The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 27, 1924, Page 7

eer ee ee er rt te enn a Serta mnt lene OE STEREO CNC A SRA RSS RECT EACGSA (SSRIS nN SR NEN AAT ERRNO RRR RMN a ane AR LEAR As NR rE LT LL LT A TT Make It a Party of Leninism By EARL R, BROWDER. F there is one task of supreme im- portance-bet6¥é thé Workers Party of America it is that of remaking itself into a bolshevist party,. When, during the commemoration of the| death of our great leader, Lenin, we launched the recruiting slogan: “Join the Party of Lenin,” we all were more or less conscious that for the Work- ers Party this was an aspiration rather than an established fact...Now more than ever we are realizing (since the disussions in the Fifth World Congress. particularly) what a big job we have to make good our boast of being the Party of Lenin. Leninism Is Not Phrasemongery. In this task we must develop the discussion necessary to make the is- sues clear to our membership, At the same time the danger of degenerating into phrasemongery, the very opposite of Leninism, is ever present in a party so young and untried as our own. It is this tendency to let the word stand in place of the deed that Com- rade Zinoviev struck at, when he said at the Fifth Congress: “A good deal has been heard at this congress.of.the- necessity of bol- shevising the parties, of remaining true to Leninism. We would prefer to hear less about bolshevising the party, but to have the essence of Leninism itself studied more deeply, especially in regard to the trade union ques- tion.” In line with this gentle hint from Comrade Zinoviev, let us try to keep our discussion on bolshevizing the Workers Party upon as concrete and definite a plane as possible. Five Points of Leninism. According to the theses of the Fifth Congress, there are five fundamental features of “a really bolshevik party,” which are: “(a) The party must be really a mass party; ie., while being a legal party or if obliged to become illegal, it must maintain the closest and un- severable ties with the mass of the workers and serve as the expression of their needs and aspirations. “(b) It must have the ability to maneuver; i. e., its tactics must not be dogmatic or sectarian; it must be able to resort to every strategical maneuver against the enemy, which will enable it to remain true to itself. It is one of the chief errors of our parties that they frequently fail to understand this. “(c) It must be essentially « revo- lutionary and Marxist Party, undevi- atingly and in spite of all circum- stances proceeding towards the goal and making every effort to bring nearer the hour of victory of the pro- letariat over the bourgeoisie. “(d) It must be a centralized party, prohibiting factions, tendencies, and groups. It must be a monolithic party hewn of one piece. \ _ “(e) It must carry out a_ regular definite propaganda in the bourgeois army. ‘ “Bolshevising the party means the application to our sections what in Russian Bolshevism was and is inter- national and of general application. “Only to the extent that the sec- tions of the Comintern become really converted ifito bolshevik parties, will the Comintern indeed become a World Bolshevik Party imbued with the ideas of Leninism.” Where Do We-rall. Short? Does the Workers Party measure up to these standards?-No one will pre- tend that we do. But it will be of great value to us to know where and in what manner we. fall. short, and also to what extent we have really progressed in the ‘desired direction. Let it be admitted at once that on all five points our Workers. Party does not come up to standard. With this qualification we can then say, that on some points we have made distin¢t progress, while on others we still face the first elementary steps. First, we must become a mass party. To accomplish this, five fur- ther pre-requisites are laid down by the Fifth Congress: (1) Construction of the party on the basis of shop nuclei; (2) A correct trade union pol-j;a certain amount of leadership icy and work; (3) Initiation and link- ing up with a shop committee move- ment; (4) A correct policy toward the farmers; (5) A correct policy on the national question. Shop nuclei, the first law of organ- ization.for-a Party of Leninism, are only now being organized®in our party. And we still lack that driving force of a convinced and enthusiastic membership that will make our shop nuclei the living, vital organs of the party. <A drastic awakening of our membership to the absolute neces- sity of this re-organization task is called for immediately. Correct trade union policy has been one of the strongest points of the Workers Party from its inception. But even here, tendencies to deviate | from the true line of Lenin have ap- peared, not alone among small cir- cles of our. membership,. but also among some leading comrades. Es- pecially did we find the disastrous deviations of the German comrades on this question finding echoes in America. The party must be con- firmed, from top to bottom, in. the bolshevik trade union policy, sum- marized in the slogans: “Back to the LENIN trade unions;” “Unity, nationally and internationally, of the trade union movement;” “Against splits and secessions;”" “Relentless struggle within the mass organizations against the policies of class collabora- tion and for policies of class strug- gle.” ‘The problem of snop committees is only now. being»faced and mastered by our party in its theoretical aspect. But today it is also becoming a ma- jor practical problem of our move- ment, because only insofar as the shop committee movement is now de- veloped will we be able to secure the necessary contact with the masses for the development of our whole movement, especially in its trade un- ion phases, on to the new stage called for by the class struggle. In- tense activity and “study in initiating and understanding real, practical movements for shop committees, is today the oustanding problem on the economic field of a Party of Leninism in Americas x A correct policy toward the farm- ers is another point on which we can justly claim progress. We have established vital contacts with the poorer farmers, and have given them we have disclosed..weaknesses—not | South and Central in their struggles. Even here, however, | in underestimating its . importance, but in a tendency to allow the center of gravity of the struggle to slip over too far toward the agrarian elements. The leadership must always remain with the vanguard of the industrial workers. On the national question we may say that our theory has been corréct, but our practice has been sadly lim- ited. Only on the question of the Philppines can we say that the party has really made itself a factor. In America, where burning questions of national strug- gle are smouldering and flaring up under the oppression of American Imperialism, our party sadly failed to make the most of its opportuntities. There are a hundred excuses for this, lack of resources, etc., tut the fact remains that until we make good this deficiency we cannet claim to be fully a Leninist Party... Summarizing the conditions neces- sary for making the Workers Party a mass Party of Communism, we may say that on the first, third, and points, we have made but the barest beginnings. On the fourth, the farmers, our exceptional opportuni- ties have enabled us to make progress which is not discreditable. Only on the second, that of trade union policy, can we say that ouf party has really made appreciable strides towards the goal of establishing a living contact with the masses. bs Ability to Maneuver. In developing the ability to meneuw ver, the second point laid down as a necessity for a Party of Leninism, We must register some progress but many shortcomings. We have defi- nitely overcome the sectarian attitude to our problems, and established a will to maneuver. But the firmness of ideology in our membership, neces- sary to carry out maneuvers success- fully and.to keep.our own forces and program intact, has not always been present. In our Labor Party cam- paigns, we sometimes found individu. als and even whole units of our party, being confused by opportunist ideas, instead of overcoming and defeating such deviations which always threaten in suéW fianeuvers among backward masses, The ideology of our mem- bership. must-be strengthened, its in- stinct. against opportunism must be sharpened, before we can claim the ability .to-manetver as a Leninist Party. Among other things this calls for..a tenfold intensification of our educational activity, and the keenest scrutiny of every item of our educa- tional work, that it may be Leninist in fact as well as phrase. A Revolutionary Party. On the third pre-requisite laid down by the Comintern, that the Party must be essentially and undeviatingly a revohitionary and Marxist Party, we claim that the Workers Party comes close to the standard. Devia- tions from lack of understanding, irom an incomplete assimilation of the. Communist..theory and practice, have appeared and will appear. But our party record this respect. Vigilant scrutiny of all our acts; and merciless self-criticism, will keep us on the correct road. A Centralized-tronolithic Party. It-is. when we come to the fourth point, that we begin to get an ap preciation of the appalling shortcom- ings of the Workers’Party as a Party of Leninism. The Comintern says: “It must be a centralized party, prohibiting ‘factions, tendencies, and groups. it must be a monolithic party hewn of one piece.” A black record of sin against Len- inism stands here against our move- ment in America. Not only have we silently acquiesced in our soecial-dem- ocratic inheritence of structural form, which reduces centralization to a mockery—we have done worse, by systematically placing a premium upon factions, tendencies, and groups within our party. We have a pernic- ious tradition, running violently counter to the fundamentals of Len- inism, that the road_ to. leadership lies thru the development of “tend- encies” differing from the party line, and the crystallization of factions and groups around these “tendencies.” A sharp halt must be called to this un-bolshevist practice, and an end put to this shameful tradition. The Workers. Party of America must, too, become “a monolithic party hewn of one piece.” There is no room for warring factions ‘and groups within a Communist party. When the next Central Executive Committee and District Committees of our party are élected, let it be understood, once and for all, that when the party has estab- lished its line of policy in the discus- sion period and by convention decis- ion, at that moment all —struggle within the party ends and every mem- ber, from top to bottom, becomes one unit in “a centralized, monolithic party hewn of one piece.” Propaganda in the Army. T™m the fifth point, the systematic preparation of the armed forces of the bourgeois state for refusal to fire upon their brother workers when or- dered to do so by the capitalist mas- ters, we find another measure of the immaturity of our party. Not a tenth part of what should have been done by. us has been accomplished. Im- mersed in the practical affairs of daily life, we have neglected what will soon become one of the most practi- eal and pressing problems of the movement. And for the ultimate struggle for power, we know that upon this problem being solved de- pends the fate of the revolution itself. It is # pleasure to make note of the fact, however, that if our party has neglected this work, the Young Work- ers League has not. It has made at least. a beginning by sending picked members into the military training camps, compiling its experience, and make it available for the movement generally. 4 Conclusion. Yes, it requires more, much.more, than mere repetition of phrases from the» books for us to reach the point where. we can say: “We have a Party of Leninism.” It requires that we take hold of our party and change it, organizationally and _ ideologicaliy, hammering it‘in the course of our struggle, in the course of applying the principles of the Communist In- ternational to the life of the American working class, into the kind of a (Continued on page 6) is not too bad in *