The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 14, 1934, Page 8

Page Eight “Forward to Winning the American Workers for Soviet Power!” (Continued from Page Seven) n of a constantly ing standard were going to res i all our ist efforts to reduce er how much Rooseve of “economy p sacrificing. We tt to realize a full and happy ve to take power, over- take only the revolutionists | for the immediate and for better food, the toilers. Any- ition or afraid of it, ] he betrays rs them to the Questions of the United Front | ic of the United Front must be ap- a Ss activities. In each case a itable for the occasion must be That means the whole Party | against distortions ainst deviations. ized by contempt at, tematic, daily work necessary | to win ‘the workers who are under reformist | leadership; by rigid and mechanical approach | to united front problems; by fear to plunge boldly into the broadest mass struggles. In all of our election campaigns, we have the problem of giving them a united front character. The coming Congressional Elections must everywhere be made real united front drive, with the objective of electing at least a| few Communist Congressmen from a few con- | centra n points. We mu good deal of attention to two | importa: 1 united front efforts, namely, | the Cleveland and Dearborn elections last year. | In Cleveland, the comrades correctly set them- selves the task of involving the mass move- ment of small homeowners in the Communist election campaign. But they made many serious errors in doing this. They encouraged or toler- | ated the tendency for the Homeowners’ Federa- tion to go into politics on its own hook and to transform itself into a political party. The Homeowners’ Federation took the initiative in nominating aldermanic candidates, and only as an afterthought, were other workingclass organ- izations drawn in, while the Communist Party, as such, was pushed entirely into the back- ground. Let nobody understand our criticism} of this as trying to protect narrow Party in- terests as against the interests of the Home- owners’ Federation. No, we are insisting equally upon the interests of the Homeowners’ Feder- ation, when we demand that such an organi- zation shall not be transformed into a political party. To attempt to make a political party out of such mass organizations is to seriously threaten their future work and growth, and turn them aside from their proper function. At the same time this has a liquidating effect upon the Communist Party. It does not consolidate the unity of the masses of workers, but rather threatens to break up that unity. Similarly in the Dearborn election campaign: Dearnborn is the city of the Ford Motor fac- tories; it is a company town. There was a mass revolt against the Ford domination in the city | government. We correctly decided to unite this | revolt around a workers’ ticket, participated in ie Communist Party and with Communists central candidates. But in practically retreated before the of the Party in this united front, evaded some | of 1 political i Thus, our comrades contributed to tie creation of such} an atmosphere of timidity, and evasion, that under sharp attacks from Ford’s agents, some of the weaker elements on the workers’ ticket rs into panic entirely, and the candidate for . ab one point, signed a resignation from the struggle. _We must again emphasize that, while workers’ i ble under certain special cir- nstances, and especially in company towns, this under no circumstances means the aban- donment of the independent role of the Com- munist Party. To push the Communist Party into the background, to allow it to be forgotten, ' 8 fatal to the success of a particular campaign, as well as endangering our future development. The tendency to bring forward workers’ tickets in large industrial cities is generally wrong; it is a tendency to surrender to Farmer-Laborism. | Recently, in South Dakota, our comrades seized the opportunity of a broad State confer- ence of farmers and the Unemployed Council movement to launch a campaign of a leading Communist for Governor of that State. This was correct under the circumstances, even though the Communist Party, as such, had not | Possession of | yet named publicly its candidates. |'s a danger that the further development of |this campaign in South Dakota may have a But there tendency to develop under the flag of non-parti- sanism. If this is permitted, the movement is jin danger of sliding off into the old traditional }path of Farmer- ‘Laborism with disastrous re- sults to the workers and farmers in South Dakota. To prevent this, the Communist Party | there must come to the front most energetically. The candidate for Governor must make this campaign openly and frankly as the nominee not only of the broad united front, but also of the Communist Party. He must speak as a Communist. The Party must not dissolve its own activities into the broad movement and |lose itself there. On the contrary, the Com- munist Party must be tremendously strength- ened in the course of this campaign and must prove in practice its right to the tit'e of leader of the exploited masses of South Dakota. There are still some tendencies in our moye- ment to look upon the United Front as ly a matter of addressing letters to the top com- , |mittees of various organizations and conducting negotiations with these committees. But this is not the essence of a united front at all. Letters and negotiations to top committees of reformist organizations have their place at cer- tain moments when they serve as instruments to dramatize issues before the broadest masses and arouse these masses to action and to 6 movement toward unity. But if such letters and negotiations become an end in themselves; if they are constantly repeated without any re- sults, then they serve not to build the move- |ment for unity, but on the contrary, to de- moralize and dissipate it, to discredit the whole |slogan of the united front. The United Front tactic plays a growingly important role in the trade union field and strike movements. This is especially true in the struggle against company unions, and in those industries where two or more trade unions are already being built among the workers. In | every case, revolutionary forces must come for- ward as the practical fighters for uniting all workers against the company unions, for find- ing the forms to unify the struggles of the workers in the A. F. of L., T.U.U.L. and inde- pendent unions. An excellent example of cor- rect effort in this direction was the proposal for united action submitted by the delegates of the Steel and Metal Workers Industrial Union to the Conference of the Republic Steel Mill locals of the Amalgamated Assn. of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers held recently in Ohio. Another example of the correct united front tactics in the trade union struggles was the work in the Western Pennsylvania mine fields during the big strikes there, in which the National Miners’ Union declared its support for the demand for the recognition of the United Mine Workers, and in which the S.M.W.LU. successfully began the establishment of united action of the strik- ing miners, with the steel workers. Another example of the correct application of the united front was the Automobile Workers’ Conference |held last week in Detroit on the joint call of |the Auto Workers’ Union and the Mechanics Educational Society, participated in also by rank |amd file delegates from the A. F. of L. auto unions, with the slogan of joint struggle against company unions, and for the auto workers’ de- mands. Many other examples could be brought forward, should be analyzed. Comrade Stachel through this correct line, the comrades |in his special report on the trade union ques- “red scare,” hid the face | tion is going to go more into detail in analyzing | the whole of our trade union problems now. In all united front activities, the Commu- nists must always grant the right to all other groups, and reserve the right for themselves, of mutual criticism. It is permissible and cor- rect to make specific agreements of non-criti- jcism during the actual carrying through of joint actions agreed upon, within the scope of the specific agreement, so long as these agree- | ments are loyally adhered to by all sides. But the Communists can never agree to be silent, to refrain from criticism, on any breaking of agreements for struggle, on any betrayal or desertion of the fight. Any such agreements would not be contributions to unity, but rather to disunity. | “Left” Social-F ‘ascism and Its Role | The relationship between immediate demands and revolution has become closer than ever with the deepening of the capitalist crisis. talists are driving more and more to reduce the standards of living. The Socialist leaders and the A. F. of L. are more and more driven by their subordination to the Roosevelt program to openly betray the struggle of the workers for the means of living. Where formerly they had time and room to maneuver in and fool the workers, they now more and more have come out quickly and openly with their strikebreak- ing role. As a result, the masses are becoming quickly disillusioned. There is a real crisis among the social-fascists; their followers are turning away from them. A little example of the speed of this develop- ment has been seen in the two taxi drivers’ strikes in New York City. Two months ago the taxi workers went out demanding the recog- nition of their union and increased pay. When they first struck, who were their leaders? Mayor LaGuardia, himself, appeared as a sort of god- father to them; Socialist Judge Panken was their principal spokesman; liberal Socialist Morris Ernst was the arbitrator; the Socialist Party spoke of it patronizingly as “our” union. Quickly the scene changed. The arbitrators got to work. When the men hesitated to compro- mise their demands, LaGuardia quickly changed from the kindly godfather to the threatening policeman. The liberal Socialist councillors and arbitrators pressed the taxi men to accept the settlement dictated by LaGuardia; the men finally accepted under the impression that they had gotten part of their economic demands, plus the recognition of their union. The Com- munists told the taxi strikers they had been betrayed. The taxi strikers were still loyal to these “leaders’ and they tore up the Daily Worker that told them the truth, and beat up the Communists. Disappointed though they were, they would have nothing to do with the “Communist disrupters” and “reds.” But when they got back to work, they found The capi- | had been not only cheated out of their sup- posed economic victories, but were completely denied the right of their own organization. The companies began installing company unions; the men threatened to strike against them; they returned to their old leaders for advice and were told not to make any more trouble, to submit to the N.R.A. code of $13.00 per week; that the company had a right to organize com- | pany unions if they wished. In desperation, the jmen went on strike again to enforce the recog- |nition of their union. Already they had ar- |rayed against them all their former friends; every newspaper in the city vilified them; La- Guardia threatened them; the police arrested \them and beat them up; the Socialists washed | their hands of them; the A. F. of L. threatened to come in and take over sponsorship of the Company union. Only the Communist Party, the revolutionary trade unions and the Daily Worker came to the assistance of the taxi strik- ers. Result: the same taxi drivers who a few weeks ago were tearing up the Daily Worker, and beating up Communists, today cheer the Daily Worker, send delegations to the Commu- nist Party Convention, and are no longer afraid or ashamed that their union is being called a red union. In a few brief weeks the social-fas- cists lost their influence over them; in a few brief weeks these men who in overwhelming majority, a few weeks ago were actively antag- onistic, became Communist sympathizers. ‘The same thing is happening on a larger and smaller scale everywhere. The class lines are tightening; the class struggle is sharpening; the masses can learn quicker now than ever before on which side do the leaders stand—with the eapitalists or with the workers. The social- fascist leaders are being exposed before the masses as capitalist agents. In this crisis the social-fascist leadership finds it necessary to invent new means to keep the workers fooled and under their control, For this purpose, they are beginning, wherever§the situation gets too hot for them, to establigm a division of labor—one part of them becomes the ;of the history and functions of these people “right wing,” which carries through the dirty work of the direct sell-out; comes a “left-wing” which mildly deplores the necessity of submitting to the sell-out, and which consoles the workers with an ineffective opposition and a sugar-coating of radical and even revolutionary and Communist phrases. This left-reformist, left social-fascism, is spring- ing up everywhere today, and is especially dan- gerous. One form of it is the self-styled “Amer- ican Workers Party,” headed by the Rev. Muste. Another is the Lovestone group, with its I. Zimmerman in the shoe industry and its S. Zimmerman in the needle trades. Another iS| agenda adopted for the Convention. the Trotzky group in the food industry. They are characterized by the multiplicity of their banners, their hatred of the Communists; their radical hot-air, and their practical service to} the A. F. of L. and Socialist Party officialdom. A classical example of this left social-fascism is given by the “Communist Oppositionist,” Ss. Zimmerman in Local 22 of the IL.G.W.U. Zim- merman’s “Communist” revolutionary phrases have become invaluable instruments in the hands of the LL.G.W.U. officials and the So- cialist Party. The workers in Local 22 are be- coming disillusioned with the officialdom. They can't be fooled anymore by the old means. They are prepared to give a large vote for revolution- ary policy. So the S, P. and A. F. of L. officials decide that here is an occasion to apply the good old American saying “if you can’t lick| ‘em, join ’em.” They find ready at hand in| the person of S. Zimmerman their own “Com- | munist” to lead Local 22, and safely preserve | these workers under their control. They assure the workers: “Your choice is no longer between reformist and revolutionary leadership. Now you choose between two kinds of revolutionists —the practical, the realistic Zimmerman, or the impractical, utopian, disruptive Communists. You're nos even choosing between non-Com- munists and Communists, because we're even prepared to give you a Communist to lead you.” Thus in the recent elections in Local 22, the A. F. of L. officials, Socialist Party, the Socialist press, created a firm fighting united front in support of the “Communist” Zimmerman. Thus these little groups of renegades, trading on the name of Communism hire themselves out to the blackest reaction in the labor movement, and become “mass leaders” in the service of social- fascism, ‘The example of the Zimmermans gives the type of the whole tribe of left social-fascists that is being born out of the crisis of social- fascist leadership. They are the most dangerous enemies of the workers’ struggles today. We can move forward only to the extent that we expose their true character, and thus drive them out of the workers’ movement. In this respect we must say that too often we still see remnants of a certain liberal, toler- ant attitude towards the renegades. To some extent this is born out of the fact that we have such a new membership in our movement—be- cause we are growing so rapidly. Many of our members are not familiar with the direct facts the other part be- | who call themselves “Communists.” Too many of our members still do not understand that Trotskyism and the Trotskyists are not a “branch” of the Communist movement but rather a police agency of the capitalist class. There is also a real leftward movement among Socialist workers which tries, often confusedly, to give expression to a revolutionary policy, A symptom of such a movement is the plat- form recently issued by the Revolutionary Pol- |icy Committee in preparation for the S. P. | Convention in June. Some of its proposals have been included for action fn the official It must be said that the Revolutionary Policy Commit- | tee comes much closer to revolutionary formu- lations on central issues than does the Muste “AW.P.”; and further that it is much less vicious in its attacks upon Communism than is Muste or the renegades. The composition of this “left-wing,” however, gives little ground for expecting it to lead the real leftward de- velopment of the S. P. meniers toward the united front with the Communists and even- tually toward unification. It is not homogene- ous; many of its members are known for their vacillating, compromising character. In all | probability this effort also will collapse into another contribution to that “left” social-fas- | cism whose object is to disrupt and disperse the left-ward movement of the workers. All Socialist Parties, in their division of labor, are producing not only “left” wings, but also open fascist groupings. Thus in Japan, the Socialist Party split with its general secretary going over with a section of the Socialist Party to “national socialism,” a crude imitation of Hitler adapted to Japanese war policy. Thus in France, the “neo-socialists” have split from the Socialist Party, in order to pass over openly to a national chauvinist platform, open fascism. The American Socialist Party also has its open fascist grouping, which centers here in Ohio. Its spokesman is Joseph W. Sharts, state secre- tary of the S. P. Let me give you a few samples of this new fascist program for the S. P.: “Frank recognition of the futility of all Socialist efforts so long as we ignore or oppose those elemental emotional forces implied in ‘Americanism, ‘nationalism,’ and ‘patriotism, and therefore the need of utilizing or at least neutralizing them by a shift of attitude and Propaganda so as to enlist national pride and love of country.” “The socialist appeal which relies on a vague internationalism and a mythical work- ing-class instinct of solidarity is easily crushed whenever it meets the elemental emotional forces roused under the name of patriotism.” “These great traditions cluster around the Stars and Stripes and make it worthy to be fought for, regardless of the capitalist con- nections in recent years.” “Not by the pacifist but by the patriotic approach lies our path to power and freedom.” It would be difficult to improve on Mr, Sharts by quoting directly from Hitler. Progress in the Bolshevization of the Communist Party It means to master all the lessons taught us| tunists, and turned the Party resolutely towards by that first Communist Party, the most suc- cessful one, created and led to victory by Lenin, and now successfully building Socialism under the leadership of Stalin. It means to become a party of the masses; to be a Party with its strongest roots among the decisive workers in the basic industries; it means to be a Party whose stronghold is in the ships, mines and factories, and especially in the biggest and most important ones; it means to be a Party that leads and organizes the struggles of all the oppressed people, bring them into firm alliance with the working class; it means to be a Party that answers every question of the struggle; that can solve every problem; it means to be aj Party that never shrinks from difficulties, that | never turns aside to find the easiest way; that learns how to overcome all deviations in its own ranks—fight on two fronts—it means to become a Party that knows how to take difficulties and dangers and transform them into advantages and victories. Are we such a Party? Not yet. We have a strong ambition to become such a Party. We are making progress in that direction. But when we consider the extremely favorable cir- cumstances under which we work, when millions are beginning to move, to organize, to fight, when only our program can solve their prob- lems, then we must say that we are moving forward entirely too slowly. Our task is to win the majority of the workingclass to our program, We do not have unlimited time to accomplish this. Tempo, speed of development of our work, becomes the decisive factor in determining vic- tory or defeat. The Bolshevik method of work necessary in this period was concretely outlined for the Party in the Open Letter of the Extra-ordinary Party Conference last year. It called for con- centration of our forces upon the most im- portant tasks, upon the workers in the basic industries, upon the biggest factories. Tk set certain minimum, practical tasks to be accom- plished within a certain period; it called for pe- riodical re-examination, check-up and control on the execution of these tasks. This 8th Convention of the Party must make such a check-up and control for the entire Party. We must review the work of our Party since the 7th Convention and especially since the Extraordinary Conference, and establish what we have succeeded in accomplishing. Where have we failed, and where are our weak- nesses? Upon this basis we can then correctly set ourselves the control tasks for the next period. We must forever put behind us that) time when we wrote resolutions and set ourselves tasks on paper, then took this paper, carefully locked it up in the drawers of a desk, forgot’ about it and proceeded to drift along as best. we could according to the exigencies of the movement without plan, without direction, and then write another resolution like the one we wrote before and proceed to forget it like we forget the other one. When we write a resolu- tion, this is the most serious binding of our- selves to carry it out. If it is not carried out we must know why, and in the next resolution we write we must take all necessary measures to guarantee that the resolution will actually be put into execution. In 1930, at the 7th Convention, our Party had just emerged from a long period of relative | stagnation and even retrogression, resulting the correct Bolshevik policy of mass struggles and mass organization. But the Party was still very weak in practice. It had only 7,545 dues- paying members; its factory nuclei were few and functioned very weakly, The revolutionary trade unions had no more than 25,000 mem- bers, and were poorly consolidated; revolution- ary work in the A. F. of L. was at its lowest ebb; mass organizations around the Party, mostly language and cultural organizations, were not politically active and a very generous estimate of all mass organization membership could not possibly exceed 300,000. Since that time important changes have taken place. Consider firstly only the dues-paying membership of the Party. If we take this by half yearly averages, we obtain the following very instructive figures: 1931—First half .. 1931—Second_ half 1932—First half ... 1932—Second half ... 1933—First half... 1933—Second half 19,165 1934—Three months 24,500 From these figures it is clear that the unifi- cation of the Party and its correct general poli- tical line from the 7th Convention and during the period of the crisis, has resulted in a cons- tant increase in membership from half year to half year. Today our Party is more than three times its size at the 7th Convention. But it is also clear that it is the past six months which show the most decisive upward turn. This cor- responds with the period when the main body of the Party began sericusly to improve its work, that is, since the Party studied and began to master the Open Letter. This becomes even more clear when we study the figures of our shop nuclei. At the 7th Con- vention, we had a little more than a hundred shop nuclei. At the time of the Open Letter there was still only 140. Even taking into con- sideration that the intervening period had wit- nessed the closing down of innumerable fac- tories, and the consequent destruction of many nuclei, still it is clear that we only little more than held our own. Since the Open Letter, however, due to our concentration and im- proved work, assisted, of course, by the general atmosphere of struggle that has swept the fac- tories, we can now report 338 shop nuclei. The proportion of total membership in shop nuclei has risen from 4 to 9 per cent, and the propor- tion of employed members is 40 per cent. What kind of shops are these in? Last year, 68 of them were in basi¢ industries, This year, there are 154, with a proportionate increase in membership. The majority of these shop units are in small factories. A growing number are in the larger and more decisive factories. We have shop units functioning now in our con- centration points in the steel industry, the big mills of Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Calumet Valley areas. We have nuclei in the important auto shaps as well as in many of the smaller shops; we have a growing number of mine nuclei. In the shops where these 338 shop nuclei operate, there are at work a total of over 350,000 workers, showing a general average of about 1,000 workers per shop. In these enterprises where our shop nuclei work, there was one year ago very little trade union organization. The total membership of all categories in the shops of the 140 nuclei 8,339 9,219 12,936 14,474 16,814 from protracted inner party factional struggles, was a little more than 7,000. Today in the 338 and the domination of the opportunist policies | shops where our nuclei operate, there are over of the Lovestone leadership. The 7th Con-| 10,000 members of the revolutionary unions, vention consolidated the unification of the Party, confirmed the throwing off of the oppor- more than'5,000 members in independent unions, and over 21,000 members of the A. F. of L. These figures represent a very important in-| crease, comprising more than 10 per cent of all the workers in these enterprises. That the Communists have had a great deal to do with) this growth in trade union organization, is dem- onstrated by the relatively high proportion of revolutionary and independent unions. The most serious weakness that these figures disclose is that as yet only a little more than 10 per cent of the workers have been brought into the unions. Tt is clear that recisely at this point we have the key problem to the future growth of our Party and of the revolutionary trade union |movement. The problem of our shop nuclei is to win the leadership of the overwhelming ma- {jority of these 350,000 workers, bring the best fighters, the most capable forces, into the Com- munist Party and the whole mass of workers into the trade unions. Is it utopian to set such a task for ourselves? No, it is not. Weak as our shop work has been, we already have ex- amples showing that it can be done, and done Example of Good Shop Work quickly, Let us take, for example, the case of a cer- tain metal shop, the experiences of which I have personally examined. This shop is of medium size in the lighter section of industry. It employs in this period about 500 workers. A year ago we had a stagnant nucleus of three members. Following the Open Letter, the Party committee in the section where this factory is located, assigned some politically capable com- rades to work with and help the nucleus. In connection with the Metal Workers Union, the shop was drawn into a strike movement, to- gether with many other small metal shops. The demands of the strikers were won, and the em- ployers signed a contract with the union. The} nucleus was still functioning very weakly. It | to find the proper activity for a street nucleus, had worked only as a fraction of the union, | without showing the Party face. Consequently, it recruited very slowly. The workers in the shops didn’t know the Party existed there. The union leaders were afraid that if the Party nu- cleus took any initiative it might disrupt the mass organization of the union in the shop. As @ result of this political weakness, the shop committee of the union elected as its chairman one of the most reactionary elements in the shop, a very conscious supporter of the Social- ist Party leadership, and an entmy of the union. The opinion prevailed that this was the way to secure full unity of the shop, but this shop chairman sabotaged the work of the union. The shop nucleus meeting every week with the personal participation of representatives of the section, and discussing all the problems of the shop and the union, gradually became conscious of these weaknesses and dangers. They saw the boss becoming ‘very arrogant again and threat- ening to refuse to renew his contract with the union, or to consider the new demands the workers were formulating. They saw a spirit of passivity and defeatism spreading among the workers in the shop. The nucleus decidéd that it must become active and make its presence mown in the entire shop. Its first move was to secure the defeat and removal of the sabo- taging shop chairman. A shop paper began to appear regularly. It is interesting to note that our trade union leaders resisted the devel- oping initiative of the shop nucleus. They were afraid of it; they even developed the theory that the shop nucleus was merely a fraction of the union, and subject to the directives of the leading fraction of the union as a whole. But the nucleus correctly and successfully overcame this resistance. At the crucial moment when it seemed that the union in the shop was about to be wiped out, the nucleus distributed throughout the shop to every worker a leafiet in which, speaking as a unit of the Communist Party, it pointed out the dangers to the workers, called upon them to rally their forces to the union and to win their demands. Within a day the atmosphere in the shop was entirely trans- formed; defeatism and demoralization vanished. The Communist who had been discharged for distributing the leaflets in the shop was quickly reinstated in his job by the action of the en- tire body of workers, who threatened immedi- ate strike if this demand was not complied with. The employer quickly changed his tone, and instead of tearing up the union contract, he negotiated a new one, embodying additional gains for the workers. The union meeting in the factory thereupon invited an official speaker from the Communist Party to come and speak at their meeting; greeted the speaker with an ovation. It is the common talk of the shop that “our union is strong because we have an active, strong Communist Party nucleus among us.” The Party and Y.C.L. membership in this shop now comprises 14 per cent of the whole body of workers. The shop is 100 per cent unionized in the revolutionary union. These workers are raw and inexperienced, the type usually known as “backward.” The leaders of the shop nucleus and the shop committee of the union is now composed of new, active, cap- able forces in command of the situation, dis- playing strong initiative; the individuals who make up this leadership were three months ago looked upon as “backward workers,” who rarely raised their voices in meetings. Imagine the tremendous steps forward our Party would make if the experience of this shop was repeated in just half of our existing shop nuclei! Imagine how quickly we could develop a mighty mass Party when we get a few hun- dred strongholds like this throughout the coun- try, especially in the basic industries! What a transformation would take place in the Chicago District if the Packinghouse and Steel nuclei would repeat this experience, if the comrades had not forgotten their own good resolutions! What a new District Pittsburgh would become if a similar work were done in the Jones and! Laughlin steel mill! The greatest weakness of our shop nucleii is that they are not so much secret from the bosses as they are from the workers in their shops. They are afraid to speak to the workers in the name of the Party. They rarely issue leaflets. Less’ than 15 per cent of our shop nuclei issue a shop paper of any kind. We even find theories, popping up,—for example, in Cleveland and in some sections of New York, that Party shop papers are really a danger and a hindrance to penetrating the factories, that we must work by stages and have first only union papers; then later on, carefully begin to introduce Party shop papers. This opportunistic hiding the face of the Party in the shops is the most serious right danger. How a Street Nucleus Can Build Communist Strongholds Our street nuclei are also beginning in some tases to learn how to do mass work on their own account. We now have 1,482 street nuclei. What a tremendous power even these can be- come when they learn Bolshevik methods of work. That they are not such a power today is only because they will look upon themselves merely as dues-collecting agencies, as agencies to distribute leaflets handed down to them from above; at best, as political discussion clubs of a general character and a timid dis- tributor of the DAILY WORKER. That is the! & : Picture of the average nucleus. But in these cases where a street nucleus begins to under- stand its independent political function as being the Party in its own neighborhood, as being the organizer and leader of the masses in that neighborhood, when it begins to set itself the task of winning the majority of the workers in its neighborhood, and to take the initiative in accomplishing this task, the results are simply tremendous. Street nuclei are finding out that very often with only a little attention, they can, themselves, give birth immediately to important shop nuclei out of their own membership, They are finding that individual connection with Particular shops can quickly be built up into a shop nucleus, and especially they are beginning as such, rooting the Party among the masses in the neighborhood, building neighborhood strongholds for the Communist Party. Above ail, the street nuclei must become serious organizers and leaders of the unem- ployed. From 60 to 70 per cent of our mem- bers are themselves unemployed, but relatively few of them are active in building block com- mittees and Unemployment Councils winning strongholds for the Party among the 16,000,000 unemployed. We must declare that just as it is the duty of every employed Communist to be a leader in his trade unions, so also is tt the duty of unemployed Communists to become the leader of 10 or 100 other unemployed workers in block committees and neighborhood councils, Let me cite only one good example of a street nucleus which is beginning to get itself on its own feet, politically. This nucleus has no great achievements yet in factory work. A year ago it was a rather discouraged group of good, loyal comrades who didn’t exactly know what to do. They began to apply the Open Letter to their neighborhood problem. They opened a neighborhood Workers’ Club and kept i open at all hours, especially for the young people in the neighborhood. They introduced organi- zation among these people of a primitive sort, giving them activities, games, music, ete. In another part of the neighborhood, with a con- siderable Negro population, they began to build a branch of the L. S. N. R., with white and Negro members. Some members of the nucleus took the initiative in launching a branch of the C. W. A. Workers Union. The nucleus put on activities of a couple of strikes that affected the neighborhood, and rallied some support for Picket lines. As a result of these activities, the unit began to grow, more than doubling its membership. It has drawn into the Party sev- eral excellent new Negro workers. At its last meeting, it spent a couple of hours discussing the most difficult problems that have arisen with the mass influx of raw young American workers from the streets into the neighborhood clubs. Large groups of such. youngsters that had for months been avoiding the club as “dis- reputable red” headquarters, had suddenly changed their attitude, and presented them- selves for membership in the club, and were making all sorts of demands upon the leader- ship for organization and activities. The life of this unit is now rich and intense with the problems of the daily life of the neigh- borhood. It has become a mass influence among thousands of people. An interesting sidelight on our methods of work is given by an ex- perience of this unit in conducting its neighbor- hood club. In order to raise the political level of the club life, they have been inviting speakers from various mass organizations and the Party from other parts of the city. They report almost invariably these speakers are absolutely unin- telligible for the neighborhood crowd that at- tends this club. The speakers never find any point of contact with their audience. They talk over their heads, use long phrases which may have been very good in a thesis, but of which these neighborhood workers haven't the slight- est understanding. As a result, the audiences grow restless; the young people get boisterous; and even contemptuous of these spouters. This phase of politicalization has been a dismal failure, as it was bound to be with such an approach. Here is a lesson for the entire Party, in its work of mass agitation and propaganda, of political education of the new raw masses that are coming to us. It is the virtue of parrots and of phonographs that they mechanically repeat the phrases given to them. But that is no virtue for Communist speakers. We must completely overhaul our methods of mass education; we must absolutely put a stop to this business of our Party speakers copying parrots and phonographs, putting forth the Party program in such unintelligible terms that it is just so much Greek to the audience and doesn’t touch their lives in any way or arouse a spark of interest. Party Section is the Keystone The next central point in Party building after the shop and street nuclei is the Party Sec- tion Committee, Section bureau. This is the real cadre of the Party’s mass leadership. To the extent that this is broadened and strength- ened, to the degree that it becomes the decisive and controlling force in our daily work, to that degree, the Party will become a mass Party. That means that our sections must enough for the committee to actually problems, find the solutions, and leadership in carrying through the Section Committee must be the of the revolution in its territory. every house, street, and factory. the daily problems of life of its must know all our enemies and defeat them. It must turn its Communist stronghold. That means a number of sections, more careful selection of leadership, and a better quality of leadership to the Sections from the Districts, We have made progress in development in sections of our Party, but not nearly enough, Where in 1930 there were 87 Party sections, there are today 187. The geographical extension of the Party organization is shown in the fact that these sections include functioning Party committees in 463 cities. The work of these Sec- tion Committees have improved, but we must iH A lleaegel ca MIT (Continued on Page Ten) I i \ '