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Arne Swabeck

Frame-Up Challenge Stays Unanswered by Party

(September 1932)


From The Militant, Vol. V No. 39 (Whole No. 135), 24 September 1932, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).


Central Executive Committee
Communist Party of the United States:

The Daily Worker of August 23, contained a direct frame-up charge of murder against the Communist Left Opposition. This was repeated by you in a number of leaflets issued as well as in subsequent issues of the Daily Worker.

We could consider this only as a vicious attempt to incite a black hundred pogrom campaign against us in lieu of the failure on your part to answer politically a single one of our arguments on vital working class problems. We so branded it in our public declaration published in The Militant of August 27. We also declared our readiness to have the facts of the situation, which you turned into a dastardly frame-up, fully investigated at a public working class hearing. To this effect we addressed a letter to the following central organizations:

Communist Party of U.S.A.
Trade Union Unity League
American Civil Liberties Union
Conference for Progressive Labor Action
Communist Party (Majority Group)
Industrial Workers of the World

You failed to answer this letter, and so did the I.I.D. and the TUUL which you direct. The other organizations declared themselves ready to participate in a public hearing. To us this is the most convincing proof that you were not at all prepared even to make an attempt before the eyes of the working class to make good your charge. You found that your foul attempt of incitement did not succeed and you were compelled to back down.

In view of this retreat from a false and unsubstantiated position on your part we intend not to make any further request upon the other organizations mentioned for a public hearing. Your fear of meeting the issue squarely before the working class has therefore closed this phase of the incident.

We do declare, however, that this contemptible effort on your part, stooping to the worst methods of reaction, served to open the eyes of many serious Communist workers and render them more willing to listen to what the Left Opposition has to say. Of this we have received ample proof by growing sympathy for our ideas. We shall not fail in the least to continue our political hammer blows for a return of the Communist Party to a Leninist basis.

 

Communist League of America (Opposition)
— Arne Swabeck, Sec’y.


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