United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities

“ The End of Capitalist Stabilization has been reached. There is nothing left for the Capitalist Class except to wage a more vicious attack on the living standards of the Working People. Profits can only be obtained by wringing them from the lifeblood of the toiling masses. The living standards of the workers has reached such a low level that huge masses would suffer extinction should this level be reduced. And yet such is the program of World Imperialism. ”

“ To meet this condition of World Revolt, the Ruling Classes throughout the world are turning more and more to Fascism—a system of open dictatorship of the present group of exploiters—a system more brutal, more ruthless, and exceedingly 352 more destructive of the materials needed for the sustenance of human life. Fascism is therefore the main enemy of the Workers of the World.
A system of Fascism will not bring about a stabilization of Capitalism, but will instead bring a whole train of persecutions, and inflict the most abject misery upon the toiling masses. ”

“ I have been asked by the press in Montana—I am not being braggadocio or conceited—by the various newspapers, the Great Falls Tribune, the Lewistown Daily News, and many others, whether I was going to come back into the political life of the State. I have always told them, and told them constantly, that I wanted to be a lawyer; I wanted to be, if I could, the best lawyer that Montana ever had. That was the desire that I had. I have been practicing law to the very best of my ability. When a man starts to practice law, as I did, when he is about 40 years of age, he has a lot to learn. ”

“ And I am strictly opposed to secret negotiations, whether it occurs between employers and unions, whether it occurs between heads of organizations, or whether it occurs in international affairs. I think that the only safeguard that we have that the rights of the people will not be trespassed upon is when everything is out in the open. ”

“ And it was always the party’s claim in the United States that what they were trying to accomplish was to unseat the robber barons and the big business interests who had seized the seats of government in the United States, and the Communist Party always played down the problem of changing the form of government because nearly all liberal persons you come across will raise the point that one thing that America contributed which the rest of the world has never enjoyed is the right to individual freedom. ”

“ Everything I proposed by way of reorganization or by way of organizational activities—I, for instance, felt that a fundamental policy of the party was to concentrate in the mass production industries, to concentrate in basic industries. I had always been taught that that was one of the party’s chief concerns.
But, lo and behold, when I approached the district leaders asking for assistance to concentrate on making a strong party in the steelworkers, they said, “Oh, we’re not interested in them. We have got other problems that are more important to us than just a bunch of steelworkers.” ”

“ I just want to say that, as far as I am concerned—that is, the best way I can describe it honestly and sincerely, is that from my environment, from the poverty since my birth and the things that happened to me as a child and as a young man, and so on, I grew up in a very, very liberal tradition where people were certainly tolerant of all the various shades and hues of political opinion as we saw them. ”

“ And I fear that the average person who attempts to transplant an arbitrary form or an idea which is erected in one part of the world because of a certain historical set of circumstances and arbitrarily transplant it to another part of the world under entirely different historical circumstances finds himself trying to solve an impossible problem. And I think that that is basically the problem which the Communist Party itself ran into. ”

“ And I cannot pass up the opportunity to remind all of us that it is a fundamental principle of our form of Government, of our democratic representation system, that we honor and dignify the individual as an individual for his own worth, and not completely subordinate this individual to the purpose of a mass and make him a faceless creature. ”

“ With regard to Party members who do not wish to take part in the work of factory cells, the most attentive and stubborn explanatory work must be carried out. But if somebody or other all the same, categorically refuses to work in a factory cell, that comrade must be told that nobody is keeping him in the party. (The Communist Party is a voluntary organization, but every worker who voluntarily joins the ranks of the Communist Party accepts iron party discipline. If that discipline seems very hard to him, even unbearable, then the Party should not shut its doors upon him.) ”

“ Chairman.
Mr. Willis. If she had substituted the word “indifferent,” it would have been a close analysis of our appreciation of your testimony up to now. I look forward, however, to your contest with Mr. Budenz in that lawsuit that you mentioned.
Mr. O’Connell. I want to assure you that there is a difference. One can be a sincere American liberal and still fight for the political rights and civil rights of Communists. I can be non-Communist and yet not anti-Communist, just like I can be a Democrat and yet not an anti-Republican. ”

“ We are at present witnessing an attack upon a union in our own city as a result of the combination of discredited labor leaders, the un-American Canwell Committee and the Seattle P-I and its FBI agent and strike-breaker, Fred Niendorff.
Today, Labor is faced with and all-out offensive of the profit-greedy NAM. They are determined to bring wages down while continuing to raise the cost of 483 living. This attack on the peoples’ living standards is most serious to the thousands of greatly underpaid white-collar workers. ”

“ The experiences of the Soviet Union during the World Crisis of Capitalism stands out as a Beacon Light to the toiling masses throughout the world as a living example of the Working Class way out of the Crisis. ”

“ In fact, the Trotskyites, as I understand, their philosophy in the matter is that the Soviet Union has suffered from an arrested development—it is not truly Socialist; it has not been permitted to become Socialist, and that the biggest crime Stalin committed was to pretend and hold the Soviet Union up to world view as a Socialist country when, in fact, it was not a Socialist country. ”

“ The Party Committee of this town should interest itself above all in what is happening in the big enterprises—in the railway workshops, in the metal factory and the textile factory, how the factory cells are working there and in the first place help the factory cells of these enterprises by all and every means possible, concentrating all their attention and all their forces on this task. In the lawyer’s office and the doctor’s surgery there are no masses which the Party must win over and organize for revolutionary struggle. It is another matter with the big enterprises. ”

“ It is perfectly clear that with activists like the “activists” of the Prague organization, who were present at Vandervelde’s meeting, the Czechoslovakian proletariat will not win power but the Communist Party will be a shameful laughing stock in the eyes of the proletariat and the proletariat, quite rightly, will not listen to such “activists” and will not support Party organizations which keep such “activists” in leading Party work. ”

“ Every Party member working in the factory should begin with the workshop in which he is working, organizing the Party work there. He should first of all find out who his fellow workers in the shop are. That is his first Party duty. He should establish who is the Fascist agent in order to know whom to avoid, and in his presence not talk about Party affairs or carry on Communist agitation; next he should find out which workers are so narrow-minded that they are not interested in politics at all, either Communist or Social-Democratic ”

“ When we approach the study of the work of the factory cells in capitalist countries we are often struck by the great passivity of the members of the cell. A further examination of the reasons for this passivity will reveal, as a rule, a complete ignorance on the part of the Party members as to what they should do in the factory in their everyday work. The task of the Party organizer, his most important task, consists in teaching every Party member working in the factory what he should do every day. ”

“ Mr. Dennett. I have held nearly all the organizational positions in the lower ranks of the party. That is, I have been a branch organizer, sometimes called branch, sometimes called unit. I have been an educational director in a branch, I have been a section organizer, I have been a fraction secretary, I have been a district agitprop director. That is a combination of two words—agitation and propaganda. I doubt that the term is used very much any more. It would be comparable to educational work now.
I have been a member of the district bureau of the Communist Party. ”

“ The inexorable laws of Capitalist Development will continue to bring new crises in spite of the repressive measures of Fascism. During the Present Economic Crisis the Fascist nations have suffered along with the other Capitalist Nations, and they are now staggering under the strain, thereby intensifying the present World Crisis of Capitalism. Only in the Soviet Union where there is the open dictatorship of the Workers and Farmers, where Socialism is being definitely planned and organized and put into operation is there any escape from Economic Crises. ”

“ I think we have to get at the facts as they exist. And my own feeling and the thing that I was impressed with was, again, the teachings of Lenin wherein he proclaimed that never did any autocracy willingly yield up its power. Never did any tyranny willingly yield up its power, and that necessarily any group who sought to obtain political power under those circumstances would be confronted with solving a problem of force and violence. They would be met with force and they would have to answer it with force. ”

“ Bellingham, you have to understand, is a comparatively small town. People in it live much closer together than they do in a larger city. Neighbors are a little better acquainted with each other. Consequently, any suffering in the neighborhood arouses a deeper response among people who are better acquainted than it does among total strangers.
And these women extended themselves greatly to aid those of us who didn’t have any adequate income or any adequate subsistence. I understand that both of these women have since left the Communist Party. Do you want me to name them now?
Mr. Tavenner. ”