Harrison George
(Readers will note I use quotations, some long ones. Our Party leadership has made this imperative, because I have found it necessary in order to take Marx and Lenin from the grave, to which our leadership has consigned them, as also to put Franklin D. Roosevelt back into the grave, where our leadership refuses to let him remain. More, this should make clear that I am not “inventing” any “new theory,” but only presenting in the current situation, the theory of Marx and Lenin – HG.)
ON THE QUESTION OF ALLIANCES, Lenin wrote: “The Russian Social-Democrats are prepared to enter into alliance with revolutionaries of other trends for the purpose of achieving certain partial aims...
“While pointing out that one or other of the various opposition groups are in unison with the workers, the Social Democrats will always put the workers in a special category, they will always point out that the alliance is temporary and conditional, they will always emphasize the special class position of the proletariat, which tomorrow may be the opponent of its allies of today.
“We may be told: ’This may weaken all the fighters for political liberty at the present time.’ Our reply will be: This will strengthen all the fighters for political liberty. Only those fighters are strong who rely on the appreciation of the real interests of definite classes, and any attempt to obscure these class interests, which already play a predominant role in modern society, will only serve to weaken the fighters.
“That is the first point. The second point is that, in the struggle against autocracy, the working class must single itself out from the rest, for it alone is the truly consistent and unreserved enemy of absolutism; it is only between the working class and absolutism that compromise is impossible, only in the working class has democracy a champion without reservations, who does not waver, who does not look back. The hostility of all other classes, groups and strata of the population towards autocracy is not absolute’, their democracy always looks back.
“The bourgeoisie cannot but realize that industrial and social development is retarded by absolutism, but it fears the complete democratization of the political and social system, and may at any time enter into alliance with absolutism against the proletariat.
“The petty bourgeoisie is two-faced by its very nature; on the one hand it gravitates towards the proletariat and to democracy; on the other hand it gravitates towards the reactionary classes, tries to hold up the march of history, is likely to be caught by the flirtations of absolutism, to conclude an alliance with the ruling classes against the proletariat in order to strengthen its own position as a class of small property owners.
“The proletariat alone can be – and because of its class position cannot but be – consistently democratic, the determined enemy of absolutism, incapable of making any concessions, or of entering into any compromises. The proletariat alone can act as vanguard in the fight for political liberty and for democratic institutions...
“That is why the merging of the democratic activities of the working class with the democratic aspirations of the other classes and groups would weaken the political struggle, would make it less determined, less consistent, more likely to compromise. On the other hand, if the working class is- singled out as the vanguard in the fight for democratic institutions, it will strengthen the democratic movement, will strengthen the struggle for political liberty, for the working class will stimulate all other democratic and political opposition elements, will push the liberals towards the political radicals, it will push the radicals towards an irrevocable rupture with the whole of the political and social structure of present society.” – Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 377-9.
Is there a light-house in this storm of controversy about which kind of a coalition, and with whom, the. CPUSA should strive to build? Yes, there is!
The basic outline of what a coalition should be, and should not be, in the United States, was set clearly forth by none other than the same Comrade Dimitroff (then head of the Communist International), whose present coalition in Bulgaria is, first misrepresented as having attained power “peacefully,” and then subtly interpreted (as a sort of new “Teheran”) as being identical with the “democratic coalition” now being advocated by our Party’s present leaders.
Let us see what Dimitroff said about a coalition in the. United States; a coalition which cannot be successfully attacked as “leftist” or “adventurist” or as a “direct” fight for Socialism. However, since such a coalition does lead to the “direct” fight for Socialism, it is certain to be attacked by those who have given up the thought of ever fighting for Socialism. Of that, more later. But here is what Dimitroff said at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935, of the specific kind of coalition needed to fight fascism and reaction in the United States:
“There are in every country certain cardinal questions which at the present stage are agitating vast masses of the Population and around which the struggle for the establishment of the united front must be developed. If these cardinal points, cardinal questions, are properly grasped, it will ensure and accelerate the establishment of the united front. (This in introduction to his comment on specific countries. – HG.)
“A – The United States of America
“Let us take, for example, so important a country in the capitalist world as the United States of America. There, millions of people have been brought into motion by the crisis. The program for the recovery of capitalism has collapsed. Vast masses are beginning to abandon the bourgeois parties, and are at present at the crossroads.
“Incipient American fascism is endeavoring to direct the disillusionment and discontent of these masses into reactionary fascist channels. It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism at the present stage that it appears principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an ’un-American’ tendency imported from abroad. In contradistinction to German fascism, which acts under anti-constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and ’American democracy.’ It does not yet represent a directly menacing force. But if it succeeds in penetrating to the broad masses who have become disillusioned with the old bourgeois parties, it may become a serious menace in the very near future.
“And what would the success of fascism in the United States entail? For the toiling masses it would, of course, entail the unrestrained strengthening of the regime of exploitation and the destruction of the working class movement. And what would be the international significance of this success of fascism? As we know, the United States is not Hungary, or Finland, or Bulgaria, or Latvia. The success of fascism in the United States would change the whole international situation quite materially.
“Under these circumstances, can the American proletariat content itself with the organization of only its class conscious vanguard, which is prepared to follow the revolutionary path? No.
“It is perfectly obvious that the interests of the American proletariat demand that all its forces dissociate themselves from the capitalist parties without delay. It must at the proper time find ways and suitable forms of preventing fascism from winning over the broad discontented masses of the toilers.
“And here it must be said that, under American conditions, the creation of a mass party of toilers, a ’Workers’ and Farmers’ Party’ might serve as such a suitable form. Such a party would be a specific form of the mass people’s front in America that should be set up in opposition to the parties of the trusts and the banks, and likewise to growing fascism.
“Such a party, of course, will be neither Socialist nor Communist. But it must be an anti-fascist party, and must not be an anti-Communist party.
“The program of this party must be directed against the banks, trusts and monopolies, against the principal enemies of the people, who are gambling on its misfortunes. Such a party will be equal to its task only if it defends the urgent demands of the working class, only if it fights for genuine social legislation, for unemployment insurance; only if it fights for land for the white and black sharecroppers and for their liberation from the burden of debt; only if it works for the cancellation of the farmers’ indebtedness; only if it fights for the demands of the war veterans, and for the interests of the members of the liberal professions, the small businessmen, the artisans. And so on.
“It goes without saying that such a party will fight for the election of its own candidates to local offices, to the state legislatures, to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“Our comrades in the United States acted rightly in taking the initiative for the creation of such a party. But they still have to take effective measures in order to make the creation of such a party the cause of the masses themselves. The question of forming a ’Workers’ and Farmers’ Party,’ and its program, should be discussed at mass meetings of the people. We should develop the most widespread movement for the creation of such a party, and take the lead in it.
“In no case must the initiative of organizing the party be allowed to pass lo elements desirous of utilizing the discontent of the masses which have become disillusioned in both the bourgeois parties, Democratic and Republican, in order to create a ’third party’ in the United States, as an anti-Communist party, a party directed against the revolutionary movement.” (From Dimitroff, a pamphlet by Workers Library Publishers, pp. 30-31, 1935.)
In making Dimitroff’s position official, the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, by resolution, approved of “the formation of ’Labor Parties’ or ’Workers’ and Farmers’ Parties’(USA).” – Page 28 of “Resolutions” of the Congress, published by Workers Library Publishers, 1935.
To thousands who have joined our Party in the last ten years or so, and to many who joined it before, but seem to have forgotten the Seventh World Congress, the above may come as something of a surprise.
Why? Because, beginning in 1937, the Browder leadership began a policy, unfortunately successful, of sabotaging to death the then growing Farmer-Labor Party movement, saying it was “too narrow,” on Browder’s road to the liquidation even of our own Party.
Secondly, it may surprise many, because our present leadership, following the same path, has so far completely concealed even the one-time existence of such a policy as that set forth by Dimitroff, uttering not one single word about it in all the verbose speeches and articles concerning the “coalition” they are at present advocating. Concealing the slogan “For a Farmer-Labor Party,” they themselves narrow it down to a bare mention of a “labor party,” which they curtly dismiss as “too narrow.”
Reviewing the above, and comparing it with the propaganda put out by the Party leadership for a “democratic coalition” that is supposed to take form in a “third” party, what becomes abundantly clear is that the leadership is not fighting for the kind of coalition which Dimitroff’s report and the 1935 program of our Party held “might serve as a suitable form” of “preventing fascism from winning over the broad discontented masses of the toilers” who “have become disillusioned with the old bourgeois parties.”
It has become clear that our Party is not fighting for, but rather is fighting against, any new party, regardless of name, which could be said to be a “farmer-labor” party, a term never even mentioned. It has become clear, as well, that our leadership is, as it has stated, utterly opposed to any “labor party.” Therefore, it is also clear that our Party leadership is ignoring Dimitroff’s estimate that:
“The interests of the American proletariat demand that all its forces dissociate themselves from the capitalist parties without delay.”
On the contrary, our leadership, in every report and speech upon the subject, has elevated “delay” of this “dissociation” to the level of a principle, and has even made it, in practice, a requirement of party loyalty.
We must do nothing “premature,” has been the central theme, and from that the result has been that we have done nothing, except utter a vast amount of chatter about a “third party,” filled with warnings of what not to do, with contradictory urgings to “take the initiative,” but, also, to “wait till the Center forces in the CIO,” or the “liberal Democrats,” or the “conservative-progressives” – as the case may be – “are ready.” Never an attempt to rally the millions of discontented masses, because of no faith in their readiness. Always crying out that labor must lead, but contradictorily, that it “cannot succeed” without the liberal bourgeoisie. Always and ever, in short, qualifying, postponing, delaying that which Dimitroff declared must not he delayed, the “dissociation” of all labor forces from “the capitalist parties.”
This vagueness, this Hamlet-like indecision, this voluminous and verbose teeter-totter between doing and not doing, has filled our publications, lectures and committee reports with a mass of detailed confusion. And not by accident. As Lenin remarked, vagueness is an inherent formula of opportunism. An opportunist must advise the workers to follow the bourgeoisie, but he dare not say so plainly, hence the equivocation, the beating about the bush, the vagueness and double-talk.
(Postscript: Two new examples among many: “New York, Sept. 19 [1947] – AP – Eugene Dennis, general secretary of the Communist Party, said last night that American Communists believed the time right for launching a third party but that they would not ’isolate ourselves’ by taking such a step ’without substantial trade union and other progressive support.’ Dennis told a rally [at Madison Square Garden] the party favored ’a strong, independent people’s party closely connected with the pro-Roosevelt-Wallace program and movement’. ”
(Again, from the People’s World of Sept. 20. 1947: “San Francisco, Sept. 19: William Z. Foster, national chairman of the Communist Party, told an audience of 1200 last night that the two great ’historical tasks’ [sic!] facing the American people are [1] the defeat of the Republican Party in 1948 and [2] the laying of a basis [sic!] for a third party.”)
This avoidance of plain and simple clarity of declaration, always observable in the policy statements of a revolutionary, has been deliberately aided by a most unusual dodging of the adoption of any official resolutions on policy by our leading bodies, especially the National Committee; and the substitution, for such definitive resolutions, of “reports.” These reports, invariably verbose, crammed with ambiguous directives, not only have the vagueness of opportunism, but have the result of opportunism, the yielding of hegemony by the proletariat to the bourgeoisie in whatever action is taken, if any, and the consequent tailism of our Party.
Therefore, it is very clear that our Party has not done what Dimitroff advised it should do; that is, build a Farmer-Labor Party type of coalition. What is not made clear, as yet, is precisely what kind of a coalition, what kind of “third party,” if any, the present activities of our party, guided by such unclarity and ambiguity, could be building.
What kind of “third party” could be built by the present activities, is not yet clear because, subjectively, this vagueness of directive has left every individual comrade to imagine, rather than be certain, that there is to be found in the ambiguous directives, the confirmation he wants to find there, for the kind of coalition he hopes and works for, and that whatever coalition may be, finally, formed, will do what he hopes it will do.
Objectively, likewise, the kind of coalition or “third party” being built remains unclear because no real coalition has yet developed, and consequently there have been no results of its activities. What it will be and do are matters only for conjecture, and the Party comrades naturally hope for the best.
(Postscript: Since the above was written, it has become clear that there will not be any “third party” formed in 1948 on a national scale, the only scale on which the national dictatorship of capital can be really opposed. This failure was not inevitable, but the direct result of our Party’s practice of delay over a long period, when objective factors were favorable, as stated in the National Convention Resolution of 1945, which resolution has thus been violated by our leadership through deliberate neglect. In only one state, California, has there been formed, on a state scale, what is called a “third” party, the “Independent Progressive Party” formed at Los Angeles on August 24, 1947. All Party comrades should examine it closely to determine if this “sample,” is what they want. It excludes the Communist Party by the device of not including it; the Party leadership having surrendered to red-baiting even by anticipation and made no fight to obtain “acceptance,” therefore, this new party can easily become viciously “anti-Communist” in a positive way, as it already is in a negative way. With the announcement that its chief function is to “threaten” the Democratic Party with a “third” party if the Democratic convention does not nominate somebody like Henry Wallace, not only is the so-called “independence” from capitalist parties proven to be a sham, but this “threat” itself shown to be ridiculous. For what callous and cynical capitalist politician is going to be impressed by a “threat” which he is told in advance is merely a threat, not seriously intended to be followed by action, and coming from but one, or at most, two states?
(This “third” party in California, together with the American Labor Party of New York, constitute the puny reality behind all the tall talk of a third party, talk so prevalent in our Party press that one might well imagine that Comrade Dennis has but to pull some nation-wide third party organization out of his pocket, like a stage artist pulling rabbits out of a hat, and thus confound the power of monopoly capital. The American Labor Party of New York, it must be recalled, has been said by Earl Browder to meet with just about as near his approval as any party now existing. In fact he joined it. Need more be said about it?
(This is the way the leadership of the CPUSA pretends to influence bourgeois democratic political government, at a time when the Communists of Italy compel a hostile government to yield, by calling, and winning, a strike of one million farm wage laborers – just to mention one item.)
However, the hopes of Party comrades that the “third party,” if ever our own Party leadership permits it to be formed nationally, will be of a character that Dimitroff described a Farmer-Labor Party would be, and will do what such a Farmer-Labor Party would do, even if called by some other name, such hopes are not to be realized.
To think so, is to imagine that there is more than one correct way to organize a People’s Front type of coalition. The solemn warning of Dimitroff, that to allow the formation of a “third party, as an anti-Communist party, a party directed against the revolutionary movement!” is a warning that an incorrect way of organizing a coalition is definitely tending to set up a fascist party in the United States. In short, by refusing to build a people’s front type of coalition, our Party leadership, if it is building any new and significant political party whatever, is building toward the formation of a party of fascism.
This may shock some comrades, because events have not as yet developed the true character of the ”third party movement” as at present promulgated to a stage where its anti-Communist, basically fascist character can be visible to all. At present, it shows a liberal, anti-monopolist visage to the masses. This is not unlike all fascist, as well as all social-democratic movements in their earlier periods, when they are establishing a base among the toiling masses, the better to betray these masses later.
In their formative periods, when definitely fascist parties seek a mass base, their agitation outruns social-democracy in demagogic cries for “social justice” and even “revolution,” although Dimitroff has pointed out that “a peculiarity” of American fascism is that it “appears principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism” and “as the custodian of the Constitution and ’American democracy.’ ”
Hitler promised the starving unemployed that the heads of the rich would “roll in the sand.” He promised “socialism,” but of a “national,” not a Marxist kind, the very kind of “socialism” furtively mentioned occasionally by Comrade Dennis, “socialism” in the “American national tradition.” Both Hitler’s Nazi Party and Mussolini’s Fascist Party violently attacked the “old parties” of capitalism. So revolutionary was the original Fascist Party program that, after Mussolini had seized power with the aid of the masses he had attracted by this program, and had “forgotten” his promises, the Communist Party of Italy offered a united front to these deluded “old guard” of Mussolini’s early followers, on the basis of a joint fight to demand that the original program be fulfilled.
Therefore, here in America, no one should be deceived by the “militant” words and “progressive” program of any “third party” which asks “the people” to support it against the “old” parties of capitalism.
This does not mean that a “third party” necessarily must be fascist, or even social-democratic. More than once, the Soviet press has recently mentioned how identical are the Democratic and Republican parties, and the need for a third party in the United States, but always implying that such a “third” party must be led by labor in complete independence of and opposition to both parties of capitalism. More than once, Communist leaders of Europe have expressed amazement why American labor has not organized “its own labor party.”
Such a “labor party” can, of course, be a “third” party. Likewise, a “Farmer-Labor” party can be a “third” party. But, this does not mean that any new party, merely because it is “third,” can be a “labor” party or a “Farmer-Labor” party. For a “third” party can also be a fascist party. And if our present CPUSA leadership continues in office and in its present practices, any “third” party is highly probable to turn out to be a party of fascism.
A “third” party can be a party of fascism if it:
1. Develops as a party which, in fact, if not in formal statement, is an anti-Communist party; when it excludes the Communist Party in any way.
2. Any “third” party can become a fascist party if its exclusion of the Communist Party takes the more subtle but more dangerous because deceitful form of merely not including the Communist Party; especially so when the Communist Party itself takes a non-resistant attitude toward such fascist exclusion of itself and hence toward fascist domination of such party, thus surrendering to fascist red-baiting or the possibility of it, and does not fight, down below among the masses, for full and equal participation, more, as Dimitroff advised, to “take the lead in it.”
3. A “third” party can be a fascist party when it is given over to the hegemony, ideologically, of the liberal bourgeoisie, even though its mass of followers are proletarians and come from organized labor. The reason why such leadership will eventually lead such party into fascism is because the petty bourgeoisie must, inescapably, respond to the pressure and requirements of the fascistic big bourgeoisie in the latter’s drive for war abroad and fascism at home. As Stalin has said (Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, p. 233): “The liberal bourgeoisie of an imperialist country is bound to be counter-revolutionary”
4. Any “third” party can be or become a fascist party, regardless of all the hip-hurrahing of its followers in its formative period, which departs from the qualifications laid down by Dimitroff at the Seventh World Congress for a Farmer-Labor Party in the United States.
5. In short, any “third” party can be a fascist party when the Communist Party is, itself, not a true Communist Party, does not fight for its own distinct revolutionary, proletarian ideology (and denies its revolutionary goal as is constantly being done by our leadership), does not fight for inclusion and leadership in the third party movement, when it gives over leadership in such movement to the liberal bourgeoisie, and does not follow the tactical line laid down by Dimitroff to attain its strategic historic aim of socialism, and thus carry the masses onward from a defeat of fascism to the overthrowal of capitalism.
Why, in its arguments for the “coalition” it champions to become the “third party,” does our leadership not speak at all of the policy set forth by Dimitroff in 1935 and, for a while, successfully pursued by our Party? If our leaders can bring forth sound arguments against such policy, as to why the position taken by Dimitroff and our Party in 1935 could not apply to the United States today, why don’t they bring them out?
Obviously, because they cannot. For the most careful analysis, or the most cursory will show that even more than in 1935 the kind of People’s Front coalition “in opposition to the parties of the trusts and the banks, and likewise to growing fascism,” as represented by a Farmer-Labor Party, is imperatively necessary, Even more than in 1935, an “anti-Communist third party” is a menace to the revolutionary movement, a fascist danger.
Let us briefly compare: In 1935, the crisis which had begun in 1929 had brought “millions into motion”; in 1947 we face a crisis which will make the one beginning in 1929 look mild, and will undoubtedly set far more “millions into motion.”
In 1935, “the program for the recovery of capitalism had collapsed,” even with the efforts of Roosevelt to prevent it in 1947, does “the recovery of capitalism” look better? On the contrary, it looks far worse.
“Vast masses are beginning to abandon the bourgeois parties,” said Dimitroff in 1935. Are not even vaster masses doing the same today?
In short, the “tide of the movement,” spoken of by Stalin in his Foundations of Leninism (Chapter VII, Section 3), which was at its “ebb” during World War II in the United States, is again on its way to “high tide.”
In 1935, Dimitroff said that a peculiarity of American fascism is that it “appears principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism... as the custodian of the Constitution and ’American democracy.’ ” Does it not do the same today? Indeed so; it specializes in being, demagogically, “against both fascism and communism.” And any “anti-Communist third party” would undoubtedly be “anti-fascist” and the noisiest “custodian of the Constitution and ’American democracy,’ ”– and highly attractive to the masses who are abandoning the “bourgeois parties.”
Now, it will have been noted that Dimitroff said, in 1935, that “Our comrades in the United States acted rightly in taking the initiative for the creation of such a party (a Workers’ and Farmers’ Party).” The fact is that, long before the Seventh Congress of the Communist International our Party not only initiated the Farmer-Labor Party movement, but that movement was progressing very well even after the Seventh Congress until Browder become captivated with opportunist nonsense and proceeded to liquidate it. Let us look at a cross section of the history of how that was done.
In June, 1936, Browder wrote an article, which appeared in the September, 1936, issue of the magazine The Communist International, published at that time by our Party. He began by saying:
“The program of building a people’s front against reaction, fascism and war, elaborated by Comrade Dimitroff in his historic report to the Seventh World Congress, is being carried out also in the USA and takes the form of gathering the mass organizations of the toilers – hitherto without independent political roles – into a federation (Note: It was a federation of organizations, not a “mass” party in the sense of an organization of individuals of mixed affiliation or of none – hence, within it, labor kept its identity, as did our Party. – HG) with the still small Communist and Socialist parties, to make up what has come to be known in our country as a Farmer-Labor Party.” (Browder then quoted part of Dimitroff’s report, and continued.)
“The CPUSA has undertaken as its central task in this period to assist the toiling masses in breaking away from the capitalist parties and to achieve political independence through such a Farmer-Labor Party. Political reaction is threatening the United States.” (He gave details of the “Liberty League,” then continued.)
“Its program has been taken over by the Republican Party, and rallies all the most reactionary forces of the Democratic Party. It is determined to oust the Democratic President, Roosevelt, and place the Republican candidate, Landon, into office.” (Browder then explains the role of Hearst and Hoover as Landon’s backers, and continues.)
“What is the role of Roosevelt in this situation? He attempts to steer a course between the Hearst program on one hand, and the interests and demands of the people on the other. Strong pressure from the masses has brought some concessions from Roosevelt; but strong pressure from the Republicans and Liberty League wrings from him greater concessions to the reactionaries – at the expense of the masses.” (Browder gives details, then continues.)
“It is clear that it would be a fatal mistake for the workers to depend upon Roosevelt to make the necessary battle to defeat the Republican Party reaction and the Liberty League forces within his own Democratic Party.” Browder then speaks of trends in the labor movement; of how William Green’s link with the Republican Party “misrepresents the bulk of the organized labor movement” – the CIO not yet being formed – and that the AFL masses were, he says:
“... much better represented by the leaders of the progressive industrial union bloc, John L. Lewis, Sidney Hillman and David Dubinsky. This group has sounded the alarm against the menace of fascism and war, represented by the Republican Party, and without endorsing the Democratic Party, are working for the re-election of President Roosevelt through a new organization called Labor’s Non-Partisan League, which they indicate may take the path of the formation of a Farmer-Labor Party at a later time.” (Familiar outlines appear; these heroes of yester-year had their LNPL; today Phil Murray has his PAC.) However, Browder continued:
“At the same time the Farmer-Labor Party movement is growing rapidly. Hundreds of local parties are already in existence or in process of being formed. Several states have serious Farmer-Labor Parties in the field, fighting for Congressmen and State administrations. Mass movements within the old capitalist parties are moving towards separation and towards unity with the Farmer-Labor Party movement. This is especially seen in the Epic movement of California, which leads a large part if not the majority of the Democratic party following; in the Commonwealth movement in Washington, with a similar position; in the Nonpartisan League movement in North Dakota, which in the past has dominated the Republican Party of that state. The movement in the trade unions has become formidable, but in its national expression is still dominated by the Labor’s Non-Partisan League exclusive orientation on Roosevelt.
“The possibility for unification on a national scale of the Farmer-Labor Party movement in 1936 faced a serious difficulty in the sweep of the Roosevelt support through the ranks of labor and the farmers. It was clear that the movement was not prepared to put a presidential ticket in the field against Roosevelt, and that any effort to do so would split the movement and set it back for a long time.
“When, therefore, a call was issued by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, which controls the administration of that State, for a national conference to examine the possibility of calling a constituent congress for a national party this year, but excluded the possibility of naming a presidential ticket, the Communists and their sympathizers throughout the Farmer-Labor movement agreed to participate upon this basis. Our Party declared:
“In the Farmer-Labor Party this year it is necessary to have a united front between those, like the Socialists and Communists, who will have an independent ticket, and the broad trade union movement which is supporting Roosevelt.
“We Communists can enter such a united front with workers who support Roosevelt. Of course, we do not commit ourselves to Roosevelt in any way by this. Our position towards Roosevelt is clear. We do not cancel a word of our criticism of Roosevelt. We do not and will not take any responsibility for him. But we will not break off united front relations with those organizations because they go with Roosevelt...
“This position of the Communist Party made it possible to bring together a national conference of 85 representatives of all sections of the movement for a Farmer-Labor Party, in Chicago on May 30, 1936.”
What was the outcome? Good. But with the seed of future defeat if our Party yielded, as it did later yield, to the opportunism seeping down from the “trade union leaders” who were captivated by the bourgeois reformism of Roosevelt, and gave up its agitation among the deepest layers of the exploited masses for a party of their own, organizationally and ideologically independent of both bourgeois parties, even if remaining, for a period, under the spell of Roosevelt. Engels, urging American Marxists in 1886 to help organize a “labor party,” especially pressed them to remain at that task, even if it were led for a time by Henry George, and would have a confused program. Officially, the Chicago conference of May, 1936, declared:
“Increasing millions of farmers, workers, middle class and professional people live in want and degradation, or face insecurity, unemployment and poverty. The major political parties – controlled by the banks and corporations – are unable or unwilling to end this tragic state of affairs. Yet it can and must be ended.
“The conference therefore recognizes the need to form a national Farmer-Labor Party, based on and controlled by trade union, farm, unemployed, professional and co-operative organizations, united for independent political action.”
But – it “left open” the question of when that should be done, and Browder said:
“This action was taken on the motion of trade union representatives who work in close contact with the progressive trade union leaders composing Labor’s Non-Partisan League.”
Thus, the “Phil Murrays” of 1936: John L. Lewis, Hillman and Dubinsky, who were Labor’s Non-Partisan League, as Murray is the CIO-PAC, had the decisive role – but only providing our own Party failed to do what Dimitroff urged it should do:
“... in order to make the creation of such a party the cause of the masses themselves. The question of forming a ’Workers’ and Farmers’ Party’ and its program, should be discussed at mass meetings of the people. We should develop the most widespread movement for the creation of such a party.”
That this could have been done in the years directly following 1936, and upon the same basis as in 1936, with the popular tide remaining high for Roosevelt the reformer, as distinct from Roosevelt the Democrat, goes without question. At the time, the Party even said so. But we shall see, shortly, how it was not done. Now, it is worth remarking that, because we had done our work well up to that date, the 1936 conference for a Farmer-Labor Party not only rejected red-baiting, but admitted the Communist Party on a basis of complete equality, and it developed a leading ideological role. The issue was raised by the refusal to attend of the Wisconsin Farmer-Labor Progressive Association, because Communists were attending.
The Communist Party spokesman addressed the Conference. He frankly stated our Party’s disbelief that Roosevelt was a bar against “reaction and fascism in America; he is retreating before reaction, and his own party, especially in the South, is itself too deeply reactionary. Only a Farmer-Labor Party can rally the progressive forces of the country, halt the trends towards fascism, and preserve American democratic liberties.”
“It is true we Communists are revolutionists,” he said, making the differentiation which our present party leaders never make. “That is our right guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence... we help build the Farmer-Labor Party. We do not propose to give it a program of revolution, now or later. We do not ask it to adopt Communist principles. We ask only that it shall not adopt the Hearst anti-Red campaign, which harms the broadest progressive movement more than it does the Communists, and that it allow the Communists to help build the party. We know that America, while its people are not ready to fight for Socialism, is fully ripe for a Farmer-Labor Party. Such a party will not bring Socialism, but it will greatly lessen the pains of a later transition to Socialism.”
After that speech, said Browder’s article, the anti-Communist issue was not raised, and Communists took an active part in all discussions and decisions: “The Communists have strengthened and deepened their roots among the American masses,” he wrote. And as to the Conference itself – it constituted “a decisive advance on the road to independent political action of the American toiling people in a degree never before seen.”
Notwithstanding this promising situation, in which the Communist Party declared: “If we begin now, then by 1940 it (the Farmer-Labor Party) can become one of the first two parties in the land,” the prevalence of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bourgeois reformism began to affect Browder, and little by little led him, first to liquidate the Farmer-Labor Party movement, then to the liquidation of the Communist Party itself.
Three months later, in the December, 1936, issue of the magazine The Communist International, Browder estimated the presidential elections then just past. Observe the course of his retreat from working class political independence; also how he covered the retreat with reassuring words of how it was “really” an advance:
“It is clear,” Browder wrote, “that the class basis of support of the two major (no longer “bourgeois”? – HG) parties was significantly transformed in 1936. The two... rallied armies behind them of a fundamentally new composition... The tide which made up Roosevelt’s immense majority was composed of the currents moving towards a great People’s Front against fascism and war; but the administration which it swept into power is not a People’s Front administration... is not dependent upon this movement nor representative of it... Roosevelt will doubtless continue the role of mediation between the people and Wall Street, without departing from the fundamental interests of finance capital... (Can anyone show that he ever did, after 1936? – HG.)
“If we are to cause American political life to move Leftward, this must be based on the further growth, activity, organization and political maturity of the new progressive people’s organization and especially the increased unity and hegemony of the organized labor movement. That is a reasonable perspective... Roosevelt’s platform offered extraordinarily little of a concrete nature. (Nevertheless, Browder was deeply impressed by the pro-Roosevelt vote – HG.) That is a political fact of the most far-reaching consequences.”
Browder then went into a typical Dennis bit of speculation on “a split” in the Democratic Party, with an additional Dennis-like praise for what is absurdly called “independent” labor political action – by Lewis and his Labor’s Non-Partisan League, or by Murray’s CIO-PAC, these merchants of labor votes to the bourgeois parties exclusively. Of that “split” in the Democratic Party, Browder was most hopeful. There was, he solemnly declared, “a differentiation which is leading, sooner rather than later, to a deeper split.” (How soon is “soon”? That was over ten years ago, and Dennis has taken over the job of saying: “It is soon” – HG.)
“While this question (of a split) is being fought out,” Browder went on, “there will probably be no broad national convention to establish the Farmer-Labor Party (Yet this was what the Communists had advocated before the election! – HG), which is thus delayed, even though on a state and local scale the building of Farmer-Labor parties is in many places hastened by the election results.” (Naturally, and Browder was still giving the appearance of talking in their favor – HG.)
There was, in this article, the developing Browder idea that the Democratic Party was ceasing to be one of the parties of capitalism; that its “class ’basis” was ”significantly transformed.” And that, with a lucky “split” which was to come “soon,” by golly, the Democratic Party might well become the People’s Front! Therefore, with John L. Lewis busy with “independent” labor action in support of a capitalist party that was about to become a People’s Front by immaculate conception, any national convention to establish the Farmer-Labor Party was, indeed, not “probable.”[29]
Six months later, in Browder’s report to the Central Committee in June, 1937 (published as The Communists in the People’s Front), he took another step to the Right. But cautiously. He starts off with abundant camouflage: “The movement for a Farmer-Labor Party in the United States represents those same social and political currents which in France and Spain have crystallized in the People’s Front.
“Many are puzzled by an apparent contradiction between the clearly established growth of the People’s Front sentiment in the United States, and the slowing up of the organizational realization of a national Farmer-Labor Party.”
Browder then “rejected” any theory that “the tempo of development has been previously over-estimated” and likewise that “the whole conception of a Farmer-Labor Party has been artificially forced upon a movement which will take another direction in real life.” He gladly “analyzes and explains,” and came forward with the analysis, which he said “may shock some,” to the effect that the “tempo of development of the Farmer-Labor movement (sic! “movement” – HG) is seriously under-estimated.”
“Actually,” he went on, “the rise of the new political current has been so great that many eyes lost sight of the big wave and were fastened instead on some of the small ripples in the current. It is precisely because of the exceptional breadth and speed of the rise in the Farmer-Labor movement (sic! “movement”) that there has occurred what seems like a pause in organizing the national Farmer-Labor Party” (sic! “party”).
From then on, Browder resorts to some devious arguments. He cites the growth of the newly-born Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), as “the essential foundation and driving force of any successful Farmer-Labor Party.” But, he complains, the CIO (meaning John L. Lewis and his then assistant, Phil Murray) “is not ready” for such a step. (Nor is Phil Murray yet “ready” after ten years!)
To evade the fact that he was really referring to the CIO officials, and was ignoring the rank and file, Browder then speaks of some anonymous “Pennsylvania steel workers,” who, he claimed, were “deeply involved in politics,” and “will not listen to anyone who wants to deliver a lecture proving that the State, as the executive committee of the capitalist class, must always be a strikebreaker until it is taken over completely by the working class.”
After thus obliquely denying the class character of the capitalist State, a fact basic to Marxism, Browder here set up a straw man, and then lustily knocked it down. Actually, nobody “wanted to deliver” such lectures as agitational talks for a Farmer-Labor Party. It is exactly like his charge that somebody wanted to “wreck capitalism,” used as an excuse for him to advocate that we should “make capitalism work.” It is a typical Kautsky-Bittelman trick of charging comrades who want a Communist Party to have a Communist program with “wanting” to start an “immediate” or “direct” fight for Socialism.
These ”steel workers,” said Browder, back there in 1937, ”will waive all theoretical (sic!) objections for the practical advantages (sic!) of winning a few more strikes and consolidating their unions.” It would be ”unrealistic,” said Browder, to expect them to go for a Farmer-Labor Party in Pennsylvania, until ”the CIO (meaning Lewis & Company) is convinced that such a party will immediately exert as much political power as the CIO already exerts through the Democratic Party.”
He then added that the “first conclusion” of the “main body” of steel workers and miners, drawn from the (May 30, 1937) Republic Steel massacre of strikers, “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.”
This was only two weeks after the massacre, and not even Doctor Gallup had taken a poll, but Browder claimed to know exactly what steel workers and miners had “concluded” as to political affiliation in the future; and because of that massacre. They wanted, he said, a “liberal” Democratic Party in Illinois, “on the lines of Pennsylvania.”
What did they have in Pennsylvania? Governor Earle; later defeated because of graft, given diplomatic post by Roosevelt, and now a leading howler for atomic war on the Soviet Union. What have they now in Pennsylvania? A Republican administration! And in Illinois? The same!
So what has Browder’s “practical” and “realistic” sneering at “theoretical” objections gotten the steel workers and miners? No Farmer-Labor Party. No “liberal” Democratic Party; but only Republican state governments. And a lesson to our Party of what it means to tail after Phil Murray and allow him to dictate what Communists should, or should not, advocate among the trade union masses. A priceless example of opportunism; of “tailism” toward trade union officials.
Further along in his report, Browder went into some fancy sophistry which abolished our previous class estimation of the bourgeois parties as bourgeois parties, and made them represent “regional differences,” obviously in order to give his “new” theory of a “transformation” in their “class basis.” He said:
“For generations in America it has been an unquestioned axiom of political radicalism that progress begins with the organizational break with the old two-party system... 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 emerges the clear outlines of two new parties (sic! “two,” and “new” – HG) carrying over much debris of the old, but representing something new – a political alignment dominated, not by regional differences among the bourgeoisie, but by class stratification among the masses...
“It is in the light of this larger view of the political scene that we must estimate all the immediate factors and problems of the Farmer-Labor Party.” (In short, let us be opportunists, and under the excuse that “objective factors” and “the relationship of forces” compel us to do so, let us liquidate the People’s Front – HG.)
That the Browder leadership had already started this liquidation can be seen from what he stated on a previous page, where he said that examples he cited (Pennsylvania, Illinois, Washington) “express a general tendency to strengthen the line of Labor’s Non-Partisan League against that of the immediate formation of the national Farmer-Labor Party.”
In Washington, the Commonwealth Federation, with Communist consent if not initiative, had decided not to form a Farmer-Labor Party, but to “work” in the Democratic Party. And now, ten years later, look at the result: The Commonwealth Federation reduced to zero, and reaction triumphant in the Democratic Party! Some more results of opportunist “realism,” sneering at Marxian “theory” and ignoring the advice of the Communist International.
Further along in his report, Browder, to avoid class analysis, gave an inappropriate biological simile to represent a sociological process, by declaring:
“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 (“old/” not “capitalist” – HG) parties. It will be born in the main one (??? – HG) of the old traditional (again, not “capitalist” – HG) parties, contesting and possibly winning control of the federal government from the hour of its birth.”
Marvelous! And how appropriately that idea fits one of Lenin’s definitions of revisionism: “The policy of revisionism... consists in forgetting the basic interests of the proletariat... and in sacrificing these basic interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment.” And how identical, politically, is that statement by Browder in 1937, with the following from Comrade Foster in the February, 1947, issue of Political Affairs:
“Third Party workers must understand very clearly that the working class is now in the historical process of breaking from the political tutelage of the two bourgeois parties and that, with its allies, it is actually forming the new people’s party... The new party must be a great mass party in its first campaign and make a powerful contribution to the defeat of Republican reaction.”
Observe: That the working class is “breaking from” the “two” bourgeois parties”; but that its first job is to “contribute” to the election of one of those very same bourgeois parties!
“The development of the People’s Front,” said Browder, in his 1937 report, “can proceed only along the line of combining (the way to “break away” from the capitalist parties is to “combine” with them, in the weird reasoning of all our opportunists! – HG) the existing Farmer-Labor Party forms with the simultaneously developing progressive movements inside the Democratic Party... These considerations determine the form (emphasis mine – HG) of the broadest struggle for the maintenance of democracy and its extension. Their determining force must be equally great (emphasis mine – HG ) for all those whose chief aim for America is Socialism.” (It was, indeed, “equally great” in that Browder followed the liquidation of the Farmer-Labor Party by liquidation of the Communist Party, both into the Democratic Party.)
And how familiar does Browder’s words of 1937 sound, when compared with those of Eugene Dennis in January, 1947, when the “combining” process of “breaking away” is being advocated all over again. Dennis, in January Political Affairs (p. 15), spoke as follows to our National Committee Plenum:
“They (the advanced workers and progressives) must bear in mind that they cannot succeed unless the struggle for an effective and progressive realignment within, (my emphasis – HG) the Democratic Party, and among the electorate following it (not “breaking away” but “following” – HG) is vigorously pushed and fought for, and is closely coordinated with a gigantic and consistent effort to advance and organize in time, on a broad and representative basis, a new people’s and progressive party. However, at this time, the question must be left open as to whether or not it will be necessary (sic! “necessary” – HG) or advisable for this new party to place a third presidential ticket in the field in 1948.”
Here we have some pretty logic: The movement which is breaking away “cannot succeed” unless it is “closely coordinated” with the so-called movement which is not breaking away! And this is “explained” a million times over as “independent” political action! Just so did Browder, in his 1937 report, insist that in liquidating the People’s Front movement into the Democratic Party, he was “really” building the People’s Front:
“Does this broadening out of the approach 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 changes needed are tactical, in the field of methods and approach, above all by a broadening out to wider horizons.”[30]
Browder having liquidated this mass movement for political action really independent of the bourgeois political parties, Dennis is following the same theoretical concepts to maintain that liquidation. But, since Roosevelt is dead, and the masses are nearly if not quite as disillusioned in the Democratic Party as in the Republican Party, Dennis is having difficulties.
What to do? Firstly, Dennis insists that Roosevelt is not dead, but lives again in the form of Henry Wallace. (Since there is always bound to be some individual reformist emerge among the politicians of the capitalist parties, whether it be Henry George, William Jennings Bryan, Wendell Willkie, Franklin Roosevelt or Wallace, there can never be a shortage of material for creating reformist illusions.)
Secondly, to set up the hope that Wallace (or somebody else) can get “a liberal overturn within the Democratic Party on the lines of Pennsylvania” (Browder; quoted above).
Thirdly, to direct every effort and attention of our own Party and those influenced by it, to encouraging and organizing such a movement within the Democratic Party.
However, as an alternative, if the desertion from both bourgeois parties by the masses cannot be halted by this attempt to divert these masses into adherence to one of the bourgeois parties, then they are to be made captive by a “third” bourgeois party, although Dennis avoids describing its class character. This “third” party is not to be led by either labor or labor’s vanguard, the Communists, and under the conditions prevailing now and in the foreseeable future, and regardless of its anti-monopoly demagogy, is inescapably bound to be an “anti-Communist third party,” such as Dimitroff wanted us to prevent arising.
I repeat that neither labor nor the Communists are even supposed to hold leadership in this projected “third” party, although our Party leaders have repeated a million times that “labor must lead.”
Firstly, there is no genuine attempt to arouse the deep masses to take the lead; “to make the creation of such a party the cause of the masses themselves.” In practice, every move is directed to giving, even imploring the liberal bourgeoisie to take leadership.
Secondly, although in relation to a Farmer-Labor Party, Dimitroff said “we should take the lead in it” (as Communists took the lead in people’s front movements in Europe), our present Party leadership renounces, even in theoretical concept, the leadership of this “third” party by labor or the Communists. We have only to turn to the Daily Worker of February 18, 1947, and read the official pronouncements of Comrade Bittelman:
“Leftist opportunism,” he says, “appears in the Leftist insistence upon labor and the Communist Party assuming dominant positions in the coalition from the very first phase of its development.”
This is “Leftism,” Bittelman assures us, because labor dominance in the “coalition,” and in the “third party” which is to be the final organized form of this coalition, will come... sometime... but not now, “as a process of development.” But that is the music of the future. And neither Bittelman nor anybody else can point to a single historical instance, where the bourgeoisie, liberal or otherwise, having once gained control of any party, ever relinquished it to labor or the Communists “as a process of development.”
History, however, is littered with the wrecks of “labor,” “workers,” and “Socialist” parties where labor relinquished control to the liberal bourgeoisie, ideologically if not organizationally. Indeed, our own Communist Party stands in that very danger today![31]
I have, above, mentioned that one method of short-circuiting the leftward movement of the masses is to divert these masses, who are tending to desert both bourgeois parties, into adherence to one of them. This has been happily facilitated by the simple fact that congressional elections occur every two years, and presidential elections every four years.
Therefore, since we are forever facing an election within any “next” two years, the particular election being faced is always represented as so “extremely important,” as “the most crucial one in history,” with issues of “congressional,” or of “presidential” control, as the case may be, of such “terribly grave decision,” that it would never, never do to form any opposition party “now.”
That, we are solemnly assured, year after year, and election after election, would be “premature.” For, it is explained, although we must certainly aim to have a new opposition party in the “next election after this one,” just now “Republican reaction” must be defeated “at all costs.” And it is just too bad that it “costs” all hope of independent political action. In “this” election, “every progressive” must work and vote “against the Republicans.” By working and voting for whom? The Democratic Party, of course!
(This illustrates the crime our leadership has committed against the American proletariat, by deliberately leaving the working class no chance to cast a vote of protest against capitalism.)
In order to give this farce a serious aspect, every Democratic Party crime against the people is represented as “really” being “Republican Party policy.” That the Republican Party is reactionary goes without saying. But that every reactionary action of the Democratic Party is the result of some sad stupidity of Truman or Jimmie Roosevelt being “influenced” by the “Republican Party policy” (“falling for the Republican game” as Schneiderman puts it), is a howling absurdity.
But it is more. It is a deception of the masses. And by this deceit of the masses, they are held in leash by the Democratic Party, which they are led to think is fundamentally all right, but as having fallen into error, temporarily, through having “forgotten” to be true to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s memory, and having been seduced by the bad Republicans.
I have also noted above that, as an alternative method of preventing a People’s Front, in case the leftward moving masses cannot be deceived into adhering to the Democratic Party, our Communist Party leadership is preparing the masses to accept a “third” anti-Communist party, and hence an abortion of any genuine People’s Front.
And, since the liberal petty bourgeois is by nature a timid creature, our Communist leaders have taken up the vain task of organizing, not the proletariat, but the petty bourgeoisie; and are ever hopeful of snaring some individual of the big bourgeoisie, some of Dennis’s “conservative-progressives,” who might temporarily think that bourgeois reformism is better than bourgeois terror as a method of maintaining capitalist class rule.
Thus, Comrade Dennis, with all the hypnotic fixation of Buddha scrutinizing his navel, fixes all attention of “labor and the progressives” upon “rifts and realignments within the Democratic Party organizations” (September, 1946, Political Affairs), or “any cracks, rifts or fissures in the Administration or Democratic Party circles” (January, 1947, Political Affairs). And in September, 1946, Political Affairs, “Communists and militant workers” are enjoined to “seek out and cultivate allies and associates from among the followers of Wallace, Ickes and other independents.” (Sic! “independents” – HG.)
Because, said Dennis (September, 1946, Political Affairs), “It is necessary that labor encourage and aid the organization and activation of the pro-Roosevelt forces... that labor help influence a progressive regrouping within the Democratic Party.”
Is this Marxist? Not if Engels was a Marxist. In his letter to Turati in 1894, Engels plainly said: “Undoubtedly it is no business of ours directly to prepare a movement ourselves which is not strictly a movement of the class we represent.” If the petty bourgeoisie, or vagrant segments of the big bourgeoisie feel that they have class interests demanding a liberal or reformist expression in a political party, let them organize it. If that party of theirs, not of the proletariat, wants to fight fascism and war, we shall be glad to make a temporary and conditional alliance with it on that basis. But to seek out these elements and organize their party for them – never! We have our own work to do among the proletariat, teaching them always to mistrust all the bourgeois parties, including the “third” one.
Of course, as Lenin said, the proletariat must not regard the other classes and parties as “a homogenous reactionary mass,” and must support them (but from its own independent proletarian position) when they struggle for progressive aims. But organizing them is something else again. And to halt, to cripple and retard the organization; the separate organization of the proletariat, in order to “organize” the petty bourgeoisie, in hope that they will fight the monopolist bourgeoisie for power, is both criminal and futile.
The question of the petty bourgeoisie taking power came up, and in the most favorable circumstances for it so doing, just before the October Revolution in Russia. And then Lenin described that possibility as follows:
“The petty bourgeoisie has no desire to and cannot take power independently, as has been proved by the experience of all revolutions and by economic science, which explains that in a capitalist country, one may support capital or one may support labor, but one cannot hold a middle course.” (Selected Works, Vol. VI, pp. 285-6.)
Again, in his Tasks of the Proletariat (Little Lenin Library, Vol. 9, p. 45), Lenin wrote:
“How can the petty bourgeoisie be ’pushed’ into power, when this petty bourgeoisie could seize power now, but would not?
“Only by separating the proletarian, the Communist Party, through proletarian class struggle, free from the timidity of those petty bourgeois, only by consolidating the proletarians who are free from the influence of the petty bourgeoisie in deed and not only in word – can one make things so ’hot’ for the petty bourgeoisie that, in certain circumstances, it will have to seize power.”
Applied to the American scene, this Leninist principle would indicate that, even were it possible for a “third” party to be organized under leadership of the petty bourgeoisie; and even if it were desirable in the interests of the proletariat, for such a party to take power, by election or otherwise, there would still remain to our own Communist Party the task of organizing, and organizing separately, every possible force of the proletariat and its most dependable allies among the poorest farm strata, in such strength and with such sustained militant actions against the rule of the big bourgeoisie, that the petty bourgeoisie might be “pushed” (perhaps, as Lenin remarked, with the consent of the big-bourgeoisie) into governmental power.
In short, the task would still remain for us to organize a genuine People’s Front, whose foundation and core must be that of labor; and that this task must be done, with the trade union bureaucracy if possible, but without them and against them, if necessary.
We see, then, how widely our Party has departed from, in practice, the precepts stated in the Preamble of its Constitution, which declares our Party is based “upon the principles of scientific Socialism, Marxism-Leninism.”
We see how, after Browder liquidated the Farmer-Labor Party movement as a “specific form of the People’s Front in America,” our present leadership is maintaining that liquidation under the guise of providing a “third” party, of a kind expressly condemned by the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International.
We see, also, how, in trying to convince the Party membership of the wisdom of this opportunist policy, our present leadership, for reasons both obvious and questionable, omits the least mention of the Farmer-Labor Party movement, led with growing success in the 1930’s until liquidated by Browder.
We see how Comrade Foster skips clear over the 1930’s and the Farmer-Labor Party movement, without one single word, and goes back to 1924, to find a precedent more suitable to the character of the “third” party now being advocated, the CPPA (Conference for Progressive Political Action). For those who wish to learn how not to form a democratic coalition, I recommend a careful study of the history of the CPPA, as set forth in The Fat Years and the Lean, by Minton and Stuart, and published by our Party (Workers Library Publishers, New York). Foster prefers to use as reference the book Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States, which he himself admits (Political Affairs, February, 1947) is written by “the Social-Democrat, Nathan Fine.” In so doing, Foster grossly misrepresents the class character of the CPPA (page 111) by saying, concerning the Socialist leaders:
“They looked upon the labor party movement as dual to the Socialist Party. Later, however, they abandoned this sectarian position and penetrated the CPPA.”
The Socialist leaders went into the CPPA precisely because it was not a “labor party.” Indeed, it refused to become a “party” at all. It was as futile and as harmful a “coalition” of upper trade union bureaucrats, bourgeois reformist politicians and Social-Democratic traitors to the working class as could be assembled. And its historic role was to prevent the emergence of a labor party, a job it succeeded in performing.
The CPPA, led dictatorially by the elder LaFollette, who feared labor, and insisted on writing, personally, his own presidential platform, insisting as well on not being nominated, but only “endorsed” by the CPPA, was violently anti-Communist, anti-Negro and even anti-third-party.
True, LaFollette had, in 1924, an 1890-model program of “trust-busting.” But he spent more time “red-baiting” than trust-baiting. He arrogantly rejected the least organizational control over him, and when defeated, his CPPA – for he had it in his personal “pocket” – promptly dissolved.
LaFollette’s CPPA, a class hybrid which could not breed, could do nothing else but die. But it served to sabotage the first fumbling efforts of our Party to lead the proletariat to break with the parties of capitalism and form a Labor or Farmer-Labor Party. Just why Comrade Foster wants, in 1947, a replica in class character of the CPPA of 1924, is up to him to explain. Our Party should reject it, absolutely.
The Convention of our Party, in shaping its next tasks, must take account of the opportunist deviations in our present and past practices in interpreting, in action, the National Convention Resolution for a “democratic coalition.” It must:
1. Put an end to all these opportunist practices.
2. Clearly and explicitly define the task ahead as one of the building of a People’s Front in the United States against war and fascism, through the coalition of workers and farmers by federation of organizations, and the immediate separation of all possible forces of labor from both political parties of the bourgeoisie.
[29] This same illusion was already moldy with age when Browder got it. In the International Socialist Review for September, 1900, Eugene V. Debs was contending against it, as follows: “We hear it frequently urged that the Democratic Party is the ’poor man’s party,’ the ’friend of labor.’ There is but one way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and that is by making common property of the tools of labor... For a time, the Populist Party had a mission, but it is practically ended. The Democratic Party has ’fused’ it out of existence.”
This might well be read by Comrade Foster, who, in his eagerness for a “People’s Party” goes backward “From Stalin to Bryan.” Already in 1850, Marx remarked caustically upon bourgeois-democrats who “turned the word ’people’ into a sacred being” to avoid class analysis of parties.
Later, Comrade Lenin wrote, in his book Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (p. 94), how the Bolsheviks fought “against the bourgeois democratic abuse of the word ’people.’ It (the Bolshevik Party) demands that this word shall not be used to cover up a failure to understand the significance of class antagonisms. It absolutely insists on the need for complete class independence for the party of the proletariat. But it divides the ’people’ into ’classes,’ not in order that the advanced class may become self-centered, or confine itself to narrow aims and restrict its activity so as not to frighten the economic masters of the world, but in order that the advanced class, which does not suffer from the half-heartedness, vacillation and indecision of the intermediate classes, shall with all the greater energy and enthusiasm fight for the cause of the whole people, at the head of the whole People.”
[30] “Any broadening and deepening of our work inevitably gives rise to the question of how it should be broadened and deepened; if liquidation and otzovism are not accidents, but currents generated by specific social conditions, they then can penetrate into any methods for the broadening and deepening of the work. It is possible to broaden and deepen the work in the spirit of liquidationism...” (Lenin, Vol. IV, Selected Works, p. 46).
[31] In spite of Comrade Bittelman’s undoubted séances with the departed spirits of Kautsky and Bernstein, his reputation as a prophet does not improve with age. Directly after Browder had, in the June, 1937, Central Committee, put through his liquidationist policy of “broadening out,” Comrade Bittelman, writing in the September, 1937, issue of The Communist, figuratively danced with glee that our Party was “in the very thick of big progressive mass movements.” But Comrade Bittelman is a discerning man, and knew that this entailed dangers of liquidation. So he assured us all that this danger would never, never descend upon us. As political sentinel he declared “All is well!” In his best Socratic form, he wrote:
“Does it follow that in the present situation with the new relationship between the vanguard and the mass movements of the class, that the Communists should permit themselves to become dissolved in the mass movements, should cease to function within them as Communists and Marxists, should cease building the Communist Party? Of course not... The June meeting of the Central Committee warned against the danger of dissolution, and indicated ways of guarding against it.”
So it was all taken care of in advance, Comrade Bittelman said. Nevertheless, and as a direct consequence of that June, 1937, Central Committee meeting, it so happened that just eight years later, another Central Committee meeting in June, 1945, was supposedly in brave endeavor to reconstitute our Party from the very dissolution which Comrade Bittelman had so positively prophesied could not happen.
As to Comrade Bittelman’s special leadership in Jewish work, his history there is one of such an unrelieved series of opportunist errors that he has had to write a pamphlet devoted exclusively to confessions of mistakes and promises not to commit them all over again.
In the light of this sad record, Comrade Bittelman, in assuming the same role of soothsayer for Dennis that Bob Minor played for Browder, might well take a more modest pose; indeed, retire from the business of political prophecy, and permanently refrain from oracular denunciation of “opportunism” in others.