building.

I have been unable to find a single
instance where a serious effort to ex-
tend the circulation of our paper did
not achieve important results. If there
is not a general and decisive forward
move in this respect, it is only because
there is not yet a general effort that
involves the whole Party. We are pro-
ducing a paper today that wins the
praise as a newspaper of the President
of the Newspapermen's Guild. Can any

123

one any longer give as an explanation
of our lack of circulation that the
paper is not good enough editorially.
Impossible, comrades. We can still im-
prove the contents of our paper; but it
is already one of the indispensable
papers of America for all people who
want to be well informed. The time
has arrived when we must prepare a
radical step to overcome the difficulty
of distance which hampers the circu-
lation of the Daily Worker in the
Middle West and in the Pacific areas.
This Plenum should consider and give
its judgment on a project to establish
before the end of this year a companion
Daily Worker in Chicago and another
one in San Francisco. We are prepared
to go into this project in a business-
like manner. We know that all the pre-
conditions for success of our paper is
within our grasp. Comrade Dimitroff
said,

". . . correctly to combine the operations of
the policy of the People's Front with the pro-

124

paganda of Marxism, with the raising of the
theoretical level of the cadres of the working
class movement, with the mastery of the great
teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin
as a guide to action— all liiis we must learn
and teach our cadres and the masses day af ten-
day. We must not allow a situation where
'you cannot see the woods for the trees.' We
must not allow practice to become divorced
from theory, a gap to develop between the
fulfilment of the urgent tasks of today and the
further perspectives and aims of the working
class struggle."

Building the Party and extending
the circulation of our daily press are
not a task for a few weeks' campaign;
it is the permanent task that permeates
every item of Party life and work, the
guiding aim of which is to build a
strong, capable mass Communist Party
able to meet and solve the problems
and tasks of a great working class of
forty million in the most powerful cap-
italist country, a working class which
inherits a long revolutionary tradition
and which today is entering the period
of history with greater revolutionary

»*5

upheavals than any we have known
before. It is the consciousness of this
task which our present Plenum must
bring to the whole Party, in the full
realization that through our correct
policies that meet the conditions of the
day we must build the Party that will
be capable of carrying out the much
greater task of tomorrow.

126

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