The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 17, 1931, Page 12

Page Six DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1931 ‘A YEAR OF BOLSHEVIZATION [Why theBose The Bolshevik Party of Russia Was the organizer and leader o the first victorious battle in the international pr-ictarian. revolu- tion, Lenin was the organizer and leader of the Bolshevik Party of Russia. Leninism is the very es- sence of Bolshevism. The Commu- nist Party cannot become the or- ganizer and leader of the proleta- rian revolution fore manifest itself in the contin- ued revolutionary improvement of our Party. Our Leninist under- standing of the revolutionary tasks before us must show itself in a progressively closer adaptation of our Party to these tasks. Does our Party pass this test? Our ‘international leadership, the Communist International, in its letter to our Sixth Convention, formulated the main task of our Party as its “marked transforma- tion from a propaganda sect into } a mass Party of revolutionary ac- | tion.” This transformation , pre- supposes Bolshevization. The’ Bol- shevization of our Party is exactly the process of making it into a mass. party of revolutionary action. This Bolshevizatioa necessitates the change of the relations of the Party members to, each other, the ‘ change of relations of the Party members to their units and to the i the Party, and finally. } the change of the relation of the { leaders of Party to the masses, In the last year our Party dic make substantial headway in this & direction. was insuff stances unsy However, the progres nt and in many in stematic. The first task to be considerec is the activization of the Party and the politicalization of its ac- tivities. This change is not a merc mechanical one. It presuppose already a partial penetration bh: the Party of the working class An active Party member, or an active’ Party unit, are not the ones that participate in or hold many and long meetings, but the ones that reach.many workers and that have their contacts organized and systematized. The political char- acter of the activities of a Party member or a Party unit are not proven by the political nature of the subjects they discuss in their meetings but by the influence they exercise upon the political activi- ties of the workers with whom they hgve contact. The activities of the arty members and Party units | w#ad the political character of these autivities must at once be the ce- ment which. binds the Party with the working class and the magnet which attracts the working class to the Party. The Party can reg- ister some progress in this field. The unit meetings which in a, net far distant past, have been immune from any influence that important events in the. class struggle might exercise, have now opened their doors to let the storm of the class struggle enter. The unit meetings. become more and more the training ground for the members to fit them for their agi- tational and organizational tasks among the workers. The unit meetings also’ become more and, more the sounding board of. the feelings and. reactions of the workers in the shop to events of the class struggle. In this direc- tion the recent campaign of the Party for concretization has con- tributed much, bu’ a completion of this process is possible only by a transformation of the basic Par- ty units and the shop nuclei. The political work of the Party urit in the working class.as. well as the.chance of the Party-unit to feel the pulse of the working class at all times and on all issues, de- pends upon its construction into: the basic unit of the-working class, the. productive -unit:in. sheps, fac-}. teries, mills. and mines, This. Boishevist ‘reorganization of the Party and the: building of until it becomes a } Bolshevist—a Leninist Party. Our adherence to Leninism must -here- |: By MAX BEDACHT "Fighting illiteracy in the Soviet Union —_—_—_— OO OO rrr the roots of the Party into the; shops and factories will aiso defeat the efforts of the capitalist class and its government-to outlaw the Party and to illegalize every ac- tivity of the Party: The capitalist class. policeman may be able to prevent the worker-from going to a Communist meeting by. prevent- ing such a meeting; but he cannot prevent a Communist worker in the shop from talking to-his fel- low worker and from winning him for struggle against capitalism. In spite of a comparatively suc- cessful recruiting campaign at the beginning of the year, the megnber- ship of the Party actually nemain- ed unchanged. However, the fact that a large section of our Party membership, in some districts. more than half, are new members, tes- |tifies to the fact that the results of the recruitment campaign were not mere pretenses, But why no increase in membership? A large section of our old Party members have been so used to in- | activity that the activization of the Party in many instances drove them out. It would. be ‘wrong to explain this merely with a.lack of revolutionary quality on the part of these ex-members. This result was largely due also to incorrect methods in the campaign of activi- zation, to tactlessness and especial- ly to an insufficient ideological campaign. In the field of trade union work our Bolshevization process. was least successful. This is not merely a. shortcoming of our or- ganizational activities, it is a po- litical weakness of the first order. The organization of the working class fer a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is possible only if this working class is drawn into the revolutionary struggle gradu- ally through successive struggles for immediate demands and for the solutior of immediate prob- lems. The winning of the working class for the revolution is not the winning of the working class for certain theoretical formulae. It is rather the winning of the work- ing class for the struggle in its own immediate interests and the | development of this struggle into a revolutionary one by gradually adding in the minds of the work- ers to the understanding of the immediate interest and understand- ing of their potion! class inter- ests. If we understand this, we know that our Party can never become a mass Party without economic mass organizations under our in- fluence and leadership. Our Party can never attract masses for the political class struggle if it does not succeed in organizing and in leading masses into economic struggles. A lack of understand- ing of this point also represented the major weakness of our recruit- ing campaign last year. The recruiting campaign became & {more of a problem .of .arithmetic than of the class struggle. ~The eampaign was conducted ‘more by numerical addition of whoever con- | sented to be added, than of inten- sive class struggle activities in which the Party by its initiative and leadership would attract the most intelligent, the most active | and the most militant workers in- | to its ranks.. But whatever the shortcomings of the Party in this field still are, the very experiences gathered during the last year will! be a considerable step toward de-| cisive improvement. The greatest weakness of the} Party is still its inability to es- tablish a more intimate contact with the masses which it leads. In} many slo- gans lead the masses, but the Par- ty. does not. The basic for this weakness is the sect conception still prevailing in our Party about the united front tac- tics. Here lies the reason for the continuing propaganda character of the activities of the Party. In| the anti-war campaign for in-! stance, we have penetrated quite | deeply into the working class with our propaganda against the threat- | ening imperialist war and against | thes, impending imperialist inter | vention against the Soviet Un- instances’ Communist reason | AN | ion. But weshave no organizec mass movement against this war and intervention. / The greatest step toward the, overcoming of this weakness was! made by the Party during the last | yeay in the unemployment cam- paign. There, though slowly, the Party learned to realize the para- mount importance of real orzani- zation and real struggle and the| indispensability for this real or-| ganization and this real. struggle} for immedidte and partial de- mands. Our unemployment cam- | paign is the best manifestation of | the progressive Bolshevization of the Party. The next step must be| the application of the experiences of this campaign to the general! work of the Party, especially in ithe anti-war campaign. } On the whole, we are justified in stating that the last year was the year of greatest progress of our Party on the road to Bolshevi- zation. Not only did the Party actually improve considerably. its revolutionary quality, but it be- came more and more conscious of the gap that still exists between what it is and what it can and | must do; The Lenin Memorial campaign; shall be made the occasion for dis-| seminating the experiences of last | year within our Party. It shall be! made the occasion to translate | Leninism into a living and guiding | principle of every activity of the | Party as well as its organizational | os forms and life. STALIN ON LEADERSHIP The workers in the U.S.S.R. grew up and received their training in the storms of three revolutions, -They learned, as no other workers learned, to try their leaders and to expel them if they do not satisfy the inter- ests of the proletariat. At one time the most popular man in our Party was Plekhanov. How- ever, the workers did not hesi-° tate to isolate: him completely when they became convinced that he had abandoned the pro- letarian position, And if these workers express their complete confidence in the Communists, elect them to respdnsible posts -in the trade unions, it is direct evidence that the strength and stability of the Communist Par- ty among the workers in the U. S.S.R.is enormous. This is one test of the andoubted sympathy ofthe broad masses of ‘the . workers for the Comunist Party. | activities of the Cheka. | with the,attacks, | polities, Hate the GPU (The Cheka) (Lenin at a meeting of the Cheka on the First Anniversary of the October Revolution) Comrades: Celebrating the anniversary of our revolution, I should like to say |a few words about the hard work of the Extraordinary Commission, It is no wonder that*we hear not enemies but also the iB only from our from friends making attacks on Reviewir | the activities of the Extraordinary { and comparing them I must say that Commission the latter nothing but “alk hardly minds me of Kautsky’s dictatorship. which he !with from the angle of beurg are worth mentioning. It sermon a | the eois 3ut we are speaking’ fro that quires a very hard struggle to ex- experience, we know propriate the bourgeoisie, to estab- jlish a dictatorship. Marx said that bctween capital- ism and Communism there is a pe- riod of the revolutionary dictator- |ship of the proletariat. The more |the proletariat will bring pressure Ito bear-on the bourgeoisie, the greater will be their resistance. We know how they dealt with the pro- letariat in France in 1848 and we are surprised to see how peonle can forget the most elementary principles of Marxism when’ re- proaching us for being severe. We still remember the uprising of the junkers in October, we must not forget the organization of a 1-um- ber of insurrections On the one hand we have to learn to perform creative work, and on the other, we have to break the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The White Army of Finland did not hesitate in shooting down the workers of that country, notwithstanding its beast- ed democracy The idea of the need for a dictatorship has deeply pene- trated the broad masses, notwithe standing its severity and difficul- ty. There is nc other way of emancipating the masses except through the violent suppression of the exploiters. And that is just } what the Cheka is doing, that is its service renderéd to the proletariat. Rosa Luxemburg “She was and remains “an eagle; and not only will her memory always oe highly es- teemed by the Communists ~/ all the world, but her biography and the compiete collection of her writings will be useful for’ the instruction of many generations of Communists in all countries.” —V. 1. Lenin.