Harrison George
“Instead of a revolutionary policy, we saw effete philistinism, the paltry dickerings of politicians, parliamentary coalitions. Now and again they adopted revolutionary resolutions and slogans, to be buried as soon as adopted.” – From Foundations of Leninism, by Stalin, p. 19, 1932 edition, referring to the parties of the Second International.
COMING TO THE SECOND POINT raised by the August, 1946, statement of Vera Smith (which was followed immediately by his expulsion for “Opposition to Party policies”), the point concerning electoral coalitions; this point is dealt with by Smith in two ways.
First, in regard to the 1946 election in California; secondly, concerning coalitions in general. Let us look first at what he says about the Communist Party’s actual coalition practice in California.
“In my opinion,” said Smith, “the election campaigns this year are a real touchstone of leadership policy. The Democratic state primaries fully justified the general criticisms of Party leadership policy in the city-county election.”[14]
“As a matter of cold fact,” Smith continued, “the Party was made an organized election worker squad for Kenny, a candidate put before them for practical support by door-bell ringing, etc., without their ever having a say in the matter.
“Aside from the failure to do Communist work during the primary elections, or to build the Party in any way, Kenny was not a good choice, nor did the Party handle his campaign correctly.
“Kenny’s one chance to be of some use was to have broken with Truman, and the golden opportunity was in the railroad strike case. But he didn’t break with Truman, and therefore he went down to defeat with the Truman brand on him.
“The Party’s chance to make Kenny do something worth while was to have blasted him at the time of the railroad strike, put him on the spot, and if possible force him to break with Truman. Even Kenny, with such a red hot issue as denunciation of the strike breaking of the Federal government to win the masses, might have got AFL rank and file support. But he didn’t move, and in that very failure showed how wrong the Party was to support him.
“Yes, Kenny finally broke with Truman, and this illustrates one more case of Communist Party leadership bad judgment, for he broke too late to have any effect on the election primaries, and simultaneous with Truman’s veto of the Tidelands (oil) Bill. Kenny’s oil company pal, Pauley, lobbied for the Bill, and Kenny used his State Attorney’s office to block action in the Supreme Court until it could be passed. There could easily have been a grand oil scandal, in which Kenny’s followers, as well as he, himself, would have been smeared.
“At no time is it good Communist strategy to sacrifice the building of the Party to win for a capitalist politician ’at any cost,’ but the case of Kenny is particularly atrocious.
“A fancy name is given to all the leadership theory by which such cases as the city-county election and the Kenny campaign get into our record. It is called ’coalition,’ and supposedly, when it really works, it will have the labor movement, the farmers and the liberal bourgeoisie in it, either in a new capitalist third party, or in the left wing and center of the Democratic Party.”
Now, then, what is the truth about all this?
The State Board of the Party says that Smith ”attacked the Party’s election policy and tactics of the necessity to build a labor-progressive coalition, as ’support for capitalist candidates,’ and a ’capitalist third party.’ ”
Clearly, Smith’s statement does not bear out that charge. He merely states what a “coalition” is, ”supposedly, when it really works.” His criticism of the Party leadership is against how it “handled his (Kenny’s) campaign.” That is, the policy didn’t “work.” Specifically, that it “sacrificed the building of the Party to win for a capitalist politician.” And didn’t win, even at that.
The State Board does not answer with facts. It does not show whether the Party was, or was not, built, in the election.. It makes no defense against Smith’s detailed assertions about Kenny’s failure to break with Truman in time. It has nothing to say of Kenny’s ties with the notorious oil lobbyist, Ed Pauley.[15]
The State Board, of course, does not have to answer questions. That is, it thinks it doesn’t have to, since it holds Party authority. So it expels Smith, who raises annoying questions. It asserts that its policy is the noble one of “building a labor-progressive coalition,” and it knows nothing, absolutely nothing, of Ed Pauley, nor of oil trust scandals, or Kenny’s participation therein.[16]
On paper, and for the record, the California State Board of the Party had a policy to bear out its claim of noble intentions. Issued to “All Counties and Clubs” under date of March 23, 1946, a letter of some 2,000 words gave explicit and detailed information on the building of “a coalition of Labor and its allies, and advancing the independent role of Labor in the coalition,” with a ”political orientation for building of a mass third party movement for the 1948 presidential elections.”
With laudable orthodoxy, it held “the key” to doing this to be “the independent role of the Party in this election campaign, in clarifying the issues, in influencing labor and its allies to organize mass activities and struggles around these issues.” Not that anybody saw much of these “mass struggles around these issues,” but, they were there, on paper, in the Party’s policy.
Granted the correctness of the national Party program, the California Party’s policy – as stated in the March 23, 1946, letter – was a model of punctilio. We were to “differentiate ourselves and develop an independent position within the coalition.” More, “The Communist Party has not endorsed any candidates for the June primaries, and after the primaries will only endorse candidates who are running on a genuine people’s platform.” Still more, the Party “will fight for recognition and acceptance of the Party within the coalition, while reserving the right to present its own independent position.” (All this is in accord with the National Convention Resolution, which, as delegate to the California State Convention in August, 1945, Vern Smith voted to accept. Hence it is scarcely fitting for him to speak of a “coalition” as something of which he had never before heard. What he had never heard of before, was the way the correct program for a coalition, was being carried out. But he does not make that distinction.)
The policy as set forth in the March 23, 1946, letter of the State Board appeared, in broad outline, perfectly proper, as I told the State Security and Review Commission on August 19, 1946. In it was no mention of Kenny, or of any “capitalist politician.” It did not even say that the Party, itself, would even approach such characters, although how it could expect to build a coalition with them without some dickerings and agreements, is hard to see. Apparently, the mystical “coalition” was to start on its own power, without Communist ignition. The sole indication of initiative was a sentence prodding the trade unions, which said:
”In order to help determine their position on the various candidates who have filed for the primary elections, trade union bodies and independent organizations should get commitments from the various candidates on their stand on the major political issues of the day and their willingness to fight on these issues.”
As this letter was sent to the lower Party organizations on March 23, 1946, it might be taken for granted that, at that time, the Party attitude toward all candidates, including Robert W. Kenny, was still undecided.
The letter from the State Board, in the paragraph just quoted, would, at any rate, lead one to believe that the “trade union bodies” had yet to ascertain what the “stand” of the “various candidates” might be on “the major political issues.” In order, quite obviously, for such trade unions to make up their minds as to ”endorsements.” This is obvious because another paragraph declares:
“Endorsement of candidates by trade union bodies should not prevent local unions and independent organizations, should that become necessary, from taking their own position on these candidates, nor from freedom to criticize and differentiate among candidates as to degree of support they should get.”[17]
Now, the discerning reader will have observed that, in the method and mechanism recommended by the State Board letter, that unions “should get commitments” from candidates, and endorse or not endorse, not the slightest iota of difference between the new and sacred method of “building a broad, democratic coalition,” and the ancient and evil policy of Sam Gompers in “rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies.” The union quizzed the candidate, and the candidate did or did not make certain promises to the union. Whereupon the union gave its support to, or withheld its support from, the candidate. Since when can this sort of thing be called building a ”coalition”?
True, in the paragraph urging the trade unions to do all this, it is added:
“Decisions of labor and independent organizations on candidates will have to take into account what will best promote the unity of labor and progressive forces and the building of an effective coalition taking an active part in influencing the 1946 election campaign.”
But what, precisely, does this mean? The trade unions are not asked to build a coalition, but only to endorse candidates.
By this vague talk about them “taking into account” when making such endorsements – “what will best promote” such a coalition – it is evidently so much eyewash. In reality, it covers up the guilt of the CIO leadership – and that of the subservient Party leadership – in perpetuating the split in the trade union movement, in place of building the first and most necessary “coalition,” the unity of labor. It hides the Gompers method of keeping labor politically tied up to capitalist political parties (in this case the Democratic party), behind a pretentious facade of clamorous adjectives about the Communist Party trying to build a “democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-fascist, anti-war, broad, independent, labor-progressive, people’s coalition.”
Is it the same old dirty political horse-trading of working class votes for capitalist promises? Perish the thought! For the very next paragraph of that March 23, 1946, letter to the lower Communist ranks assumed that, once the endorsements were given, the “coalition” was in operation! It says:
“Trade union and independent organizations, while being a part of an electoral coalition, must work to influence the character of the campaign conducted by the coalition,” etc.
But if the State Board waited until March 23, 1946, to ask trade unions to begin to “get commitments” from and give endorsements to the “various candidates,” as far as the Communist rank and file were told, this does not mean that something, indeed much, had not already been done behind their backs and, as Vern Smith said, “without their having a say in the matter.”
Long before March 23, 1946, it was known to everybody conversant with California politics, that the CIO (namely, that same group of CIO officials who have reduced the Communist Party leadership, with that leadership’s eager assistance, into a rubber stamp for their own syndicalist opportunism) was imploring Robert W. Kenny to run for governor against Earl Warren.
This fondness of these CIO leaders for Kenny had existed for years. On his part, Kenny, for some time had, indeed, had a fairly progressive record. But where he supported reactionaries, or such things as the Associated Farmers’ wage labor schemes in 1942, the CIO covered up his faults, and got the help of the Party leadership to do so. Publicly and privately, Kenny demonstrated an inseparable friendship for no less of a Hoover Republican than Earl Warren, champion of black reaction. But this was never allowed mention in the CIO or in the Party.[18]
At the insistence, practically, of the CIO officialdom, Kenny “consented” to run for governor against his friend, Earl Warren. The political question was not even “Would Kenny break with Truman?” but rather, “Would Kenny break with Warren?” This touching affinity of Kenny, a leader of the Democratic Party, for Warren, leader of the Republican Party, has been known to the Communist leadership for years, and was more than once a “problem” for the Communist Party because of its tailism toward the Democratic Party. In the 1942 election, for instance, Kenny’s feud with Gilbert Olson, then governor, had thrown the election to Warren the Republican, by creating a schism in the Democratic Party. The Communist leadership at that time wore its shoes out running about trying to keep the Democratic Party from splitting wide open and down the middle. Kenny settled for the Attorney Generalship, and, as a Democrat serving under Governor Warren, a Republican, they made as blissful a pair as Troilus and Cressida. Now, however, in 1946, Kenny was, at CIO insistence, going to run “against” Warren. Or, possibly, was it for Warren?
Long before March 23, 1946, the candidacy of Kenny, under sponsorship of the CIO, was a fixed fact. And, therefore, the CIO having decided the matter, the Communist Party had to turn to and work for Kenny, and defend Kenny against all criticism, regardless of its paper “official” policy of “differentiating ourselves and developing an independent position within the coalition.”
For months before March 23, 1946, the cause celebre of Ed Pauley, and the question of whether the U. S. Senate would confirm or reject Truman’s nomination of Pauley to a high post in the government, had filled the press and air-waves. Pauley was exposed by Secretary of Interior Ickes as having tried to bribe President Roosevelt, with oil money for Roosevelt’s campaign, to turn over the vast federal holdings in lands covered by tidal waters, to the states, for easy exploitation by the oil trust, for which Pauley was lobbyist. Pauley was already notorious in California as a pay-off man who could finance a campaign for any impecunious politician, if said politician would do “right” by the oil companies. Ickes had thrown some padded brickbats at Kenny, for Kenny’s organizing a campaign among the state governments to claim all tidal lands as state property, not federal, and for filing a suit in the U. S. Supreme Court to that effect.
This was notoriously a joint play with Ed Pauley, who was lobbying a bill through Congress, which would give such lands to the state governments. Kenny’s Supreme Court case was devised as a means to hold back President Truman from making an executive decision before Congress could pass the Pauley bill, and to restrain him from vetoing the bill if passed.
In the midst of a terrific uproar of scandal, the People’s World political department, headed by Doug Ward, sat silent, until February 5, 1946, when I broached the necessity of us taking a position, for or against tidelands oil going to the federal or the state governments. Here are my notes, taken at the Editorial Board meetings on that subject:
“Feb. 5, 1946: On tidelands oil question, Doug Ward objects to writing anything because; a) anything against Pauley or about the tidelands, would hurt Kenny; b) he (Ward) doesn’t know enough about the case. I offered a hatful of clippings from my file. Ward ’didn’t have time’ to read them.
“Pittman says that since progressive influence is easier brought to bear on the federal government, we should support federal jurisdiction.
“Doug Ward instructed to see Bill (Schneiderman) and write an editorial.
“Feb. 7, 1946: Doug Ward, when assignment of Feb. 5 is checked, says he wrote the front page story (’Behind the Tidelands Uproar’) in issue of Feb. 7, instead of an editorial. Says that it don’t take sides. Ward added that he had talked with Bill (Schneiderman) and Bill said not to go for federal control, until he, Bill, sees Comrade , CIO official, about it. Also, Bill says some oil men are trying to get federal permission to drill this oil.
“Lapin, saying that the oil lands question can be separated from the question of Pauley, proposes that we have an editorial blasting Truman appointments of both Pauley and George Allen, as big business men of the trusts, whereas Truman should nominate people who are progressives.
“Ward: Getting angry, says we cannot attack Pauley without hurting Kenny. “Lapin: Asks why.
“Ward: ’Pauley is paying Kenny’s campaign expenses.’ However, says he will see Bill (Schneiderman) tomorrow.
“Pittman: Says Bill is leaving for the East. We cannot wait forever, with the press filled with the Pauley affair, to say something.
“Vern Smith: Says that we should favor federal control of tidelands, as it facilitates later nationalization of oil trust. State control would create obstacles.”
“Feb. 12, 1946 (at Editorial Board meeting):
“Doug Ward: Says, I think I better give you a report on the oil question. Bill didn’t get to see Comrade of the CIO, but I did. And I guess I was a little wrong. Comrade says that Pauley is unpopular with the Democrats. He also says Kenny is wrong about state control. Also, he said that he didn’t think that Kenny was interested in the oil involved. Well, I (Ward) don’t know; but with Kenny’s banks down there (in southern California), it seems improbable that Kenny should avoid being interested. Comrade says, however, that there is nothing connecting Kenny with Pauley’.”
So! Though Kenny, using State funds, is fighting for Pauley’s Oil Trust in a U. S. Supreme Court suit; and though Pauley is paying Kenny’s campaign expenses, still there is “nothing connecting” Kenny with Pauley – no proof! So the Communist Party and the CIO can support this “progressive.” Nice, eh?
This, Communist proletarians, is the “Marxian, democratic, labor-progressive, broad, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist, people’s independent, political coalition” – as it is conducted in California!
The Communist Party, through the CIO leadership, then through Kenny, and then through Ed Pauley, had a “coalition” with – of all people! – President Truman and the Oil Trust! This is Dennis’s “coalition” of “The People Against the Trusts” – as it actually works out.
How was the question resolved? Here are my notes taken at the final meeting on the subject of the Editorial Board of the Daily People’s World:
“Feb. 27, 1946: H. G. raises the question of an editorial favoring federal control of the tidelands.
“Pittman: (Having changed his mind!) Says, ’No, the question isn’t settled yet in the Party.’
“Doug Ward: Objects to anybody writing about it, because there is a Rightist trend in the federal government, and a possibility that the states would be more progressive than the federal government.
“Decision: To give Ward three weeks more to get a decision on the question from the Party.”
It is now more than a year since then. Still those “three weeks” have brought no “decision on the question from the Party.” No more was heard of it.
Pauley was appointed by Truman to provoke conflict with the Soviet Union over reparations. Kenny was defeated by Warren, even on the Democratic ticket in the June, 1946, primaries. No wonder, as his first campaign speech was high praise for Warren as a ”great administrator.” In short, it looked like he ”threw the election” to Warren by a fake “opposition” campaign. On June 23, 1946, Drew Pearson reported over the radio that Warren and Kenny, with their wives, spent a week’s vacation together, directly after the election, at Santa Monica. ”Some Democrats,” said Pearson, ”are wondering if they didn’t spend a week together before election, too.”
The New Republic of June 17, 1946, commented that “Bob Kenny was responsible for this (the Patterson-Rogers feud) as well as for most of the untenable and unworkable compromises that had been forced on California liberals in recent years... The fact that his opportunism has landed him in the ashcan is no consolation.”
This is the Kenny campaign for the criticism of which Vern Smith is expelled from the Communist Party and termed ”an enemy of the working class.” This is the “coalition” which he criticized. Or, just where, then, is that coalition?
Was it the “coalition” which met under the name of the “People’s Legislative Conference” at Sacramento, on Feb. 15, 1947? There, the CIO had 152 delegates, the AFL only 55. We note that the People’s World of Feb. 17, 1947, reported all the organizations represented, but though there were “several clubs of the Democratic Party,” there were none at all from the Communist Party! Some 500 delegates, all told, but not a representative from the Communist Party!
Where is that bold resolve set forth in the State Board policy letter of March 23, 1946, that the Communist Party “will fight for recognition and acceptance of the Party in the coalition, while reserving the right to present its own independent position”? Where, was the Communist Party? Its face was hidden from the masses, after the standard formula of traditional Right Opportunism.
(Postcript: Again, the Party’s face was hidden at the August 23, 1947, meeting, in Los Angeles, of this same “People’s Legislative Conference.” Not one person appeared with credentials from the Communist Party! No one to ask for its “recognition and acceptance” in the coalition! No one to speak for the Communist Party and “present its own independent position.” Then, the next day, August 24, when the much advertised “third party” was born – if, indeed, an organization which sets no goal of attaining governmental power for itself can be called a “party” rather than a sort of “non-partisan league” whose goal is to “reform” the character of another party, or parties – the same Right Opportunist crime was committed of “hiding the face of the Party.” There was not only no ”fight for” the Communist Party to be “recognized and accepted” in the new “third party,” there was not even any attempt made at all to even state the existence of the Communist Party. There were members of the Communist Party there, true, but they spoke for the programs of non-Communist organizations; they did not raise one single voice to champion the “independent position” of the Communist Party! This was Right Opportunism; but it could also very easily turn out to be as sectarian as any “leftist” position could be.)
With such a leadership, of what good are the best of National Convention Resolutions? Or perfectly proper policies written on paper? Both are violated by those who wrote them while yet the ink is wet on them. Even the parties of the Second International were rarely so involved in a welter of Oil Trust intrigue, dirty political deals, parliamentary horse-trading, or got the party of the working class so ignominiously defeated or self-suppressed. Even Kautsky would scarcely have dared to call such an unprincipled and suicidal maneuver a praiseworthy “coalition,” one that is sanctioned by Marxism. But our leadership in the CPUSA stoutly contends that all this is not only Marxist, but Leninist, too! We shall explore that idea.
[14] In the San Francisco city-county election of November, 1945, the Communist Party ran Herbert Nugent for Supervisor. Apparently because this election is formally “non-partisan,” the Party practically hid the fact that Nugent was a Communist, thus hiding the face of the Party, a time-worn indicator of Right Opportunist habits. But what is more important, is the fact that, after Nugent had persuaded the important “ally,” the CIO Political Action Committee, to endorse his candidacy, a certain Party member, an official of a certain CIO union, and one of the leaders of the Right Opportunist faction in the Party, not only angrily objected to the PAC endorsement of his own Party comrade, but went into the next meeting of the council of the CIO-PAC, and making use of the threat of withdrawing his union’s financial support to the PAC, forced non-Party members of the PAC to change their vote and withdraw the PAC endorsement of Nugent! This anti-Party, red-baiting behavior, nevertheless, went unpunished by the Party leadership, always subservient to the Right Opportunist faction, and making itself, by such conduct, indistinguishable from the faction.
[15] The State Board does not deny, except by implication, that the “third” party will be a “capitalist” party. It would be difficult to deny this, because the national leadership has repeatedly and definitely denied that the “third” party would be a “labor” party; and, since parties, as every Marxist knows, represent definite classes, what other class could this “third” party represent than the capitalist class? Of course, it could be a petty-bourgeois party, but such a party, even though opposing the monopolist capitalists, still defends capitalism, and thereby qualifies as a “capitalist” party.
[16] As to Smith’s charge that Kenny’s defeat was due to his failure to break with Truman, that charge is borne out by the highest Party authority. General Secretary Dennis, reporting to the National Committee in July, 1946, said in part:
“It should not be overlooked that a number of progressives were defeated because they failed to dissociate themselves decisively from the imperialist course of the Administration... Closely connected with this, a number of progressives, pro-Roosevelt Democratic candidates, such as Kenny in California, were defeated, in part, because of the growing opposition of labor and the people to the Administration’s policies, especially as expressed in Truman’s reactionary role in the railroad strike.”
Comrade Dennis, of course, knows nothing of oil or Ed Pauley, nor of Kenny’s help to Pauley in the matter of the Tidelands Oil Bill. Dennis could not, of course, be expected to read the New York Times. And the People’s World was compelled to remain silent, by Schneiderman dictum.
[17] This seems to be merely a reminder to Party members that local unions have a right to disregard the political recommendations of higher bodies. But why was it inserted in the State Board letter? The reason is to be found in the fact that the Party has become a tail to the CIO leadership. Since the CIO had, in fact, already made a deal with Kenny, this enabled the AFL state Federation of Labor to influence the AFL membership, perhaps three times the number of CIO membership in California, against Kenny and for Warren. The State Board of the Party, by this letter to its own members in the AFL, was trying to offset that influence of the AFL leadership. At best difficult, this was made next to impossible, first by the fact that anybody trying to influence an AFL local for Kenny, would instantly be tagged as a Communist, and, therefore “a CIO man.” Secondly, as shown by my analysis of the Machinist strike, the failure — better said, the refusal of the Party to build an economic united front of labor in the wage movement that began in 1945 prevented any political united front of labor being built in the 1946 election. Both locally and nationally, this sectarian tailing of the CIO leadership by the Party leadership makes all the bluster and chatter by the Party about favoring labor unity as imperative (which it is, of course) mere talk, as the AFL membership is not blind, and can only regard talk from Communists on the subject as so much CIO propaganda.
[18] Just how unreliable a “progressive” Kenny is, even concerning upholding the U. S. Constitution’s provision as to the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” as their ultimate guarantee of their own freedom, may be seen by Kenny’s attitude toward this fundamental right. In March, 1944, Kenny, as California’s Attorney General, speaking before the State Sheriffs’ Association, declared:
“Unless government officials take steps to check the bringing back of these deadly weapons (souvenir war guns), our efforts of fifty years in disarming the public, may prove futile.”
Ultimately, any coalition with such as Kenny, would turn out to be of the quality of the internationally notorious Brandler coalition of the government of Saxony, Germany, during the armed risings of 1923, a coalition of class treachery decisively condemned by the Communist International. Of this precise nature was the support given by the Communist Party in Los Angeles in 1944 to the police demand for a “disarm the public” city ordinance, a support which I protested in vain to the representative of the State Board of the Party in the Editorial Board of the People’s World, John Pittman. This support expressed the theory of the “neutral” state, “above classes.”