Harrison George
“All agree that opportunism is no accident, no sin, no slip, no betrayal on the part of individual persons, but the social product of a whole historical epoch. Not all, however, are trying to understand the full significance of this truth. Opportunism has been reared by legalism.” – From Lenin, The War and the Second International, Little Lenin Library, Vol. 2, p. 44.
TO THE “OLD TIMERS” in the revolutionary struggle for Socialism, the memory is still clear of the shock felt by all Socialists that Fourth of August, 1914, when the cables told how the large Social-Democratic fraction in the German Reichstag, had voted war credits to the Imperial German Government of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose grey-clad legions were already storming the Belgian forts and shouting ”Nach Paris!” and singing ”Dentschland Uber Alles!”
The officials of the Party called mass meetings in Berlin to “explain” why they, who only two years before, had signed the resolution at Basle, pledging themselves, in case of an imperialist war, to transform it into civil war and to fight their own governments – had done the exact opposite. A member of the Reichstag who had voted for the war credits “explained”:
“If we had not voted the war credits, we would have been arrested.”
“Well,” shouted the workers, “what’s the matter with that?”
But the deed was done. Long years of revolutionary words, and opportunist deeds, of the gradual accretion of revisionist practices, each one appearing rather “harmless” in itself, and seemingly “necessary” to maintain the “legality of the party” and still “advance” it in numerical power, had come to this.[38]
Class collaboration had borne its social-chauvinist fruit. And across the trenches of World War I, Socialist workers began shooting each other at the joint command of their capitalist governments and their “Socialist” party leaders.
All these leaders explained that they were only “defending” their country, “their” nation, from attack. All bat Lenin, who from Switzerland sent his thesis attacking this class treachery to his party in Russia, where the Bolshevik deputies in the Tsarist Duma voted against war credits, and were promptly carted off to prison.
Lenin’s thesis was summed up in his laconic remark: “A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but wish the defeat of its own government.” And he then and there declared that the very name “Social Democrat” had become one of reproach, that thereafter his party should be known as “Communist,” and that there must be a new International, purged of every taint of social reform ism, of opportunism, which, for years, he had foretold was leading to just such a betrayal.
This was not hard to accept for those of us who, in the American Socialist Party had, also for years, been fighting our own opportunists, the Spargos, Hillquits and O’Neals, until the ideological division was even clarified organizationally by the expulsion of Bill Haywood from the Party’s Executive Committee in 1912, over Haywood’s rejection of the “legalist” concept, distortedly presented by the so-called “anti-sabotage” Section 6, Article 2, of the Socialist Party’s 1912 Constitution. With Haywood, tens of thousands of rank and file members left the Socialist Party.
The long years of factional struggle between “the Reds” and “the Yellows” seemed to end thus, with “the Yellows” organizationally triumphant. But the Socialist Party from the moment of the adoption, officially, of “legality at all costs,” had begun its decadence and virtual disappearance as a leader of the working class, until today it is but a stinking Trotskyite corpse, but still talking through the lips of Norman Thomas.
The full force of this course was not apparent until America entered the war in 1917. And, meanwhile, “Leftism” grew by leaps and bounds, not inside the Socialist Party, but outside, in the I.W.W. (the Industrial Workers of the World). But anarcho-syndicalism also could not meet the crisis of imperialist war in consistent Bolshevik manner, and it, too, finally passed from the scene as an effective force.
Only in Russia, where the Bolsheviks, under the guidance of Lenin and Stalin, led the proletariat and its allies to victorious revolution, did the 1914-17 party of the proletariat really prove to be the vanguard party. And the Bolsheviks won only because they had, for two decades, made the fight against opportunism the cardinal tenet of their policy.
World War I was an imperialist war. That seems obvious now. And equally obvious, now, appears the inexcusable nature of the class collaboration, the coalition of classes engineered then by the leaders of the parties of the Second International. Nevertheless, we know how persistent, how tenacious, was this blend of social-reformism and social-chauvinism, which arose again, after World War I, to again betray the proletariat, this time to fascism.
World War II was different. On the part of the proletariat, from the viewpoint of both its immediate and ultimate class aims, World War II was a just and righteous war against the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie which expressed its counter-revolutionary intentions in fascist forms through the governments of the “Anti-Komintern Axis.”
But, on the part of the imperialist governments and classes of the anti-Axis powers, World War II was, as our 1945 National Convention Resolution correctly pointed out, not at all an anti-f as cist war, but a war for their own imperialist advantage. The Resolution said:
“The dominant sections of American finance capital supported the war against Nazi Germany, not because of hatred for fascism or a desire to liberate suffering Europe from the heel of Nazi despotism, but because it recognized in Hitler Germany a dangerous imperialist rival determined to rule the world.”
Yet it was absolutely correct for the American proletariat to support the anti-Axis war, and thus find itself, willy nilly, in a “coalition” with its own imperialist bourgeoisie. But it was wrong, basically wrong, from the viewpoint of its ultimate revolutionary class interests, to participate in that coalition under any illusion, such as was fostered by Browder, that this “coalition” could be anything but temporary, conditional, and bound to terminate at the moment the transient common aim of the two historically hostile classes was won.[39]
Browder fostered the illusion of the permanency of that coalition, an illusion which came fully to flower only in January, 1944, because he had, since 1937, become more and more influenced by social-reformist, by opportunist and legalist concepts. That this illusion could be erased overnight by the expulsion of Browder, and the rewriting of our Party program, is utter nonsense, contrary to the thought expressed by Lenin at the head of this chapter, that opportunism is “no accident, no slip... but the social product of a whole historical epoch.”
That it affected the whole National Committee is undeniable, with the exception of comrades Darcy and Foster.[40]
Those who have read thus far, will have seen that there are “coalitions” and “coalitions.” But that when they cross class lines, the vanguard party of the proletariat must be the very soul of vigilance, allowing neither the proletariat nor itself to harbor the least illusion about its temporary and unreliable allies. The class interests of all the participants in the coalition must be kept very clear in the minds of the Party and of the class. Thus, after the February revolution which overthrew Tsarism, and before the October Revolution, Comrade Stalin, at the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party on August 9, 1917, spoke as follows:
“The question of the present moment is the question of the fate of our revolution, of the forces which are driving the revolution forward, of the forces which are undermining it.
“What did the revolution spring from? From a coalition of four forces: the proletariat, the peasantry, the liberal bourgeoisie and Allied capital. Why did the proletariat go into the revolution? Because it is the mortal enemy of tsarism. Why did the peasantry go into the revolution? Because it had confidence in the proletariat and longed for land. Why did the liberal bourgeoisie go into the revolution? Because during the progress of the war it became disappointed with tsarism. It thought that tsarism would give it the opportunity of conquering new territory. Having no hope of increasing the capacity of the home market it took the path of least resistance, the path of expansion of the foreign market. But it made a mistake; tsarism and its troops could not even protect the frontiers and surrendered fifteen provinces to the enemy. Hence the liberal bourgeoisie’s betrayal of tsarism.
“But what about Allied capital? It regarded Russia as an auxiliary enterprise to serve its imperialist objectives. Meanwhile, tsarism, which in the first two years raised hopes of maintaining the unity of the front, began to incline towards a separate peace. Hence Allied capital’s betrayal of tsarism. Tsarism proved to be isolated and quietly and peacefully passed away.
“Although marching together, the four forces of the February revolution pursued different aims. The liberal bourgeoisie and Allied capital wanted a little revolution for the purpose of waging a big war. But the masses of the workers and peasants did not go into the revolution for this purpose. They had other aims: 1) to end the war, and; 2) to conquer the landlords and the bourgeoisie. This is the basis of the contradictions of the revolution.”
But our Party’s leadership – and not Browder alone – saw no “contradictions” in the “democratic coalition” between the American bourgeoisie and the American proletariat in the anti-Axis war. And this was “no accident, no slip,” no single or transient “mistake” in an otherwise correct line.
No, this “Teheranist” outlook was the “social product” of seven years of opportunism. Under the influence of Roosevelt’s bourgeois reformism, we had turned away from the class struggle path of forming an alliance (or “coalition”) between the proletariat and the poorer section of the farmers, against the big bourgeoisie, and by the power of such a coalition attracting to such a coalition the support of intellectuals and radicals of the petty bourgeoisie. Instead we took an opportunist path of coalition between the upper strata of the proletariat and the liberal bourgeoisie, supposedly against the reactionary bourgeoisie. (The farmers, we “forgot” completely, in typical Social-Democratic fashion.)
But, when the reactionary bourgeoisie, also, joined the coalition in the war against the Axis, our whole leadership saw no “contradiction” in this, such as Stalin described; but rather that the reactionary bourgeoisie had become “progressive” and permanently “liberal.” The petty bourgeoisie, from which most “liberals” are drawn, never fails as a class to follow the big bourgeoisie, except when the proletariat, by its independent and revolutionary action, gives it some backbone. And the anti-Axis war policy of our Party was not carried out in an independent or revolutionary way, as the 1945 National Convention Resolution pointed out (Part II, Section 6).
Hence, not only was our Party and the proletariat disarmed, but even the petty-bourgeois liberals were not prepared, by instillation of deep suspicion of the .war motives of the big bourgeoisie, for that inevitable moment when the “coalition” between the proletariat and the big bourgeoisie would end with the anti-Axis war. When that occurred, and the liberals of the petty bourgeoisie, in the main, went, as is their nature, tailing after the big imperialist bourgeoisie under the banner of “anti-Communism,” taking with them the trade-union bureaucracy, while the proletariat, in the process of revolutionization in the renewed flood of the movement’s tide, went the other way, following the path of class struggle, our Party found itself isolated.
But, still we did not return, in practice, to the path of class struggle. We did not return to the Bolshevik policy of building a coalition or “alliance” between the proletarian masses. and the poorer sections of the farmers, and with this strength to attract the petty-bourgeois liberal elements to our side as against monopoly capital on the basis of a new program, for the new situation, expressing the aims of and arising from the mass demands of this new coalition.
No, instead of that, we again began wooing the petty-bourgeois liberals, who rarely express the real political inclination of their class to follow the big bourgeoisie, but only their own individual outlook.[41]
Thus, in spite of all the empty chatter about “labor must lead” and our “pasting of the label ’Vanguard’ on the rearguard” (Lenin), we tailed after the scattered bourgeois liberals, begging them to lead us in the present maneuver to resurrect the dead and restore the “Roosevelt program” to the Democratic Party so we might renew our coalition with that political party of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Even Henry Wallace is more realistic than ourselves. He has said:
“It is no part of our tradition to look backward, reconstructing the fragments of the New Deal, bemoaning the loss of wartime unity of the Allies and torturing ourselves with the thought: If he had lived.” – New Republic, December 16, 1946.
Stalin, in his Dialectical and Historical Materialism, p. 21, puts the matter in Bolshevik fashion:
“In order not to err in policy, in order not to find itself in the position of idle dreamers, the party of the proletariat must not base its activities... on the good wishes of ’great men’... but on the real needs of development of the material life of society.”
As we had been “idle dreamers” about the Teheran Pact, we became equally “idle dreamers” about the United Nations. Having abandoned the viewpoint of the class struggle in domestic politics, we also abandoned the viewpoint of the class struggle as the ruling factor in international politics.
Our leadership does not see in such organizations an arena of class struggle. It does not see in pacts made by the Soviet Union, now with this, and again with that, capitalist state, an extension of the class struggle. Yet Comrade Stalin long ago explained this, in his Foundations of Leninism (Chapter VII, Section 4), where he speaks of such things as the use made by the revolutionary proletariat of what he terms the “second category” of the ̶reserves” unwillingly given to the proletariat in its worldwide class struggle by the conflicts between imperialist groups. There being no class conception of such pacts, there is no class struggle initiated by our Party to enforce them, such as was held up as an example by Comrade Ercoli (Togliatti) at the Seventh Congress.[42]
Instead of the United Nations being estimated as “an instrument in the struggle for peace,” as Ercoli (Togliatti) might put it, our professorial apologist, Samuel Sillen, refers to it (Daily Worker, Jan. 10, 1947) as absolutely “an instrument for peace.” Which is something vastly different, since it leaves out “the struggle”; the class struggle for peace, because the international proletariat (led by the Soviet proletariat organized as a government) and the international bourgeoisie contend with each other as to which shall use this “instrument.”
Both use it as a forum. But the USSR, though losing organizationally in the voting, uses it more effectively in a political sense because its diplomacy is based upon telling the truth and defending the interests of the world’s toiling peoples, awakening them to future struggle outside the halls of diplomacy.
If ‒ and in proportionate measure – the proletariat of the world, whose interests are expressed by the Soviet government, can command the use of this “instrument,” it will be used for peace. If the world bourgeoisie gets dominant control of this “instrument,” it will be used for war. The instrument itself is just that – an instrument. It is the struggle that decides; basically, the class struggle. And our Party appears to have none of that. Thus, when Truman issued his “Greek-Turkish” program, the Daily Worker, ignoring the reality of the class character of governments, came out with whimperingly servile and vacuously nationalistic comment, beginning: “President Truman’s demand that America take over Greece and Turkey marks a day of national shame for our country.
“These are strong words...” etc., etc.
These “strong words” made Truman tremble, perhaps? Or sent the National City Bank tumbling into ruins like the Walls of Jericho?
And this puerile “shame on you!” editorial was topped by the warning that Truman may (apparently from sheer stupidity) “drag the nation into the trap of Hoover.”
That there is an imperialist class, served by both Truman and Hoover, in class struggle against the world proletariat, is obscured. To our leadership, this factional struggle between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party within the bourgeoisie, supplants the “class against class” struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
Only the appearance of struggle is given by magnifying the significance of secondary struggles and the maneuvering of our own Party’s participation in such struggles, including factional struggles among bourgeois political machines, and the factional struggles arising among trade-union bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois liberals who make personally profitable careers by political trading with these major factions, Democrat and Republican, within the camp of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
All this lends our Party work the appearance of “activity.” We have “activity,” no end, in the factional struggle within the Democratic Party. We have “activity” in the trade-union movement, but there, too, factionally, in favor of the CIO leadership as against the AFL leadership – forgetting the rank and file of both, as also our words about trade-union unity.
We have “activity” within the CIO, a factional activity (not to be confused with the really independent work of a Communist fraction) in an alliance with something called, most inappropriately, “the Murray-Hillman Center group” of leaders, naturally, and against other leaders; instead of with the rank and file (which is never “Rightist”) against the bureaucrats of both Right and “Center.”
All this “activity” and appearance of “struggle” satisfies, it may be, those who make “activity,” irrespective of which class it serves, the measure of the Party’s worth to the proletariat. But, not based upon the class struggle and not guided by Bolshevik theory, it is not only the same kind of futile activity as that of a squirrel in a wheel cage, but is objectively anti-working class. Comrade Stalin, in the very last pages of his Foundations of Leninism sharply characterized those who are satisfied with such “activity” as victims of “American practicality,” which, he said:
“... incurs the great risk of degenerating into narrow and unprincipled commercialism unless it is imbued with the wide outlook of the Russian revolutionist.”
And Comrade Stalin cites the picture drawn by the Soviet author, B. Pilniak, in The Barren Year, of Russian “Bolsheviks” (with quotes) who have numberless replicas among the functionaries of our Party, who are, as Stalin says, “... full of zeal and resolve to do things, who ’function’ quite ’energetically,’ but without vision, without knowing ’what it is all about’ and therefore stray from the path of revolutionary work.”
This is not to say that every single thing, said or done, by every single Party leader, is all wrong. But this is the dominant tendency, within which, precisely because there is no ”coherent theory,” as Stalin says of the pre-1914 Socialist Parties, there are many variations. Everybody talks about Marxism-Leninism. There is plentiful repetition of the words “working class.” There is abundant reference to “the monopolists” against whom “the people” are called to struggle (almost exclusively by the least effective parliamentary means). But without revolutionary vision, spirit, orientation and leadership, the Party cannot attain the position of vanguard, but rather serves as a bottleneck holding back the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
Nor is that all. The “activity” of the Party, confined to participation in the multiple factional stnggles going on among the bourgeoisie and their labor lieutenants and petty bourgeois retainers, and divorced from the purifying and strength-giving contact with the proletarian masses, corrupts the outlook of our entire leadership, its habits of social life and its revolutionary integrity. Our leaders become trained experts in intrigue, in the maneuvering of cliques, in unprincipled deals that are not only alien to, but directly opposed to the interests of the proletariat as a class.
This is what Comrade Stalin referred to when he said, in his Foundations of Leninism (Chapter VIII, Section 6), that:
“The opportunist elements in the Party are the source of Party factionalism... To them, factionalism and splits, disorganization and the undermining of the Party from within, are principally due.”
Naturally, the opportunists find little need for factionalism unless and until they are challenged. But the Duclos article was a great challenge, since it awakened the membership. There is here, no attempt to examine the motives of individuals. We have, as Lenin once said, no “meter” to measure sincerity. We can only judge motives by deeds. And hence here we can only look at deeds which describe how a faction formed and worked when the challenge of the Duclos article came to our leadership in May, 1945.
The California leadership was an admixture of clam-like non-commitment and, privately expressed, angry resentment, until the National Board meeting of June 2 took an anti-Browder course. Then it hastened to jump the way the cat did, and became “anti-Browder,” too. This became more pronounced after the National Committee meeting of June 20, 1945. Directly following, there was a demonstrative and apparently sincere contrition, a frank admission of error, in the State Committee meeting of July 1. Comrade Schneiderman was not only going to resign, himself, but “see to it” that no other functionary would be retained “merely because there seems to be no one to replace him.” These others seemed to accept that fate as one they deserved. “No one has any monopoly on leadership,” Comrade Schneiderman wrote in Discussion Bulletin No. 6.
“We must be judged individually and replaced if that is the judgment of the membership.”
But by July 15, 1945, with the first session of the State Convention, which was to elect delegates to the National Convention, all this had changed. Under the claim that to accept retirement from office would not be a “responsible attitude,” not only Comrade Schneiderman, but the entire state leadership, in obvious mutual group agreement, had begun a systematic fight to retain their positions, coming out shamelessly, as for example in Louise Todd’s letter to the Convention, harshly warning the delegates against anyone who might attempt to remove the old leadership.
Nobody of political experience could look upon such a violent “about face” without some degree of suspicion of the existence of a faction. Nor could it be estimated as having only local significance, especially in the light of later developments. And, as these developments arose, one after another, showing that the key officials in the National Office were by no means trying to abide by their own freshly adopted resolution of the National Committee meeting of June 20, 1945, which commanded these officials to “combat all tendencies toward factionalism,” the suspicion became confirmed that – some time between July 1 and July 15, 1945 – the local officials had been given assurance from “higher ups” in New York, that their local factional struggle to retain positions would be given support and protection from the National Office.
The obvious assurance with which the opportunist leadership faction acted in that first session (July 15, 1945) of the State Convention, gave it force to carry through not only the election of its own choice, in the main, of delegates to the National Convention, but the packing of the convention committees, especially the “Committee on Leadership,” which committee was to recommend which of the old leaders might be retained, and which removed, as well as suggesting new leadership.
Most significant, as indicating a well-working faction among the old leadership, was the studied attempt to brand everyone who spoke of removing them as a “factionalism” and the setting up of a great hue and cry against a wholly imaginary “faction” which they insisted was bent on their defeat for re-election, or election as National Convention delegates or to convention committees.
This campaign “against factionalism” by a faction continued during the month’s interlude between the first (July) session of the State Convention, and the second (August) session, during which the National Convention was held. It was largely due to this persistent factionalism of the Schneiderman leadership, that I went into a mass of detail in my letter to the State “Leadership Committee” of August 14, 1945, proving the charge made in its final lines, that the Schneiderman leadership was “bureaucratic, factional and given to double-bookkeeping in concealing these qualities.”
What happened to my letter of accusation has been told briefly in Part II, but some few details are necessary here. Locally, when the “Leadership Committee” reported to the second session of the State Convention (August 18-19, 1945), its factional balance in favor of the old Right Opportunist leadership was unmistakable. It had been “physically impossible,” the report said, “to evaluate new leadership.” So recommendations spoke only of the old leaders. And there must be “no clean sweep” of these. Hence only a couple of those of lesser rank were not recommended for re-election. As to the rest, and particularly with Comrade Schneiderman, there were recommendations for re-election based on fulsome praise; the general idea being conveyed that these comrades were good Marxist-Leninists, but had only “slipped,” yet that they had “the greatest capacity for curing themselves.”[43]
My letter to the ”Leadership Committee” was ignored, unless it could be said to have evoked from the Committee that part of its report which stated that the Committee had “rejected personal attacks.” This is always a favorite device of opportunists to protect themselves against criticism by labeling it “personal attacks,” or “scandal mongering.” Readers may see in Part II, that I based my criticism on an historical analysis of the development of opportunism as a “social product.” But persons are the bearers of policy, and if one is to be restricted in criticism to barren assaults upon abstract policy, without daring to say a word against those persons who construct that policy and impose it upon the Party, then criticism loses all organizational effect and an opportunist leadership cannot be removed.[44]
This report of the “Leadership Committee,” itself the quintessence of factionalism, of course solemnly declared that there must be “no room for factionalism.” Increasingly, this became the ritual of the official faction, functioning, after its factionalism had succeeded in reelecting it, as a bureaucracy, bent on silencing or eliminating criticism and critics of itself as “factionalism” and “factionalists.”
At my first meeting with the State Security and Review Commission on June 28, 1946, I gave that Commission several items of information showing the existence of factionalism on the part of the leadership, and there was some pretense of interest (and some laughter) and the promise of “looking into this.” But nothing ever happened, and I heard no more of it. Not even when I was again called before the Commission on August 19, 1946, and questioned for some three hours about “factionalism.”
And this local factional development received protection from the National Office. A copy of my August 14, 1945, letter to the California Leadership Committee was sent on August 18, with a covering letter, to Comrade Foster as National Chairman and supposed head of the newly elected “Secretariat” of three. Under date of August 28, 1945, it was replied to, not by Foster, but by Dennis.
Although my letter had contained not only the charge, but abundant proofs of factionalism on the part of the Schneiderman leadership in California, sufficient to make any national leadership cognizant of its responsibility to carry out the National Convention Resolution against factionalism, by at least, investigative intervention into the situation in California, Comrade Dennis declared, in the name of the National Secretariat, that:
“Since your letter arrived after the State Convention, we were of the opinion it would be unnecessary for us to express our views on the points you raise, inasmuch as the best judgment on these questions were undoubtedly expressed by the State Convention.”
Very neatly and “officially” done. And very much in confirmation of the growing suspicion that there was a factional connection between Dennis and Schneiderman (once related by marriage and always close personal friends). Since by August 28, Comrade Dennis was fully informed how the Schneiderman leadership in California had successfully retained its control of the organization, Dennis could well afford to feel that intervention would be “unnecessary.” The State Convention, as Dennis already knew, having been maneuvered by the Schneiderman faction so as to wholly ignore “the points” I had raised, Comrade Dennis could safely state his assurance that that Convention had expressed “the best judgment” on those points.
There were, of course, polite reassurances that, if I felt matters “required further consideration,” I could take it up again with the National Office. But who, with my political experience telling me that all this was nothing more than a “brush-off,” would go back for a second dose. If the convincing evidence I had already given the National Secretariat could not move it to enforce the National Convention Resolution provision against factionalism, nothing ii could add would.
Moreover, a reading of the Dennis report to the National Committee meeting of June 18-20, 1945, with its excusing of the past revisionism of the whole national leadership as “a slip” or an “accident,” and the observation of the same line being taken by the Schneiderman faction in the California State Convention, could lead only to one conclusion.[45]
As time went on, following the 1945 Convention, not only did the factional character of the California leadership develop, as related in the first three Parts of this thesis, but this factionalism increasingly received the support of the national leadership.[46]
This national support to local leaderships, regardless of their opportunist actions, became observable in many cases. Correct criticism against the opportunist, hiding-the-face-of-the-Party, policy in the local San Francisco election of November, 1945, was promptly termed “anarcho-syndicalist” by Comrade Max Weiss, who admitted, however, that he had not bothered to examine how the campaign had been conducted.
Again, the trip of Comrade Williamson to California in March, 1946, was so obviously planned and executed to give support to the opportunist behavior of the Party leadership in the Machinist strike, that Williamson himself, evidently feeling it necessary or more comfortable to avoid anybody who could “talk back” effectively, evaded even trying to see me – although I had been the one accused (falsely) in the State Board meeting of December 15, 1945, of being “the center” of the opposition in that case.
Either one of two things: either the local leadership did not inform him that I was “the center of opposition,” in which case the local leadership was inexcusably derelict in its duty; or, he was informed, and was himself derelict in his duty, which was to confer with me and either induce me to change my supposed attitude, or warn me that further “opposition” would not be tolerated. But Williamson’s visit was clearly not intended to clarify any confusion (admitted by the local leadership), nor to correct the situation. It was, obviously, intended to serve the purpose it did serve; to justify, under the claim that he had “been there” and had “examined” the dispute, the “National Board Letter” which followed immediately upon his return to New York. This “letter” to the State leadership, under the necessary bit of camouflage comment about the leadership’s ”weaknesses,” gave that leadership free rein to “take measures” to stamp out all rank and file criticism as “factionalism.”
Naturally, such undeserved repressions and reprisals against the membership by the official faction, awoke such resentment that it contributed to the tendency among a very few of the incensed members, limited, so far as I could see, to two comrades on the waterfront, to form a faction in self-defense.
And this “National Board Letter,” which was used to the limit to compel every comrade to agree with its unfair analysis and factional spirit, or face expulsion (in complete violation of the National Convention Resolution against bureaucracy), was, to Comrade Foster’s shame, signed by him, and thus given an authority which, due to its evil character, it would not otherwise have had.
Nevertheless, many who saw the injustice of this, still felt that Comrade Foster did this as a result of being misled by Comrade Williamson’s report. All still had faith in Foster, feeling that if he would visit San Francisco and, with his experience in strikes, examine fairly the way the Party leadership had handled the Machinist strike, he would correct matters.
That faith turned to disillusion when, in August, 1946, Comrade Foster did visit San Francisco. By that time, opposition resentment had, indeed, grown into factionalism, and expressed itself in an unprincipled way in criticism of the June 15, 1946, settlement of the maritime dispute by the Committee for Maritime Unity (CMU). And by that time I had taken a vigorous stand against this definitely “leftist” factionalism, although my articles, expressing the necessary (but hitherto absent) ideological struggle against it, were not allowed publication.
It is highly instructive, in estimating Comrade Foster’s role in the Party leadership, to see what stand he took toward this development.
When I saw him at the Hotel Whitcomb on August 20, 1946, and he asked me how I “got mixed up in all this,” I seemed to so convincingly have demonstrated that I had fought the Right Opportunism of the local leadership in the Machinist strike, and had with equal vigor fought against the “leftism” in the maritime dispute, that he finally said:
“It looks to me like you are in the middle here.”
“That’s right,” I replied. “I’m in the middle defending the Party line against both Right and Left deviations.”
“Well,” was Comrade Foster’s comment, “you know what happens to the guy in the middle, don’t you?”
“Certainly,” I answered. “He gets kicked by both sides.”
“Well,” Comrade Foster remarked with a cynical smile, “That’s politics, you know.”
No support for a correct line, no rebuke to the Right – and this was, under the circumstances, equivalent to an invitation to “come over” to the Right, or continue to get “kicked” by it. So this was “politics.” Not Communist politics, it is true, but “politics” of the Tammany Hall variety. A kind of politics which in Leninist terms is known as “conciliation with the Right.” A kind of politics practiced by Trotsky from 1903 to 1917.[47]
[38] With the same gradualness, the Dennis leadership, as did Browder’s before him, has been cultivating a bourgeois nationalism, not conforming with the Leninist concept of a patriotism which is “national in form, but proletarian in content.” The only result can be, with all this teaching of anti-internationalism, that the time will come when the bill will become due. And as a continuation of a supposedly classless, but in reality a bourgeois “patriotism,” with its current pledges to “defend America,” “our” country, “national unity,” and “national security,” our Party will become the tool of imperialist war, including war against the Soviet Union.
(Postscript: True, Stalin has said there will be no war. But he added that this was because the peoples of the world are against war. But, obviously, this opposition to war by the peoples cannot remain passive and disorganized if the war-mongers are to be defeated. Apparently interpreting Stalin’s diplomatic declaration in the same distorted manner that Browder distorted the diplomatic declaration of the Teheran Pact, our leadership promptly abandoned the definite, if weak and bourgeois-pacifist anti-war organization that it had previously inspired, and refuses to organize the American people, who are certainly opposed to war, against war. It “talks” but does not act, using a vague and totally inadequate propaganda against war, to cover up its crime of omission [four pages in the Daily Worker for La-Guardia, chairman of the anti-Soviet “USA-Canadian Defense Commission”; a few inches for Vyshinsky’s main speech against American War-mongers], the crime of helping the war-mongers by “laying down on the job” of fighting them.)
Browder marked his descent into social-imperialism with the cowardly, anti-internationalist and anti-Soviet comment, in answer to a question about “orders from Moscow,” by saying: “If I ever get any orders from Moscow, I’d throw them in the waste-basket.” Since there were no “orders from Moscow,” this was Browder’s way of rejecting, in advance, the obligation of all workers to defend the Soviet Union against attack. Dennis’s “national independence” from international obligations are more subtle, but forecast the same type of betrayal, being symptomatic of the same chauvinism. Forgotten, nay, rejected, is the stirring slogan of Marx: “Workers of the world, unite!”
The CPUSA can be no exception to the list of those parties which, following the logic of opportunistic development, from a subjective rejection of the possibility of revolution to active opposition to it, have found themselves in the camp of those who make war upon the land of socialism. The process takes time, and the collaboration with imperialist war-makers may never take the form of forthright anti-Sovietism (Browder’s didn’t). But rather it begins with half-hearted and shame-faced “opposition” to anti-Soviet war, and – at the hour of war’s decision – takes the form of cowardly lament that “We are powerless to prevent this evil war,” after years of having deliberately undermined the Leninist concept of the proletariat acquiring the “power” to transform imperialist war, after its inception, into revolution. It must be remembered that Lenin wrote (Little Lenin Library, Vol. 9, pp. 23-24):
“He who simply confines himself to ’demanding’ from bourgeois governments ’the conclusion of peace’ or ’the manifestation of the will of the peoples toward peace,’ etc., is, in fact, degenerating into a reformist. For, objectively, the problem of war can be solved only in a revolutionary way.”
(Postscript: Since the above was written by me, there have been numerous examples to prove its correctness. On August 15, 1947, the People’s World reported a press Conference by Comrade Peter V. Cacchione at Los Angeles, in which he replied to the question of what the Party position would be if the United States went to war with the Soviet Union, by saying:
(“’That’s a stock question,’ Cacchione laughed. ’We Communists are not lawbreakers, nor anarchists. If the United States declares war, we will obey the laws and go into the army. But any such war can only come if the most reactionary imperialist forces seize control of the Government. We would do all possible through leaflets, meetings and demonstrations, to get the Government to end the war as soon as possible’.”
(Such a reply is a declaration of future treachery by default of Leninist principle and practice. Of like nature was the evasion of the same question by Adam Lapin [People’s World, Sept. 6, 1947] in his absurd attempt to turn the question aside by citing Communist support to the past anti-Axis war, implying thereby, that the same support would be given to any war in the future, including an anti-Soviet war. By accepting the enemy-class interpretation that, if anyone should follow the Leninist principle of desiring the defeat of “his own” country in an imperialist war, such a person would be “a red bastard,” Lapin sounded a new depth in degradation of principle.
(The attempt to cover up such treachery by frequent Browderite hints that “former theories” don’t apply in this post-war period, is refuted by the fact that, just following the war’s end, the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, The Bolshevik, published in its September, 1945, issue, the following:
(“A most important condition for the successful work of our theoretical cadres is a high devotion to principle, an uncompromising attitude toward distortions in the sphere of Marxist-Leninist theory and toward manifestations of alien ideology... The Bolshevik Party is always intolerant of lack of principle, of instability... The classics of Marxism teach us that in the sphere of theory there can be no concessions.”
(We must take account of treachery’s first faint “mis-steps,” and reject absolutely the apology that evasive words are meant to deceive only the bourgeoisie. The fact is that they do not deceive the bourgeoisie, but do deceive the proletariat.)
[39] On the nature of inter-class coalitions, and the principles to be observed by the Party of the proletariat while participating in such coalitions, nothing is clearer than the rules laid down by Marx in his “Address to the Communist League” in 1850:
“In the event of a struggle against a common foe, there is no need of any special fusion. As soon as such a foe is to be directly fought, the interests of both parties coincide for the moment, and as in the past so in the future, this union, intended for the moment only, will form of its own accord... the workers, by their courage, their resoluteness and their self-sacrifice will play the main part in winning the victory.
“As heretofore, so in this struggle the mass of the petty bourgeoisie will maintain as long as possible an attitude of temporizing, irresolution and inactivity, and then as soon as the victory is decided, take it in charge, summon the workers to be peaceful and return to work in order to avert so-called excesses, and so cut off the proletariat from the fruits of victory.
“It does not lie in the power of the workers to prevent the petty bourgeois democrats from doing this, but it does lie in their power to render their ascendency over the armed proletariat difficult, and to dictate to them such terms that the rule of the bourgeois democrats shall bear with it from the beginning the germ of its destruction...
“In a word: from the first moment of victory our distrust must no longer be directed against the vanquished reactionary party, but against our previous allies, against the party which seeks to exploit the common victory for itself alone... our interests require and our task is to make the revolution an uninterrupted one until all the more or the less possessing classes have been removed from their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power.”
[40] Unfortunately, history will never accord to Comrade Foster the stature of a Karl Liebknecht. His role in respect to the fight against revisionism is better understood when examined in connection with events as they developed:
January 7 to 9, 1944: On these days were held the sessions of the National Committee, at which Browder’s whole “Teheran line” was “adopted as our Party’s policy” (Foster’s words on Jan. 20). But Foster did not speak one word in opposition at these sessions where the policy was adopted. In his “letter to the Members of the National Committee” (which never came before that committee), he “explained” that he “refrained” because he had been “urged” not to speak by “several Polbureau members.” No doubt such people were capable of so doing. That is their fault. But his alone is the blame for having yielded to them and forgotten the responsibility he bore as Chairman of the Party to the membership and the working class.
January 9, 1944: On this, the last day of the National Committee meeting, Comrade Foster delivered an address over a nation-wide radio hook-up of the Columbia Broadcasting System, expressing the Browder “Teheran” viewpoint, thus giving the Party membership and the toiling masses to understand that he was thoroughly in agreement with Browder’s revisionist policy. Comrade Foster has never explained who “urged” him to do this. Lest there be some doubt, the following paragraphs of this Foster radio speech, taken from The Worker of Jan. 10, 1944, are given below:
“My fellow Americans:... The agreements that were made by President Roosevelt on behalf of our country, together with Soviet Russia, Great Britain and China – open up the possibility that did not exist before. These agreements are the only possible hope and assurance that the people of our country and of Europe and Asia can have a long period of economic co-operation and peaceful democratic development after the war.
“The policy of our country for the war and the post-war period, made by President Roosevelt, have brought to the world the possibility of many generations of peace and security of all nations. Many of those who wish to overthrow these policies claim that they are not against them in general, but only against particular features of them...
“Just one more point the Communist Party must insist upon, to clear the air. It is the so-called question of ’free enterprise.’ The Communist Party does not believe that it would be to the benefit of our national unity to make any proposals of a specific communistic or socialistic nature at this time or in the immediate post-war period. Practically all of the labor movement and the overwhelming majority of the American people are committed to private enterprise...
“The reconstruction of most of Europe and Asia, as well as America’s participation in the reconstruction, most probably will be on the basis of what is called the system of ’free enterprise.’ It will be on a capitalist basis, conditioned by complete self-determination for each nation. It means a perspective for all the countries of Europe and Asia that will eliminate altogether the threat of civil war and of international war...
“We must remove all unreal issues. We must have no artificial divisions of the American people... The national unity must continue for the reconstruction of the world after the war...”
January 20, 1944: Although Comrade Foster did not speak against Browder’s “Teheran” policy when speaking against it would count, that is, when it was up for adoption, and although his radio speech of Jan. 9 was obviously giving it his approval, on this Jan. 20, 1944, eleven days later, Comrade Foster wrote his “letter to the Members of the National Committee” in which he disagreed with Browder’s policy.
So, to the secret files of the National Office, a letter of disagreement; but, for the Party membership and the toiling masses, a speech of agreement with the Browder line. Would Lenin have done that? Hardly. In the most extreme crisis, five days before seizure of power in 1917, Lenin broke with his own Bolshevik Central Committee and declared he would “propagandize in the lower ranks of the party and at the Party congress” against them if they did not cease an opportunist course that would “ruin the revolution.” (On the Eve of October, Little Lenin Library, Vol. 13, p. 18.) And Liebknecht went to prison rather than express agreement with a party leadership of social chauvinism. Comrade Foster did not face prison, only expulsion. And in the end vindication by the party membership and the masses. But he did not, obviously, trust the party membership and the masses. He “explained” his default by pleading (in his “letter to the National Committee”) that if he spoke out clearly against revisionism “it would cause confusion in the Party.” He chose the path of compromise, of deals and maneuvers at the top.
Feb. 8, 1944: An enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau. It was here, according to Duclos, that both Foster and Darcy “spoke up violently against Browder.” No record of this meeting, nor any text of the speeches made there, has ever been given to the Party membership. However, Comrade Duclos noted one significant thing lacking in both Foster’s “letter to the Members of the National Committee,” and in his speech to the Feb. 8, 1944, enlarged Political Bureau. Duclos said: “In neither one of these documents did Foster openly take a stand against the dissolution of the Communist Party.”
It is to be noted that, in his Jan. 20, 1944, “letter to the Members of the National Committee,” Comrade Foster concluded by saying that the “questions raised by Browder” were so “far-reaching” and represented such “a radical departure from our past conceptions of national unity,” that “they deserve the most profound consideration in the pre-convention discussion that is now beginning.” But did Comrade Foster himself ever attempt to get such “consideration in the pre-convention discussion”? Never! He remained absolutely silent about these questions in the discussion period, when every principle of democratic centralism made legal, under the Party constitution, his right to appeal to the rank and file without suffering reprisals by Browder.
Nor did he raise these questions at the National Convention in May, 1944, when the “Teheran policy” of Browder was adopted unanimously. Since nothing was ever heard of Foster voting in opposition, or abstaining, it is reasonable to assume that he voted for Browder’s full-blown revisionist line.
At this saturnalia of revisionism; this National Convention beginning on May 20, 1944, all that Foster did was reported in the People’s World of May 23, 1944, page 4, columns six and seven. It began by saying:
“Shortly after William Z. Foster, national chairman of the Communist Party, had rapped the gavel for the convention’s opening, he presented the question as to the change in organization. Then it was that Browder presented his motion for dissolution” (of the Party).
Stung by Comrade Duclos’s exposure a year later, that he had not taken a stand against the liquidation of the Party on two occasions when he spoke in general opposition (Jan. 20 and Feb. 8, 1944), Comrade Foster “explained” (Political Affairs, Sept., 1945, p. 655) that he had opposed it in the National Board (date not given), but, afterward, had “felt that further agitation of the matter was hopeless for the time being, and could only cause useless strife and confusion in our ranks.”
Match that with the cold-bloodedness of accepting chairmanship of the convention session where the Party was liquidated, and his having “presented the question” to that session. All to avoid “strife and confusion,” of course.
All that Comrade Foster had to say about policy at that revisionist convention was reported as follows:
“William Z. Foster, chairman of the first session of the new association, emphasized the threat of the Republican leadership to the winning of the war and to post-war collaboration among the nations to maintain world peace... The Republicans and Dewey present a grave danger to the labor movement, Foster said, and it is up to labor with other patriotic forces to see to it that reaction is thoroughly defeated in 1944.” (For post-war duplicates of this same policy see any Foster speech in 1945, 1946 and 1947.)
Thus ended the brave fight by Comrade Foster against Browder’s revisionism!
Except for one thing. At this convention, as the Duclos article reminded our Party, “Darcy was expelled from the Party on the proposal of a commission named by the Central Committee and headed by Foster.”
This sheds quite a light on Comrade Foster’s ability to play chameleon, because, fourteen months later, at the July, 1945, National Convention, Comrade Foster bitterly complained, after Comrade Duclos had rescued his then sadly tarnished political virtue, that:
“How far Browder was prepared to go to prevent discussion was shown by the way he suppressed my letter of January, 1944, to the National Committee. The only way I could have gotten this letter to the membership was by facing expulsion and a sure split in the Party. Even then, my letter would not have really come before the Party, for the issue would have been the unity of the Party, and anyone who attempted to discuss my letter would have been denounced as a Trotskyite by Browder. The Party must insist that this whole bureaucratic system be swept away, in the districts and nationally, as a basic condition for freeing itself from Browder’s revisionism.” (Political Affairs, Sept., 1945, P. 792.)
This “explanation” only explains that Comrade Foster is not constructed of the stuff that Leninist Bolsheviks are made of. His “opposition” to the “whole bureaucratic system” was so artfully concealed that not only was the membership deceived, but Browder himself was so unaware of it that He appointed Foster to head a commission to bureaucratically expel Darcy. And Foster did that job on Darcy, although it appears that the charges were false, even at that, and that Darcy did very little indeed to take the issue of revisionism to the membership before he was expelled. It might be added that, today, in flagrant violation of the National Convention Resolution, Comrade Foster retains intact the “whole bureaucratic system” which, in the districts, and nationally, prevents discussion in the same manner as did Browder, by expulsions, under the same false charges of “Trotskyism” and “factionalism.”
Facts remain facts: Comrade Foster was Chairman of the Party before “Teheran.” He remained Chairman of the Communist Political Association during the entire period of the “Teheran” line. He again remained Chairman of the Party after Comrade Duclos – not Foster – exposed the “Teheran” line as class treachery. It is not unreasonable to conclude that, if tomorrow Comrade Dennis would find some new way of liquidating our Party into some sort of propaganda league auxiliary to the Democratic Party – and this can be done without changing the name of the Party – Comrade Foster would turn up as – the Chairman of it. To avoid “strife and confusion,” of course.
At no time did Comrade Foster suffer any visible discrimination because of his invisible “opposition” to Browder and Browderism. On the contrary, he maintained his position and prestige. He contributed frequently to the Party press many articles, in none of which the membership could discover any disagreement, and in some of them direct statements of approval of Browder’s views and Browder’s leadership. For example, we have Foster’s Article “Dewey and Teheran” in the November, 1944, issue of The Communist, where, on page 1001, Comrade Foster wrote:
“Earl Browder long ago correctly stated that the main issue of the elections is for or against Teheran. Behind Roosevelt stands the body of American democracy, the heart of such national unity as we have, including almost the entire labor movement, major masses of the city middle classes, large sections of the farmers, the bulk of the Negro people, and also the more far-sighted elements among the capitalists.”
What have we here? A Foster endorsement of Browder as “correct.” On only one point, to be sure, but without the slightest hint that Browder was dangerously and criminally incorrect on every fundamental point. Hence, the membership was to believe that Foster supported Browder in everything. More, Foster himself, voiced here on his own account, the anti-Marxist Browderism about “far-sighted capitalists.”
Inherent here, also, is the opportunist insistence on a “coalition” with the bourgeois reformism of these ̶far-sighted capitalists,” and under their leadership, regardless of time or circumstance, which marked Foster’s attitude then, and marks it now, as well. In his “letter to the National Committee” of Jan. 20, 1944, Foster upbraided Browder because Browder “handled the two major parties almost in a tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum manner.” Comrade Williamson, in his brief period of contrition (The Worker, June 24, 1945) argued against this insistence by saying:
“We forgot that the roots of fascism were in monopoly capitalism as a class, and not just in the Hoover-Vandenberg section that opposed the entire concept of coalition with the Soviet Union. This led us to idolize the Roosevelt section of monopoly capital...”
Again in the November, 1944, issue of The Communist (p. 1009), Comrade Foster, speaking in dread of a Dewey administration, gave a typical Browder interpretation of the “diplomatic document” (Duclos) signed at Teheran, and another endorsement of Browder by saying that Dewey’s policy “would tend definitely to defeat the perspective of orderly (sic!) economic and democratic political development laid down at the Teheran conference, and which Earl Browder has dealt with so extensively in his book Teheran, Our Path in War and Peace.”
Because Browder “handled the two major parties almost in a tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum manner.” Comrade Williamson, in his brief period of contrition (The Worker, June 24, 1945) argued against this insistence by saying:
“We forgot that the roots of fascism were in monopoly capitalism as a class, and not just in the Hoover-Vandenberg section that opposed the entire concept of coalition with the Soviet Union. This led us to idolize the Roosevelt section of monopoly capital...”
Again in the November, 1944, issue of The Communist (p. 1009), Comrade Foster, speaking in dread of a Dewey administration, gave a typical Browder interpretation of the “diplomatic document” (Duclos) signed at Teheran, and another endorsement of Browder by saying that Dewey’s policy “would tend definitely to defeat the perspective of orderly (sic!) economic and democratic political development laid down at the Teheran conference, and which Earl Browder has dealt with so extensively in his book Teheran, Our Path in War and Peace.”
Again, Comrade Foster wrote in the June, 1945, issue of Political Affairs, which went to print just before the Duclos article exploded in the face of the whole leadership on May 24, 1945, once more speaking fondly (pp. 494-5) about his “far-sighted capitalists,” and then (p. 499) endorsing in brief ‒ as Dennis did at great length – the most outright instrument for class collaboration which emerged in the post-war period and for that period, the Truman-sponsored “Charter of Labor and Management.” Comrade Foster wrote:
“Organized labor must, too, more than ever, be the driving force in strengthening the nation’s anti-fascist unity. A new instrument it can use effectively for this purpose is the recently formulated Charter of Labor and Management. By a firm, united and intelligent policy, the trade unions, under this new co-operative agreement with large sections of the employers, can greatly diminish post-war industrial strife...”
Naturally, from avoiding “strife” against opportunism in the Party, Comrade Foster developed an itch to “diminish” strife in industry. In summary, the record shows that, after that one session of the Political Bureau on Feb. 8, 1944, where he afterward (Political Affairs, July, 1945, p. 655) said he was “seriously rebuffed,” Comrade Foster adapted himself to living, and living very well, indeed, with revisionism. And revisionism compensated him in kind, with the highest post in the Party.
This remarkable ability to adapt himself to whatever wind that blows, may be a great virtue in Comrade Foster. But it is a quality never possessed by any of the great leaders of Communism, and is a characteristic savagely condemned by all of them with striking unanimity. If he was capable of playing a role that deceived the Party membership so thoroughly as he did under the Browder regime, who can say that he is not doing the same thing today? Or that he will not do the same thing tomorrow?
No. Here we have no Lenin, no Stalin, no Liebknecht.
[41] “He (Kautsky) judges the interests of the petty bourgeoisie not by its actions, but by the words of some of its members, though these words are at every step given the lie by actions.” – Lenin, The War and the Second International, Little Lenin Library, Vol. 2, p.
[42] Comrade Ercoli called special attention to how the French and Czechoslovakian Communist Parties had dealt with the mutual assistance pacts signed by their Communist Parties, said Comrade Ercoli, addressed their own bourgeoisie as follows:
“Gentlemen, you have signed a pact, a limited pact, with the working class of the Soviet Union that has the power in its hands, but you have not signed any pact with the working class of our country, with us. We have no guarantee that you will not utilize your army, which continues to be a class army, against the working class of our country and against the colonial peoples, our allies in the struggle against imperialism... We have not even any guarantee that, when the decisive moment arrives, you will remain loyal to the pact that you are signing today. (Actually, both capitalist governments reneged on these pacts, three years after Ercoli spoke. – HG.)
“For all these reasons, gentlemen, we can neither vote your military budget nor give up the struggle against your government. But please note that this does not mean that we have no interest in the pact that you have concluded with the Soviet Union, or that we are indifferent to the manner in which you give effect to it. We know that in your ranks there are those who are against this pact... who would like to tear it up. We, indeed, will defend the pact with all our strength because it is an instrument in the struggle for peace and for the defense of the Soviet Union. We shall vote for the pact in parliament and we shall expose any attempt to pursue a policy which is different from or in contradiction to the obligations ensuing from the pact.”
[43] Omitted from the biography of Comrade Schneiderman, which the Leadership Committee gave to the Convention delegates, was a certain shadowy period of his political past. One may have his choice of two alternatives, either Comrade Schneiderman was dishonest in concealing this part of his past from the Committee, or the Committee was dishonest in concealing it when giving its biography of him. Actually, since some members of the Committee had for so long been familiar with his distant past, the dishonesty was somewhat general. In any event, left out from the laudatory biography of Comrade Schneiderman’s past activities was the fact, told to me months later by a worker who had been a member of the Young Communist League in the 20’s, that Comrade Schneiderman, then California State Secretary of the YCL, had been expelled for belonging to the Trotskyite faction in the organization.
Concealment of this fact by Comrade Schneiderman himself is sufficient grounds for the sternest of disciplinary measures. Concealment of this fact about him from the knowledge of the Party membership and, on the part of members of the Leadership Committee in particular, is obviously a factional use of the Party apparatus, and punishable as such.
Nor is this all. When called before the State Security and Review Commission on August 19, 1946, I was asked if I had talked with this worker about Comrade Schneiderman’s past adherence to Trotskyism. So closely had this secret been kept that the question evidently surprised one member of the Commission, who at once asked my questioner, Comrade Harry Glickson (himself once expelled in 1929 for splitting the Party): “What’s all this?” To which Glickson answered in an aside: “Yes, Schneiderman was a member of the Cannon-Trotskyist organization in 1927.”
I readily conceded that I had talked with this worker (James L. Butler of Montara, California) about Schneiderman’s Trotskyite past, but had not deemed the fact that he had such a past of any decisive importance in itself, since he was young at that time and, I supposed, had given assurances satisfactory to the Party, before being admitted to it afterward. Hence, I had not even said anything about the matter to others.
But this was an angle of great importance to the Commission. Comrade Glickson asked me if I had known (which I had not) that letters about this had been written “up to Washington state.” Comrade Lillian Denkin took pains to explain that in 1927 Trotskyism was “something different” than it is today. In her view, Trotskyism in 1927 was apparently harmless. Since I, myself, had seen Trotsky on November 7, 1927, speaking from an auto to the workers on a Moscow square, calling on them to fight against the Party of Lenin and Stalin, and declaring that “It is time to pass from the deed of propaganda, to the propaganda of the deed!” – I could scarcely agree that Trotskyism was harmless, even in 1927.
What was apparent in all this great concern and alarm on the part of the State Security and Review Commission, lest the Party membership find out the truth about Comrade Schneiderman’s Trotskyite history, was not so much the importance of that history, but the importance of that Party Commission trying to hide it from the Party membership. This is pure, unadulterated factionalism, a prime example of using the Party apparatus for factional purposes. And by the State Security and Review Commission, which has as its first function to protect the Party against factionalism!
More, this whole affair smells of the sinister tactics which the “Bloc of Trotskyites and Rightists’’ used in the Soviet Union, attempting to penetrate and destroy the Party from within, to carry out plots (as exposed by Comrade Vyshinsky) to wreck socialist industry, kill honest leaders like Kirov and Gorky, and act as spies and agents of fascist imperialism.
It must never be forgotten that, next to destroying the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, imperialism dearly desires to wreck the CPUSA.
[44] Comrade Stalin had to meet this problem in the CPSU in 1928, when he led the struggle against the Bukharin-Rykov Right Danger. In the course of the discussion he rebuked this “personal attack” and “scandal-mongering” theory, in part, as follows:
“Zapolsky is wrong... he declares that this is not a matter of a Right Deviation, but of scandal-mongering, personal intrigue, etc. Let us assume for a moment that scandal-mongering and personal intrigue do play some part in this, as they do in all struggles. But to attribute everything to scandal-mongering, and to fail to see the essence of this problem behind it, is to depart from the correct, Marxian path.” – From Leninism, by Stalin, p. 77.
[45] Comrade Dennis’s report to that first National Committee meeting after the arrival of the Duclos article is worthy of study. It begins with an assertion of “deep humility” – which is at once dispensed with – in a very brief introductory section supposedly directed to self-criticism but over half of which is, instead, given to disavowal of error. Of the remainder, part of it says:
“I have always endeavored to preserve the unity of our Communist movement as the apple of our eye. But in this connection I have sometimes tended to overlook the essential fact that Communist unity must be forged without making any concessions on questions of principle, even ’minor’ or ’temporary.’”
One would never know, from this assertion of the supremacy of principle, even over Party unity – at least “sometimes” – on the part of Comrade Dennis, that he is the same Dennis who still refers to Darcy as a “renegade,” though the written record shows that this was precisely why Darcy was expelled; he had placed principle above unity.
Again, and reminding the reader that Lenin held that opportunism is “no accident, no slip,” but the social product of imperialism, that it has been “reared on legalism,” let us see what Dennis had to say in representing the opportunism of the national leadership over a long period as just such a “mistake” or “slip.” He said:
“Did this take place because the leading cadres of our Communist movement are organically inclined towards revisionism, or are incurable opportunists? Did this take place because our leadership is bankrupt... or because we are devoid of Bolshevik honesty, integrity and devotion? To ask these questions is to answer them. And the answer is NO!”
So, everybody had been good Marxists. Nobody had betrayed the Party membership or the Working class. The old leadership was basically all right. They had, Dennis asserts later, only “become careless.” In short, it was just “a slip,” an “accident.” This, however, is not surprising, since Comrade Dennis, speaking in the Gilbert and Sullivan role of both prosecutor and defendant, could also, like Pooh-Bah, serve as judge.
[46] I have received intimations that in other Party districts, during and after the 1945 conventions, similar factional actions by the leadership were developed, directed against those frankly accused of being “premature anti-Browderites.” These may or may not be true. I have no means of knowing the facts of these other districts, and can only set down those facts coming within my own experience, not because they affected me ”personally,” but because they affected the life of our Party and the course of the revolutionary struggle of the American proletariat.
That my motives will be attacked as “personal” by those whose opportunism I expose and whose unprincipled factionalism I reveal, is to be taken for granted, since this effort to purge our party of bourgeois influence is a part of the class war, in which no holds are barred by those whose lack of principle has already become evident in the record of their deeds. It is no dishonor to be slandered by such people. Even Marx was officially censured by the General Council of the First International in 1872, for having said that “the English labor leaders had sold themselves.” Lenin, too, was covered with invective and his position constantly misrepresented by the leaders of the Second International whose class collaboration he exposed as the main activity of his political life. To expose opportunism to the Party and the proletariat is a foremost duty of a revolutionary. As Lenin said in his The War and the Second International:
“We must face the issues squarely and call things by their proper names; we must tell the workers the truth.” And again: “For the class conscious workers, Socialism is a serious conviction and not a comfortable cover to hide petty-bourgeois compromises” (pp. 7-8).
[47] This role of conciliator with opportunism is nothing new with Comrade Foster whenever a crisis arises in the Party, and is a sad blemish in a lifetime of service to the working class. In the 1925-29 struggle against the Lovestone factional leadership, although he was supposed to have led the “Foster group” in opposition, in fact he deserted the struggle late in 1927, under the plea of getting on with “practical work,” and was, for this abandonment of principle, not his abandonment of the group, “read out” of his own group in 1928. This did not endear him much to Lovestone, however, who sarcastically observed that the “Z” in Foster’s name stood for “Zigzag.”
His basic viewpoint of a revolutionary fighter, for which he deserves the highest praise and support, is unfortunately crossed with occasional outright Right Opportunism – as in his advocacy of a bigger and better CPPA (Conference for Progressive Political Action, vintage of 1924) in the February, 1947, issue of Political Affairs – and the playing of the role of conciliator with Right Opportunism in internal Party struggles. His role must, by the logic of its own development, become one of an ever more withered “revolutionary” fig leaf for an ever more naked opportunist bureaucracy.
His conciliatory attitude toward Browder, his help in the expulsion of Darcy, whose main “crime” was fighting for Foster’s opposition to Browder better than Foster himself fought for it, is certainly adequate proof of this conciliatory position.
Also, in his current unfeeling attitude toward the ordinary Party members who have been and are being expelled so unjustly by the present leadership, Comrade Foster fails to measure up to the standard set by Stalin in his Mastering Bolshevism (p. 43), where Stalin illustrates how a real Party leader listens to and protects from bureaucratic abuse, the “little persons” in the Party, even those who have been expelled, toward whom, Stalin declares in searing criticism, bureaucracy has a “heartless attitude” (p. 45).
“Only people who in essence are profoundly anti-Party,” says Stalin, “can have such an approach to members of the Party. As the results of such a heartless attitude toward people, toward Party members and Party workers, discontent and bitterness are artificially created in a section of the Party, while the Trotskyite double-dealers adroitly seize hold of such embittered comrades and skillfully drag them after themselves into the morass of Trotskyite wrecking” (p. 46).
It should be noted that another, or reverse side, of this “superior” or official heartlessness toward Party people, as people, is that sickening hero-worship of leaders who are by no means heroes in anything more than the audacity with which they look down upon the “ordinary” member who pays their salary and whose servants, not masters, they should be. This unhealthy tendency, fostered by the leadership, is at bottom a fundamental contempt for the masses, the hallmark of reaction, the philosophical basis for the fascist “Fuehrer principle,” if it can be called a principle.