Harrison George
Communist Party of California, State Office, 942 Market St., San Francisco
August 4, 1947
Harrison George, Covelo, Calif.
Dear Harrison:
It is about a year since you wrote a statement for the State Review Commission, stating that you had no basic disagreements with the Party.
Since then, it has come to our attention that your place of residence has been repeatedly visited by expelled factionalists; that you have frequently visited San Francisco, without contacting the Party Office, even tho you were asked to do so; and we are informed by the State Board that you have never given any explanation for failure to write the article you promised Comrade Foster, repudiating the position of Vern Smith.
For the above reasons, the State Review Commission feels it necessary to have a discussion with you, and is arranging a meeting on Saturday, August 9th, at 10 A. M., at which you are requested to be present. We will reimburse you for the expense of the trip.
If for any reason you cannot make it on the above date, please let us know, and give us a date, within a week of the proposed date, when you can be present. Awaiting your immediate reply,
Comradely yours, Rudie C. Lambert, Chairman, State Review Commission
(Note by Harrison George: At the State Convention of 1945, the Convention Committee on Leadership recommended against Rudie Lambert being given any new post of leadership, because of his past proven unfitness. He was, therefore, not even nominated for the new State Committee. His wife, Louise Todd, was recommended for re-election, but because of her arrogant letter to the delegates, demanding re-election of the old leadership and attacking as suspicious persons those opposed to this, she was defeated by delegate vote. Notwithstanding these convention decisions, factional preferment has now given him the highly responsible post indicated in his letter; while his wife was already in December, 1945, functioning in her old position as member of the State Board, and viciously attacked me as a “leftist” in the State Board meeting of December 15, 1945. Family clique-ism as well as factional intrigue, is notoriously rife in the Party leadership in California; and Lambert’s letter invites me to appeal from the verdict of the wife to the “impartial” judgment of the husband.)
Santa Barbara, Calif.
August 27, 1947
To: Rudie C. Lambert,
Room 701 Garfield Bldg.
942 Market St.,
San Francisco, 2, Calif.
Comrade:
Having suffered a relapse in my heart condition and having had to hasten south to place myself under doctor’s care, your letter of August 4 did not reach me in time to reply before this – and after some necessary recuperation here – much less to be in San Francisco when requested, on August 9, 1947.
However, even had this not hindered, I would, as I plainly told Comrades Foster and Lima on August 24, 1946, refuse to attend any more of the kind of “discussions” with the Review Commission, of which I had at that time already endured two sessions. I had attended those two sessions in disregard of doctor’s orders, in the hope of helping the Party contend against factionalism, not only from the “Left,” but from the Right, also.
Knowing something of the functions of such a commission, having myself in years gone by been chairman of the National Review Commission, my experience with your State Review Commission in my two meetings with it last year (June 28 and August 19), proved to me that its functions were being subverted by an official Right Opportunist faction.
While conceding that there were some individuals on the Commission whose honesty of intent I would not question, their political illiteracy and downright ignorance of Communist organizational principles, unfortunately made them, as well as others, the victims of those whose design was to protect one faction and to persecute another, even to the extent of inventing accusations against wholly innocent comrades, whose sole offense might be some slight criticism of the officials of the Party, or some remote connection with those who did. Thus, the whole function of an impartial disciplinary organ of the Party is distorted.
At the meeting of June 28, 1946, your commission was already aware of my letter to the State Secretariat of May 18, 1946, in which I gave conclusive evidence of the existence of a Right Opportunist faction, composed of some trade union comrades, and its functioning in collusion with the Party leadership for aims contrary to declared Party policy, a collusion so thorough as to make the Party leadership and the faction identical. The existence and functioning of that Right Opportunist faction was so publicly obvious that it could not be denied. In fact, neither the State Secretariat nor your commission ever attempted to deny it, or refute my charge that it was that officially-sanctioned Right Opportunist faction which was the source of the discontent and disunity in the Party that was, in self-defense, assuming a factional aspect. Unable to refute the evidence offered, your commission simply ignored my charge, and thereby proved itself factional.
More, at that meeting of June 28, 1946, I offered other evidence (which Comrade Glickson said would be “looked into”) showing that a faction, clearly working for the re-election of the old State leadership, had functioned at the 1945 State Convention, as was admitted to me personally by Comrade Clemmy Barry, who had been assigned by the leadership-faction in that convention to sit near me, in the visitors’ section, and report on what was said or done by me. By the way, when I asked her why she did such a thing, she said: “I thought you might do something wrong.” When I asked her if she observed any wrong-doing on my part, she answered, “No.”
What did your commission do about this serious charge? Nothing! And in this your commission again exhibited an attitude of protection toward the leadership faction in violation of the National Convention Resolution and the impartiality required of a Review Commission.
In that meeting with your commission on June 28, 1946, I likewise clearly stated that, if the commission was interested in fighting factionalism, or even factional feeling coming from the ”Left,” it should first combat this far more dangerous, because official, factionalism coming from the Right, because ”factionalism begets factionalism.” What did the commission do about this? Exactly nothing!
Particularly outrageous is your commission’s practice of dealing with ideological deviations, real or imagined, solely by organizational measures; its insistence upon guilt by remote and accidental association (much after the method of a Jack Tenney); and its ludicrous concept of itself as a sort of collective Dick Tracy, and not as an organ of high political responsibility.
When these practices are coupled with an evident factional attitude and, to quote Comrade Stalin, a “heartless” attitude toward Party people as people, such a commission cannot serve the welfare of the Party; for the Party consists of its members and its theory, and your Review Commission has no consideration for either of these. If there were no other reasons – and there are other reasons – this alone would cause me to decline to dignify such a farce with my presence any further. By practical, personal experience, your commission proved to me that it is incapable of proper performance of its function.
Your letter indicates that the commission, now – somewhat strangely, it seems to me – having come under your chairmanship, still pursues the same methods. Your first paragraph refers to the statement I wrote for the Review Commission on July 1, 1946. Obviously, from the contents of that statement, and the incontrovertible fact that any position taken by any comrade at any particular time and circumstance can be related to that time and circumstance only, that statement was intended to meet the situation then existing, and not necessarily some previous situation or that which might exist a year or even six months later. For time marches on and all things are subject to change.
But, my statement was not published in the situation to which it applied, the dispute over the settlement obtained by the Committee for Maritime Unity on June 15, 1946. Instead, it was published six months later, in a changed and different situation, and in context with other matter in an inner-Party bulletin, which made it appear as lending approval to this other matter, which approval it did not have. In short, you took my statement, which even in its text declared against factionalism “from any quarter,” and used it to aid the official Right Opportunist faction as against a “Leftist” faction which, by exaggeration, was made to appear more numerous, more organized and more menacing than sober facts would indicate. This is an ancient practice of Right Opportunism in diverting attention from itself by clamorous denunciation of even the most microscopic danger from the “Left.”
In this, as in all matters, I found that anything I said or did, in every contact with your, commission, and with the State Secretariat and State Board, since the 1945 convention, was subjected to the most amazing and multiple misrepresentation and distortion. Take your own present letter of August 4, for example. It says that my statement of July 1, 1946, had stated that I “had no basic disagreements with the Party.” I would put this down to carelessness in the use of precise political terms, were it not a repetition of what was said by Comrade Schneiderman in his letter to me dated September 14, 1946, a repetition which makes clear that there is a design in misrepresenting what I said. Comrade Schneiderman wrote that I had stated that I “had no basic disagreement with the Party line nor with the policies of the state and national leadership.”
My statement of July 1, last year, was distinctly different. Its first paragraph stated that I had “no programmatic differences” with the Party. It seems I must remind you that the program of the Party was given in the National Convention Resolution adopted by the National Convention in July, 1945. One may have no differences whatever with that program, but may simultaneously have many “basic disagreements” with the way that program is carried out, violated or mis-applied. And one may have very basic disagreements with “the policies of the state and national leadership” in this respect, and still have no “programmatic differences” with the Party.
If I must draw a blue-print, the National Convention Resolution of 1945 contains the programmatic proposal for a “democratic coalition.” One may agree with that completely, but still disagree very basically with what the leadership does about it, the form such a coalition shall take, which class has the hegemony in such coalition, and so on.
It has become clear to me, as time went on, that the purpose of misrepresenting my statement of July 1, last year, both as to what I said about “programmatic” differences, and also my statement that, at that time, I “accepted” the leadership of the Party, has been deliberate, in order to place me in a false light before the membership, so as to move against me later on, under the implications of such misrepresentation.
According to Leninist principles of Party organization, Party membership requires one to “accept” a Party leadership so long – and only so long – as that leadership holds the mandate of legal election under the terms of the Party Constitution. But it is a gross distortion of those principles, and of the English language, to boot, to imply that “acceptance” of the leadership means “support” of anything and everything done by that leadership. And as something eternal, at that, covering past, present and future without distinction.
Such misrepresentation obviously is done to stop me from any future criticism by claiming, before the membership: “See, on July 1, 1946, he said he supported the leadership and had no basic disagreements, but now he comes forward with all manner of criticism and attacks on the Party.”
Firstly, this ignores the important distinction that “the leadership” is one thing, and “the Party” quite another. Secondly, I do not propose to accept such misrepresentation. Nobody can stop my mouth by putting into it something which I did not say, nor debar me from exercising the right of a Party member to criticize the leadership for something it did after July 1, 1946, merely because, on that date, I agreed with it on the question of the CMU settlement and the opposition to it at that time, and said so in a statement. In this case, loyalty to “the Party” requires attacks on “the leadership.”
Apparently, your commission wishes to “forget” that, when I appeared before your commission on June 28, 1946, I was asked to write, not only a statement for the commission, but also something for publication in the People’s World, in defense of the CMU settlement and in criticism of the local opposition to that settlement.
At considerable trouble in research and time, I did that, for I am as much against “leftism” as against Right Opportunism, and I hold that ideological struggle is basic against both. However, although those articles constituted the only ideological attack made on the position of the “left” concerning the CMU settlement, and although those articles were described as “excellent” by Comrade Foster, to whom I sent a copy, and although Comrade Schneiderman had for months been complaining that I failed to “help” him against the “Left,” which he declared was so dangerous, nevertheless, when I submitted them to the People’s World for publication, I was informed that Comrade Schneiderman had forbidden their publication.
They were suppressed, and from nobody has ever come one word of explanation. However, as time went on, the reason became clear; I was slated, on the blacklist of the official faction, to be expelled as a “leftist factionalism” and the publication of those articles would completely disprove such charge and thereby defeat the plan of Comrade Schneiderman to so expel me. Even as it was, the fact that I had written those articles compelled Comrade Schneiderman to postpone my expulsion, to await the passage of time in which the fact that I had written them could be ignored and seek for a new opportunity when, by some new distortion of my political position, he could resume the charge.
Now, it appears, you think that you have me entrapped, and now you move in for the kill. After nearly four decades spent in political struggle against both Right Opportunism and “Leftism” in the old Socialist Party, in the I.W.W. and the Communist movement, I recognize your intent. Your commission, which should be above factionalism, still functions as the organ of a faction and not as an organ of the Party. Your second paragraph gives a “bill of particulars,” such as they are. It has “come to your attention,” you say (as if you had not been constantly trying to find or invent some so-called “evidence”), that my “place of residence has been repeatedly visited by expelled factionalists.”
This sort of thing is the measure of your lack of honesty. Firstly, it has come to my attention that somebody invents the most preposterous lies about me. For example, Comrade Peggy Orton wrote my host that she had heard there was a week-long “school for the expelled” held at my place of residence; and again, the falsehood that I wrote a letter which appeared in what is called the “N.C.P. Bulletin,” as coming from Covelo, California. Secondly, my “place of residence” is, as you well know, the home of other people, with whom I am but a guest, and who have the normal right to choose other guests from among friends whom they have known long before they knew me.
One such guest could, I suppose, be qualified by you as an “expelled factionalism” although accompanied at that time by a Party member in good standing. Some six months later another “expelled factionalist” did visit my “place of residence,” but without invitation from anyone, least of all from myself. And, if you know so much about who visited “my place of residence,” you also know very well that in both these cases I differed most sharply with these two guests in their political views.
This illustrates the absurdity, as well as the factional vindictiveness of your trying to “get something” on me. A great many people know me, and some of them insist on talking to me. Am I expected to shoot them on sight, or myself flee to mountain caves on their approach? As I told Comrades Foster and Lima a year ago, I decline to accept responsibility merely because people talk with me. 1 will accept responsibility only for what I say when I talk with them. That is the only sensible course.
This whole silly idea of making “charges” out of such things would be incredible in any other Communist Party on earth. Misguided comrades could never be won back to a Party. And where, as in many countries, there are large numbers of expelled comrades as well as large numbers of Party members, whose lives and labor bring them into contact, matters would be quite impossible under such a rule. Comrade Stalin, in his booklet Mastering Bolshevism, definitely condemns this sort of attitude toward expelled comrades. But, since you have undertaken to master Menshevism rather than Bolshevism, perhaps what Comrade Stalin says is of no importance to you.
Comrade Stalin says (pages 46-47), after showing that Trotskyism in the CPSU was, in reality, weak in number of adherents, that: “If, in spite of this, the Trotskyite wreckers nevertheless have some reserves or other around our Party, it is because the incorrect policy of some of our comrades on the question of expulsion from the Party and reinstatement of expelled people, the heartless attitude of some of our comrades toward the fate of individual Party members and individual Party workers, artificially engender a number of discontented and embittered people, and thus create these reserves for the Trotskyites.”
“Only people who in essence are profoundly anti-Party,” says Comrade Stalin, “can have such an approach to members of the Party.” And it is a fact known to all, that the wreckers, spies and traitors who made up the “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists” in the CPSU, made it a special point to persecute and expel from the Party every honest member and Party worker who stood in their way. In the present situation, what becomes clear is not only the “profoundly anti-Party” attitude of the Party leadership, but that its insistence that nobody who has been expelled must ever be spoken to, is a symptom of fear that Party members, by talking with those who have been expelled unjustly, and because they correctly criticized the leadership, might come to learn of that injustice and to understand that the leadership is misleading them.
Your second item in the nature of an accusation is that I have “frequently visited San Francisco, without contacting the Party office, even though I was asked to do so.” This is a weird thing to make into an accusation and hail a comrade before a disciplinary commission to answer for. Unless, of course, you wish to become the laughing stock of the international Communist movement. I was not aware that I was banished from San Francisco, and required to remain in the isolated mountain region of Covelo. The State office itself insisted on making my status one of a “member at large,” not connected with any local organization, and hence not responsible to report on my geographical position.
Moreover, there is implied, in your letter, a completely distorted version of my alleged “frequent” visits to San Francisco, and the so-called obligation to contact Comrade Schneiderman (“the Party office”). Firstly, it would appear that visiting San Francisco from a farm six miles from Covelo is as easy as taking a trolley. You ignore the fact that for me to make a round trip to San Francisco would mean – even to get to a bus line – a drive, ordinarily, of 124 miles over bad mountain roads, often impassible in bad weather, for my host’s ancient flivver, which is sometimes unable even to get off the farm itself. This, aside from taking him away from his farm work for a couple of days in all, leaving an expectant mother to shift for herself with two small children. Such matters, of course, mean nothing to any bureaucrat.
Secondly, although by a rare chance I got a ride with a neighbor to the bus line and therefore was able to visit San Francisco on December 12, 1946, it was not until afterward that I got the one and only invitation from Comrade Schneiderman to come and see him. Under date of Dec. 27, 1946, and enclosing the Party Bulletin of Dec. 11, he wrote: “Since I understand you get into town once in a while, I would like to have you arrange to come in and see me soon. Please let me know.”
Since I had, at that time, neither any plan nor possibility of visiting San Francisco – and as a matter of fact did not do so until the following April, when passing through to see my doctor in Los Angeles; and furthermore had no burning desire to look upon the countenance of Comrade Schneiderman, who seemed to have no inclination to tell me why he wanted to “see” me, I could neither set any date for a visit, nor regard his casual and purposeless invitation as a royal request, which amounts to a command for an obsequious subject. Bearing in mind that I had retired from Party activity because of my heart condition, which was greatly worsened by the harassment I had endured at Comrade Schneiderman’s insistance from the 1945 convention onward, and hence discounting any idea that he might wish to “see” me out of any comradely solicitude, I regarded the invitation as merely formal and perfunctory.
The only other occasion upon which my visiting San Francisco was spoken of, was when Comrade Williamson came there in the winter. At that time the following letters, which speak for themselves, were exchanged.
Under date of January 31, 1947, Comrade Schneiderman wrote: “As you probably know, Johnny Williamson will be in San Francisco next week, and while he is here would like to see you. Can you arrange to come in to San Francisco any time during the next week to have a talk with him? If finances are a problem, we will be glad to cover any expense involved. Please let me know by return mail when we can expect you.”
Under date of February 5, 1947, I replied to Comrade Schneiderman:
“Acknowledging yours of the 31st, which was received yesterday.
“It is at present next to impossible to leave here for a round trip to San Francisco. I might add that there is no public transportation into this isolated Round Valley, so it isn’t a question of the fare, or even of a desire. What one really needs at this season of the year is a helicopter.
“About my desire, however, I wouldn’t mind talking with Comrade Williamson, or anyone else who can get around here. But, considering the difficulties of me making a trip out of the valley now, if, indeed, I could make it at all, I can perceive of no benefit to me, or to the Party, to go through the same sort of experience as before.
“If I could speak with Comrade Williamson, though, I would tell him that I disagree with the way Party program has recently been applied, a disagreement that I will ) express fully in the articles requested by you, and which I am trying, under extremely adverse circumstances, to complete. I want to make that plain.”
This brings me to the third item in your “bill of particulars” which you say are the “reasons” you want a “discussion” with me; the matter of articles about Vern Smith’ “position.” Here, again, all is distorted. You say that I “promised Comrade Foster” that I would “repudiate the position of Vern Smith.” But what are the facts?
The facts are; firstly, that when I saw Comrade Foster on August 24, 1946, he spoke about Vern Smith’s statement in connection with one subject only, the question of a democratic coalition, saying that Smith was flatly opposed to the building of any democratic coalition at all. That was represented to me as being the main, if not the entire content of Vern Smith’s statement, which I had not seen. And Comrade Foster asked me whether 1 would approve or condemn that, and do so in writing.
Since the National Convention Resolution provided a policy for a democratic coalition, and Vern Smith had voted for that Resolution as delegate to the State Convention in August, 1945, I could only reply that, while I had not seen Vern’s statement, if he had said anything wrong, I would say so, as Party programs are adopted to carry out, not to ignore. Foster did not have Vern’s statement with him; but, Comrade Mickey Lima of the State Secretariat being present, Foster asked him to see to it that I was given a copy at once. Comrade Lima promised to do so.
However, it took two months and a letter of protest to Comrade Foster to compel the State Office to furnish me a copy of Smith’s statement. And, when I finally got it, not only had my situation changed (living in the mountains with no research material available, no physical arrangements for writing, and numerous claims upon what time and energy I had) so that writing was nearly impossible; but I found that Vern Smith’s statement was quite a document of some 3,500 words, dealing with a wide range of political and organizational questions.
While your commission, in its wisdom, was able to receive such a comprehensive and many-sided political document and dispose of it instantly by expelling its author, an unfortunate habit of political integrity compelled me to give such a document the serious study and analysis it deserved, coming as it did from a comrade whose lifetime in the revolutionary movement could not, in my opinion, be waved aside on account of one alleged error, and a tactical one at that.
Moreover, I saw why it took two months and so much pressure to get a copy, and why the State Office wanted it condemned before the membership without, however, allowing the membership to read it or get an objective analysis of it. Obvious, also, was the reason why Comrade Schneiderman, after he had finally sent me Vern’s statement, so quickly wrote me asking for my “repudiation” of it. He evidently regarded me as a kind of slot-machine, into which he put “statements,” and from which he extracted “repudiations.”
However, your letter claiming that I “have never given any explanation for failure to write the article,” is untrue on two points. Firstly, I have not failed to write the articles requested – a matter I shall speak of further on in this letter. Secondly, I twice gave Comrade Schneiderman the truthful explanation of the difficulties which hindered me for some time in completing them.
On November II, 1946, replying to his second letter asking for the articles, I replied in part:
“I did not answer your previous letter in respect to the time it would take me to finish the articles requested, for the simple reason that, in addition to some needed research, physical conditions with me have been and still are, such that setting a date was, and still is, rather futile.”
Again, replying on February 5, 1947, to his letter of January 31, both quoted above, concerning the occasion when Comrade Williamson came to San Francisco, I spoke of the ”extremely adverse circumstances” under which I was ”trying to complete” the articles, which I was then in the course of writing.
I never received any reply to that letter of February 5, and it seemed, indeed, that Comrade Schneiderman lost all interest in the articles he requested, after I told him that they would “fully express the disagreement” I had with “the way Party program had recently been applied.”
Apparently, I was expected to write only in disagreement with Vern Smith’s statement, and only in agreement with the practices of the leadership, although any honest analysis of both might dictate otherwise. Indeed, when Comrade Schneiderman sent me Smith’s statement, he referred me to the National Board’s pronouncement on the expulsions then taking place, as an intimation that I should follow its “political characterization.”
However, the first duty of a Communist is independent thinking and a critical evaluation of every political statement, regardless of source; and to express disagreement, as well as agreement, with the utmost objectivity. But it is now becoming evident that the reason your present letter ignores the fact that, already on February 5, 1947, my letter to Comrade Schneiderman expressed disagreement with the way Party program was being applied, is that you wish to depict matters as if I had concealed such disagreement, and as though my statement of July 1, 1946, bound me, for all time, to agree with anything the Party leadership might say or do thereafter. Let me repeat, for emphasis, therefore, that on February 5, 1947, I wrote to Comrade Schneiderman that:
“If I could speak with Comrade Williamson, I would tell him that I disagree with the way Party program has recently been applied, a disagreement that I will express fully in the articles requested by you, and which I am trying, under extremely adverse circumstances, to complete. I want to make that plain.”
That, surely, is categoric enough to be understood by both Comrade Schneiderman and Comrade Williamson. And if either of them had been sincerely interested in my attitude, and not merely in extracting a statement from me which might be useful to the leadership in maintaining its position, they would, as a matter of official duty, have written to ask me of the nature of my disagreement. But I never received anything further from either of them.
This gave me to understand that articles expressing disagreement were not wanted. And, as the Party, contrary to Leninist principles, provides no press medium for critical examination of its current application of program in articles accessible to the membership, I could only await the approaching discussion period of “at least sixty days” prior to the National Convention, which convention, under provisions of the Party Constitution, was due to be held in July, 1947. Pre-convention discussion, therefore, should have opened in May, and the Party Constitution, Article IV, Section 4, says that, in such discussions:
“... members have the unrestricted right and duty to discuss any and all Party policies and tactics, the right to criticize the work and composition of all leading committees, the right of full expression in the Party press or other organs provided for such discussion.”
This constitutional provision for Party democracy having been bureaucratically canceled by the National Committee, which in violation of the Party Constitution, has “postponed” the National Convention; the State leadership, wishing to make assurance doubly sure in preventing me from claiming my right to full critical expression as a Party member, has initiated another attempt to use your commission to obtain my expulsion. While I am summoned up for expulsion on a charge of having “failed” to write articles, the real offense that I have committed is that I have written them, and have notified the leadership in advance that my articles would express disagreement.
Here, I think that I should state that I have taken the trouble to answer the “charges” you make in detail in order to keep the record clear, and not because I recognize your authority to require me to do so; since, by violation of the Party Constitution providing for a renewal of mandate every two years, there is not a national or state organ of the Party which at this moment holds any valid authority.
Article VI, Section 2, of the Party Constitution, provides that State conventions “shall convene at least once every two years.” By failure to call a State convention accordingly, the mandate of the State Committee and consequently of the State Review Commission, has lapsed, and usurped authority cannot be used – on me, at least – to command me to come here or go there – or do anything whatsoever.
It is surely not news to you that Article VII, Section 1, of the Party Constitution, says that “Regular National Conventions shall be held every two years.” The word “shall” makes it mandatory, not optional. And Section 6 of Article VII provides that “The National Committee... is responsible for the enforcement of the Constitution,” as well as for “the execution of the general policies adopted by the National Convention.”
While a National Committee which has violated practically every important programmatic policy laid down by the National Convention Resolution of 1945, might well violate, also, the Constitution, as the present National Committee has, in fact, done, in both cases it can be expected to advance some specious reason for so doing, and endeavor, by pretense and bureaucratic pressure, to make the membership accept, if unwillingly, its excuses as valid. The present body of individuals claiming to be the National Committee is presently engaged in that very propaganda maneuver, seeking by cunning deceit and clumsy intimidation to maintain themselves in control.
By its increasing violation of the 1945 National Convention Resolution, the so-called “National Committee” has engendered a great volume of membership distrust and discontent, and, not daring to go to the membership to renew its mandate as provided in the Constitution, it hopes now to thwart membership expression by abolishing national conventions, during which, in the discussion period, it must give an accounting of its two year custody of Party program and open the door to the Party democracy it has suppressed for the last two years – often under the very excuse that critics must “wait for the next convention.”
I say that the National Committee has “abolished” national conventions, because the announcement that the one already due in July, 194 7, has been “postponed,” is accompanied by such transparently absurd excuses and such furtive propaganda of lame excuses, that it is clear that, if the present “National Committee” retains its control in 1948, it is capable of again “postponing” the convention indefinitely, year after year. Or, which is likely, by expelling those who object to the present “postponement,” so to tighten its bureaucratic control as to make any convention in 1948, a farce of democratic centralism.
Approaching the end of its two years of leadership, the National Committee had authority to do only one thing; call for the election of delegates to a National Convention by July, 1947, as provided by the Constitution, and to open discussion “at least sixty days” before the day set. By refusal to do that, and deliberate retention of office beyond the term for which they were elected, the members of the present so-called “National Committee” have usurped authority which is not theirs, and are no longer possible to consider as “elected” officials of the Party.
They, therefore, individually and collectively, have no authority which –previously –subordinate bodies or the membership individually, were bound to accept. In similar situations, even in conditions of Party illegality under Czarist oppression, where there was no party democracy, Lenin rejected the central committee’s claim to the inseparable principle of centralism, and approved a boycott of the Party center by the lower units of the Party.
There have been, of course, in the history of some Communist parties, occasions when party conventions have been postponed; but for good and obvious reasons which cannot possibly apply to the CPUSA at the present time. Obviously, if the National Committee could meet in 1947, so could a national convention. If a national convention can be held in 1948, it surely can be held in 1947. To ”postpone” the convention until 1948 is, under the circumstances, so transparent an act of arbitrary bureaucracy on the part of a leadership whose 1945 convention pledge to abolish bureaucracy as a guarantee against relapse into revisionism, as to be a danger signal of revisionist control. And it justifies lower units of the Party in boycotting such a leadership, withholding dues or any other obligation to a leadership which is not elected and whose authority is usurped.
That is the status in which the ”National Committee” and the ”State Committee,” also, have gotten themselves. It is their own doing. And, having violated the Constitution, they now ask for approval of their violation in the name of ”unity.” Having been disloyal to the very program it had itself written and adopted, the present leadership dares to demand loyalty to its disloyalty as the mark of loyalty to the Party. But no Party member can be loyal to the Party, without being disloyal to such a leadership. It had every right to demand unity for the carrying out of the Party program and the enforcement of the Party Constitution. But it has no right to demand unity for the violation of the Party program and the abrogation of the Constitution.
It is to be expected, of course, that this interpretation of the situation will evoke the utmost demagogic clamor for “unity in the face of the fascist danger.” But if international experience, from Lenin’s day to this, teaches us anything, it teaches us that victory over the forces of reaction and fascism is impossible by any unity on an opportunist policy, which forfeits the Party’s vanguard role and leaves the masses to be misled by bourgeois liberals.
Without going into the details of conditions under which alliances are permissible, let me point out that Lenin and the Bolsheviks rejected unity with the Mensheviks within the Social-Democratic Party, when the Mensheviks demanded it, on the basis of the revolutionary (Social-Democratic) party uncritically following the leadership of the “liberal” Cadets, in a bloc against the “Black Hundred danger,” and thus leaving the masses under the “ideological influence of the Cadets.” At that time Lenin wrote (Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 408) – in 1906 – that: “Sooner or later, unless you cease to be Socialists, you will have to fight your own battle in spite of the Black Hundred danger. And it is easier and more necessary to take the right step today, than it would be to take it tomorrow... That is why we are waging ruthless war on the Social-Democrats who allow such blocs.”
Of course, our present leaders, like Browder before them, have become intoxicated with their own “American exceptionist” revisionist ideas that Leninism is “out of date” and his fundamental principles need not be heeded by Communists in America. In emphasizing the “differences” between America of today and Czarist Russia, they choose to ignore the basic similarities of political struggle.
Again, in the most extreme crisis of the October Revolution, on October 12, 1917, only a few days before the seizure of power, Lenin broke away from unity – not with the Mensheviks this time – but from unity with his own Bolshevik central committee, over the question of such seizure, when that committee temporarily manifested the same type of opportunism and bureaucratic conduct which today characterizes the present Party leadership of the CPUSA. If you look on page 18 of On The Eve Of October you will find that Lenin then voiced the following declaration of disunity at that most crucial moment:
“Seeing that the Central Committee has left even without an answer my writings insisting on such a policy since the beginning of the Democratic Conference, that the Central Organ is deleting from my articles references to such glaring errors of the Bolsheviks as the shameful decision to participate in the pre-parliament, as giving seats to the Mensheviks in the Presidium of the Soviets, etc.; seeing all that, I am compelled to recognize here a ’gentle’ hint as to the unwillingness of the Central Committee even to consider this question, a gentle hint at gagging me and at suggesting that I retire. I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee, which I hereby do, leaving myself the freedom of propaganda in the lower ranks of the Party and at the Party Congress.”
While I am but a humble student of Lenin’s, and do not resign from any post, because I occupy none, I can only hope to follow Lenin’s example in my own way by clearly expressing my disagreement as he did, and leaving myself the freedom of propaganda in the lower ranks of the Party as against not only the “Leftism” which is increasingly evident, but also as against the Right Opportunist misleadership which imposed itself upon the Party by deceit in 1945, and now has completely usurped Party authority by violation of the Party Constitution – and thus provoked the growth of “Leftism.”
I am not insensible to the need for unity, when unity is based upon principle. But the examples cited, and numberless other ones which could be cited, show that there is never a time, nor an external menace so dangerous, as to require unity of the Party without regard for principle. Long before Lenin, Engels wrote to Bebel (June 20, 1873) concerning such unity:
“These unity fanatics are either the people of limited intelligence, who want to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew... all together in one pot... or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously want to adulterate the movement.”
Taking thought, however, upon the fact that you may regard Lenin and Engels as outdated by the “superior” wisdom of Eugene Dennis, let me remind you that even Comrade Dennis, in the moments when he was striving to maintain his position by pretending contrition for his support of Browder, told the National Committee meeting of June 18-20, 1945, that: “I have sometimes tended to overlook the essential fact that Communist unity must be forged without making any concessions on questions of principle, even ’minor’ or ’temporary’.”
As you will undoubtedly recommend to the State Committee that it expel me for the attitude expressed in this letter, let me remind you that, by its violation of the Party Constitution, it holds no valid mandate and its authority for so doing is lacking, and such expulsion need not be regarded as valid by any real Communists, either in the CPUSA, or in any other Communist Party.
Sincerely,
HARRISON GEORGE