First Published: The Militant, Vol. 10, No. 46, November 16, 1946
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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For the first time the Stalinist Daily Worker has reported one of the group purges of the rank and file that have been convulsing the American Communist Party. “The Prospect Section Committee,” the Nov. 5 Daily Worker declares, “.. . unanimously expelled Sylvia Price, her two sisters, Eileen Rechtman and Bea Rechtman, Jerry Schwartz and seven others for organizing and maintaining a faction within the P.R. club and carrying on disruptive anti-party activities of a left-wing sectarian. semi-Trotskyist nature in opposition to the line of the Communist Party.”
The notice of expulsion, issued by the Bronx County Committee, claimed the group was headed by Earl Price, who was expelled some months ago as a “petty bourgeois Individualist who propagated semi-Trotskyist views and maintained connections with an outside anti-party group.”
Up to now the Daily Worker had announced only the expulsion of such leading Stalinist figures as William F. Dunne, Verne Smith, Ruth McKinney and Bruce Minton on charges of similar character.
The Bronx group, according to the Daily Worker, accused the Communist (Stalinist) Party of “betraying the working class to the bourgeoisie” and also “betraying its brother parties and peoples throughout the world.”
The group organized a “faction” to fight for the building of a “Marxist” party. It regarded “war as immediately inevitable” and, claims the Daily Worker, “fell victim to the war scares of extreme reaction . . .”
“This faction,” continues the Stalinist organ, “. . . has made the Truman Administration the exclusive and main center of attack. It has exaggerated the degree of fascist development in the U.S.A., erroneously considering the Truman Administration as virtually a fascist government.”
The group likewise attacked “the Mead-Lehman Democrats as the chief feature of its activities.” The Stalinist Party, as is well known, was the most ardent champion of the red-baiting Democratic machine in the elections.
The expelled group also attacked the failure of the Stalinist Party to conduct a militant fight against the reactionary Case Bill.
The statement of the Bronx County Committee declares that “It is obvious that the party must carry on the fight on two fronts against these ’left’ opportunists as well as the right influences and remnants of Browderism.”
The Daily Worker’s admission of these expulsions gives additional confirmation to the declaration of The Militant last week which pointed out that a “profound internal crisis is convulsing” the Stalinist Party.