The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 29, 1925, Page 9

Pel . ee en RS AS A A SR NN AR “Es aR eS LL LL . -Central Executive United States, This was the true situation and on the basis of this, or from this, the Central S%ectuive Com- mittee concluded that the slogan for a labor party had no appealing force under these conditions and could not be employed by our party with much use in the immediate future. This was the situation when the change in policy was made and these were the Teasons why the change was made. This precipitated in our party the now famous labor party controversy. OMRADES, without going into this matter again in any way, I wish to say that whether this violent strug- gle in our party was justified or not, whether it was necessary for our party to pay the price that it did for having its policy corrected, the fact remains that never in the history of our movement.did-a party pass thru a fight of such dimensions, bitterness and violence. Most of the delegates heré are not novices in the Commun- ist movement. A good number of them have been founders of our party. ‘Most nearly everyone of us participat- » edin all the internal struggles since 1919 and every one will agree that never did our party have a fight of this kind. And I say that if our party succeeded in withstanding this fight without splitting into about ten or fifteen parts, this again is a tribute to the growth of the Communist qual- ity of our party. We all remember the old days. We know that every fight on a big issue produced a split. In those days we did not seem to know any other way of settling our difficulties than just to part ways and go asunder and then begin a cam- paign for unity. Central Executive Committee of a Communist Party which functions in the face of such an _ opposition, should not and cannot be expected by anybody to have taken care fully of everything that a Communist Party must take care of. Now do you know, comrades—I sup- pose you do-—that during these months of factional struggle, party discipline practically lost its meaning for about one-third of our party. It did not mean anything. A decision of the Central Executive Committee would be received and filed. It would be accorded the courtesy of being re- ceived and filed, but as far as results were concerned, every minority dis- trict organizer, Comrade Jakira, Com- rade Ballam, for instance, would be the judge of whether the Central Ex- ecutive Committee instructions should go into effect or whether it should just be disregarded. This example set by district organizers was followed practically by every minority com- rade in the ranks. In the old days a Central Executive Committee would do what? It would initiate a series of disciplinary measures against every one guilty of breaking party discip- line, which would result in a split. The recent Central Exectuive Com- mittee of the party did not want a split. And it was for this reason that the Central Executive Committee overlooked many and many things for .the sake of retaining the unity of the party, of enabling it to outlive its crisis and proceed further in a unified manner. Now about the activities of the Cen- ‘tral Executive Committee during that period. You are all supplied with copies of our written report. Those of you who have studied the report, have no doubt received a complete Picture of what the party was occupy- ing itself with these 20 months. I want to draw your attention 1. .ome specific features of our wora “uring these 20 months. The party carried out a number of very important unit- ed front campaigns. I will go into some details discussing tese cam- paigns, but before I proceed, I wish to say a few words about some of the “popular” criticisms that the minority has been hurling at the Central Ex- ecutive Committee in connection with its umited front campaign. One is that these united front campaigns were not real campaigns. That the Committee was simply passing resolutions, publishing them in our papers, organizing a few meetings and let the matter rest at that. In short, that the Central Ex- ecutive Committee failed to organize | the sentiment and action of the mags-!in creating paper organizations and is | organization, called the United aN 3 es in favor of our slogans in these campaigns, If you want to discuss the failures of the present Central Executtve Committee, there are many of them. For instance, we failed to seize power in the United States; we did not even elect Comrade Foster to the presidency. We have not yet cap- tured the unions in the United States; but there is one thing comrades which we have not failed to do and that is, we have not failed to resist most en- ergetically the attempts of the min- ority to drive us into fake united fronts. This we have not failed to do. The policies of the Central Executive Committee that were outlined in con- nection with every one of our cam- paigns provided for a united front policy, it provided for it. T instructed our organization to pro- ceed to mobilize sentiment for our slogans and organize it jointly with other labor organizations for definite political acts. “And if asa result- of these campaigns we have. not: suc- ceeded in creating large mass move- ments for our slogans, the Central Executive Committee cannot be blam- ed for that. For instance, during our period of office we were carrying on a campaign against wage cuts in the textile industry and in other indus- tries. These campaigns did not pro- duce a strike movement. There were several sporadic strikes here and there that were liquidated very soon and most of them were defeated. Our party issued the slogan: Strike against wage cuts. We carried on propaganda for these slogans. We took a number of organizational measures to bring about a united front struggle against wage cuts, but the results show that no big strike movement actually re- sulted. This is a fact. What does this fact prove? Does it prove that the policy of the Central Executive | Committee wag, wrong? Not in the least. The policy was correct. But it proved the fact that I started out with, namely that the American work- ing class still finds itself in a depres- sed mood due to many, many develop- ments in the past two or three years ‘which did not enable us to arouse them now at this moment for real big struggles against capitalism. And the conclusion to be drawn from this is that our party must be patient and persistent in carrying on its work un- til more favorable conditions will en- able us to secure bigger success as results of our campaigns. But to con- clude this, as some of the minority comrades are doing, that irrespective of whether you have succeeded in arousing the masses or not, you must rush headiong in building united front organizations which can have only a paper existence is to make a joke of the united front policy. This conclu- sion we cannot make. This conclu- sion the Communist International does not want to make. Some of our com- rades in the minority have reached the point where they earnestly main- tain that when the party wants to publish proclamations to the Ameri- can workers, it cannot do that unless its forms united front committees. In the course of our discussion this idea was brought forward time and time again. So our contention is this. The criticism of the minority regarding our united front policy is invalid be- cause the failure of our party to real- ly create a@ mass movement for our demands is attributable almost com- pletely to conditions outside of our control. Ballam is a minority district organizer, His district includes a good portion of the textile industry. He was doing his best to create a united front, so he says. He said he was doing his best te promote a movement and a united front move- ment. The result, comrades, is such that there {is almost nothing to: report to the party. As I said before, we had a number of sporadic strikes which we were not able to fuse to- gether and organize into a big strike movement because of the existing ob- jective conditions., HE failure charged against us to create united front organizations where there is no mass support for them is no failure at all but is real- ism in carrying on Communist poli- cles, The majority of the Central Executive Committee has maintained consistently that it does not believe going to maintain their policy in the future, Another angle of our work during these 20 months marks a beginning in a new field of-activity. I refer here to the beginnings made by our party in the field of Negro work. Now this is not the first time that a Central Committee of a Communist Party in America is interesting itself in Negro work. In fact, I remember since the very first day of the Communist move- ment in America, the C. P. as well as the C. L: P. and then the U. C. P. and then the unified party and the Work- ers Party have always been interest- ing themselves in Negro work. Con- tacts have been established in those years but I maintain that it was only during the present period of the Cen- tral Executive Committee that our work among the Negroes was placed on a correct political basts and also on a more effective organiaztional basis. The advice of the C. I. quite natur- ally played a big part in the successes achieved by the party in this line of work. “The fact’ is ttiat°at this mo- ment our party is participating and exercising a great deal of influence in the organization of the Negro Labor Congress. There is a special report on the subject and I will not go into much detail. Suffice it to say that | tral: Executive Committee has been paying very close attention to work among the Negroes. Suffice it to say ‘that nearly one-third of the member- ship of the Central Executive Commit- tee was commissioned by the Central Executive Committee as a sub-com- mittee to supervise this work of the party. And we say the party must realize the importance of this sort of work for the future growth of our Party. URING these twenty months there developed a number of contro- versies besides the controversy on the labor party. For instance, the contro- versy on women’s work and how the work should be conducted among the working women in the United States. I understand that there is a legend going about in the party about the op- position of the majority to work among women. Comrades, a cool and calm listening to the facts will con- vince you that this is, to use polite language, bunk. Before I speak of the controversy let me establish the fact. The fact is that neither during these twenty months that we were in office nor during the four or five years be- fore we came into office, was there any substantial Communist work among women. If the party is to be blamed for it, let the party be blamed for it; if the Central Executive Com- mittee is to be blamed for it, give it all the blame, but remember that Communist work among women has not yet had its beginning. Now as to the controversy. The party as a whole did nothing—very little was done for work among women. Individual members of the party, women and men, were engaged in a number of cities in work among women—notably in Detroit—the Fed- eration of Working Class Women— in Boston and in New York. Groups of comrades were engaged in those organizations in organizing the work- ing class women on various economic and political issues. Now the contro- versy in the Central Executive Com- mittee arose over two questions. One point we were making there was that the main and central objective of the Communist Party in its work among women is work among working women —women actually employed in tndus- try, not that we must neglect work- ing class housewives, but the center of attention of our party ‘and its main policies must be formulated on the basis of drawing into the struggle— economic and political—the women ac- tually engaged‘in the shops and fac- were making against the minority comrades in New York was that they have entirely overlooked the central housewives in New York. The minor ity, for one reason or another, @ great fancy to a New York women’s Coun- during the last five months the Cen-| cil of Working Class Women. They took such a strong fancy to it, that they were willing to. make this the key to the women’s movement in the United States, the basis of every manéuver and every ‘campaign that the party is going to make among the working women. And we said we failed to realize this universal great- ness and basic importance of the United Council of Working Class Women. Here is what we said. We said this Council of Working Class Women is in reality a very, very small organization of working class house- wives. We said, we failed to see how such an organization can become the center... . on which we can build and form our movement among the working class women. But the im- portant thing, comrades, in connec- tion with this controversy is that as a result of it, really nothing was achieved except factional capital against the Central Executive Com- mittee, : OW another point I wish to make, in connection with this, is that up until about one day before the Parity Commission adopted its prop- osal on women’s work the minority still did not know that the main prob- lem in our women’s work was the or- ganization of working class women. But it just so happened that the day before the Parity commission made its decision on the women’s. question, the Inprecorr brought a .report,of a decision passed by the women’s. sec- retariat of the Communist Interna- tional which contains an elaborate out- line, a detailed outline of work among women, and when the minority saw this, they saw the light, and then brought in a resolution which for the first time proposes a program of ac- tivity among women in factories. _ Now reporting on the Central Exe- cutive Committee’s work, I wish to say a few words on our right wing and the struggle against the right wing. This subject will be discussed at length under a special heading. But there is one point I wish to impress upon the comrades in Gonniection with this. And the poiit mainly is this: That when the minority of the party and Central Executive Committe come to the party and party convention tell- ing us about our alliance with the right wing, about our failure to fight the right wing, I say that there is not a particle of sincerity to all that stuff. I recall, and all of you know, that Lore and Loreism is not some- thing new in our party, even Com- rade Bedacht says that.. You know Loreism for years, and various forms and shapes, and we knew for some time that Loreism was not a Communist tendency. Why, comrades, at one stage in the life of our govern- ment, on the event. of. the formation of the Workers Party, here -is what took place. Something very important and significant. Negotiations were going on between delegates of the | Communist Party and delegates from the Workers Council group. And who do you think was representing the Workers Council group in these con- ferences? Lore! And who do you think was Lore? He was also a member of the Communist Party of America. In other words Comrade Lore in those months was a member of the Com- munist Party and at the same time was organized jointly with a political group which was fighting our move- ment bitterly and was negotiating all kinds of terms with our party. And what did the Comniunist Party do in those days to Lore? Lovestone might tell you something about that. We knew it was bad but we could not do much, We felt we could not do much. And why could not we? Because we knew that to take strict organiza- tional measures against Lore in those months, would prevent the Commun- ists from fulfilling their main ob jective in those days—the formation of the Workers Party of America. When Lore Was Respectable. In the period of the Pepper-Ruthen- in the Workers Party, do to combat Loreism? To be a friend of Lore in was an honor. It is.a now, and rightly so. But it no disgrace when Lovestone, Pep- and Ruthenberg were managing F (Continued on page 6.)