First Published: The Militant Vol. 22, No. 34, August 25, 1958
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Confronted with a continuing, deep-going, internal crisis the top leadership of the Communist Party is now whetting an old-fashioned Stalinist hatchet for use on those remaining members who oppose its policies, The Aug. 17 Worker reports two statements adopted Aug. 12 by the CP National Executive Committee which declare its intention to silence or drive out of the Party all dissident voices. One of the statements lays the basis for expulsion of a group described as “ultra left.” The other brands A. B. Magil, recently foreign editor of the Worker, guilty of “anti-Party” activity.
According to the NEC, a “Call to a Conference for Marxist-Leninist Action” in New York Aug. 16-17 was issued by the “ultra left” group, which is described by the NEC statement as holding the view that the CP is pursuing a Titoist policy of “revisionism.”
Characterizing these views as “slanders against both the Party and its leadership,” the NEC brands them as designed to “carry forward a struggle against the Party ... It is preparation for an attempt to split the Party and is aimed at its destruction.”
The NEC statement decrees that the initiators of the conference “have by this act placed themselves outside the party and merit expulsion from its ranks.” It reports that the names of the “ringleaders” of the group, including Harry Haywood, Armando Roman, Ted Allen and Joe Dougher, have been turned over to “appropriate district committees for disciplinary action.” The statement urges “speedy action to wipe out this anti-Party center in our midst.”
Thus, after publicly pronouncing the group “guilty,” the leadership has now assigned them to trial – assuming the recommended “disciplinary action” will be based on the formality of a trial.
The second NEC statement declares that “For the past two years the Party has been increasingly plagued with the disease of factionalism” and that there “has been a steady stream of factional documents, attacking the line of the Party, and vilifying its leadership, and circulated outside of proper Party channels.”
It charges A. B. Magil with the high crime of circulating among National Committee members and others in the party an article on the Yugoslav question which the Worker had refused to print.
There is “no doubt.” the NEC declared, that Magil was “fully aware of the nature and import of his action. Hence it must be construed as nothing other than a deliberate piece of factionalism. As such, it must be condemned and Comrade Magil severely censured for the commission of such an anti-Party act.”
Since the Khrushchev revelations, the CP has been deeply divided on major political issues. With the departure of John Gates and his followers from the Party, the internal struggle, instead of easing as was anticipated, grew even more intense. Yet the leadership has persistently sought to stamp out rank-and-file discussion on the many disputed issues. Borrowing the dictum of Louis XIV–“I am the State”–they have set themselves up as “the Party,” branding anyone in disagreement with them as “anti-Party.”
Unable to win support for their policies within the radical movement, the CP leaders have substituted a campaign of distortion, misrepresentation and smear for political debate. Within the party, they reply with bureaucratic decrees and disciplinary actions to any efforts to get a serious discussion of disputed questions.
The headlong drive of the central CP leadership back to all the worst features of Stalinism is a demonstration of their utter incapacity to resolve in any progressive way the political crisis that is rapidly reducing what remains of the party to a completely isolated sect.