First Published: The New Masses, Vol. 51, No. 9, May 30, 1944.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As we go to press the Communists are in full convention–perhaps the most momentous of their rich twenty-five year history. Although ten thousand of them are in military service, the Party announced a gain of more than 24,000 new members in the past three months–an increase of about a third. Meeting on the eve of the war’s climax–the invasion of Fortress Europa–the delegates came with a prepared ‥line of march”–a program that was predetermined by the “unanimous decisions of more than a score of state and regional conventions which have elected the delegates to the national gathering,” as Earl Browder pointed out. This program– foreshadowed at a meeting of its national committee several months ago– seeks to weld unshatterable national unity behind the war and postwar policies of President Roosevelt. The spirit of the convention is symbolized by the picture that dominates the platform of the meeting hall–a great photograph of the architects of Teheran–Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.
The Party, at this writing, has been dissolved, and the delegates have unanimously decided to reorganize as the Communist Political Association. The decision was made to enhance the tempo of creating the imperative bonds of national unity. As Mr. Browder wrote recently, “all aims of partisan advancement” have been renounced by the Communists, who will therefore form a new non-party organization “through which to make their contribution to the common cause of the progressive majority of the American people.” The Association will, as a group, participate in the nation’s political life through the “established party organizations, as a part of that great body of independent voters who choose candidates and issues on their merits without regard to party label, without endorsing any party as such.”
Joseph North, editor-in-chief of NEW MASSES, who is covering the convention, will comment on it at some length next week, and in subsequent issues of the magazine.
We can, at this moment, remark that the convention establishes a high point in the Party’s life–and though it closes a quarter century of heroic endeavor as a people’s vanguard, it begins a new and even greater era, one in which it will undoubtedly play an even more prominent part in the achievement of that necessary national unity to ensure victory in the war and in the peace.
It will be one of those factors which will give the people what they yearn for most–a warless world.