Communist Party USA

“ The Communist program does not presently, nor in foreseeable future elections, commend itself to enough American voters to be a substantial political force. Unless the Communist Party can obtain some powerful leverage on the population, it is doomed to remain a negligible factor in the United States. Hence, conspiracy, violence, intimidation and the coup d'etat are all that keep hope alive in the communist breast. ”

“ Violent and undemocratic means are the calculated and indispensable methods to attain the Communist Party's goal. It would be incredible naivete to expect the American branch of this movement to forego the only methods by which a Communist Party has anywhere come into power. In not one of the countries it now dominates was the Communist Party chosen by a free or contestible election; in not one can it be evicted by any election. ”

“ The Communist Party is a vanguard political party of the working class, to bring together those who are ready not only to fight for day by day immediate gains, both economic and political, but who are also ready to curb and control by nationalization, and eventually to abolish through Socialism, the octopus of monopoly capitalism. ”

“ If our handling of the problem of Communist influence in our midst is not carefully moderated -- if we permit it, that is, to become an emotional preoccupation and to blind us to the more important positive tasks before us -- we can do a damage to our national purpose beyond comparison greater than anything that threatens us today from the Communist side. The American Communist party is today, by and large, an external danger. ”

“ The Communist Party, nevertheless, does not seek its strength primarily in numbers. Its aim is a relatively small party whose strength is in selected, dedicated, indoctrinated, and rigidly disciplined members. From established policy it tolerates no deviation and no debate. It seeks members that are, or may be, secreted in strategic posts in transportation, communications, industry, government, and especially in labor unions where it can compel employers to accept and retain its members. ”

“ Yet at the same time I am doubtful whether there is much of a future for the Communist Party. I doubt whether in twenty-five years’ time there will be many Communists, under that name, below middle-age. A few nice, fierce old gentlemen will survive in smoking-rooms and cafés. The Communist movement is a part of the present world, it is a shadow cast by existing economic absurdities, it is a current reaction. ”

“ As a consequence, the leaders of the American Communist Party have been otherwise insignificant personalities, without personal political followings or aptitudes for our political methods, adapted by training only to boring their way into the labor movement, minority groups and coteries of naive and confused liberals, whose organizations they have captured and discredited and among whom they lie in wait for further orders. ”

“ The Communist Party had as one of its principal objectives and one of its chief propaganda weapons, which it used upon other persons of political mindedness, that the Communist program was a consistent program on a domestic policy and on foreign policy, that our program was liberal domestically and liberal internationally. However, in 1938, after a long period of struggle and effort, the Communist Party succeeded in prevailing upon many people to accept the slogan of collective security as the proper policy to pursue in foreign affairs. ”

“ All parties, when in opposition, strive to discredit and embarrass the Government of the day by spreading exaggerations and untruths and by inciting prejudiced or unreasoning discontent, not even hesitating to injure the Nation's prestige among the family of nations. The Communist Party, at least outwardly, only exaggerates these well-worn political techniques and many persons are thus led to think of it as just another more radical political party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am compelled to say in closing that I fear that all the arguments and urgings the Communists and their sympathizers can use in trying to convert Americans to an ideology wholly foreign to our habits and our instincts are far less dangerous to the security of this Nation than laws which embark us upon a policy of repression by the outlawry of minority parties because they advocate radical changes in the structure of Government. ”

“ This was considered by the district leadership of the Communist Party and by the national leadership as well as being evidence of very successful mass work, and it was often used as an example of successful Communist mass work where it didn’t take so many Communists in order to influence a large number of people.
Were you aware of the influence that was brought to bear by the Communist Party upon this organization, the Washington Pension Union? ”

“ At any rate, they broke away and formed two new parties of their own, a fact which is the chief point of interest to one who is more concerned with the larger issues of American radicalism than with the minutiæ of Socialist politics. The Communist Party and the Communist Labour Party, whatever may have been the legitimacy of their gestation in the bowels of Socialism, certainly found their reason for being chiefly in logic which originated in Moscow and Berlin rather than in the American situation. ”

“ Subsection (9) finds that in the United States individuals who knowingly participate in the world Communist movement in effect transfer their allegiance to the foreign country in which is vested the direction and control of the world Communist movement. Finally, in § 2 (15) , Congress concludes that
'The Communist movement in the United States is an organization numbering thousands of adherents, rigidly and ruthlessly disciplined. ”

“ Every member of the Communist Party is an agent to execute the Communist program. What constitutes a party? Major political parties in the United States have never been closely knit or secret organizations. Any one who usually votes the party ticket is reckoned a member, although he has not applied for or been admitted to membership, pays no dues has taken no pledge, and is free to vote, speak and act as he wills. Followers are held together by rather casual acceptance of general principles, the influence of leaders, and sometimes by the cohesive power of patronage. ”

“ Here we have a clear model for an International Communist Party, tasked with the creation of a visible organization whenever this is possible, but with an invisible structure of missionaries, recruiters, controllers, policemen and agents, since any bourgeois state must, once it discovers the party's true aims, forbid it and drive it underground. To the Christian dream of an eternal life in heaven or hell, the communist movement has its promise of a millenary on earth contrasted by the immediate annihilation of any traitor or dangerous opponent. ”

“ The Act does not suppress or outlaw the Communist Party, nor prohibit it or its members from engaging in any aboveboard activity normal in party struggles under our political system. It may continue to nominate candidates, hold meetings, conduct campaigns and issue propaganda, just as other parties may. No individual is forbidden to be or to become a philosophical Communist or a full-fledged member of the Party. ”

“ They do not create the impression that there is a single Communist-action organization in the United States, still less that the Communist Party is 'it.' Nor can we hold that the findings of § 2 of the Communist Control Act of 1954 unconstitutionally prejudice the Party. ”

“ Coal miners, steel, packing, maritime, rubber, lumber, textile, railroad workers; auto, aircraft, electrical-radio, shoe, farm equipment workers—we invite you, one and all, to join the Communist Party. We are proud of our Party, and we need fighting workers like you to deepen its ties among the people. It is a tough world! But men and women like you are strong to face the storms ahead. ”

“ We think that this movement should bring about a fundamental change in all existing labor organizations, co-operative, political, trade union, etc.
What does a political party represent? What causes a political party? It is an organ of class struggle. It exists as long as the class struggle. But when classes will disappear, when a developed form of Communism will spread all over the world—will the Communist Party exist then? ”

“ Communist and Anti-Communist Psychological Events. Each of the two major systems has strengths [Pg 246] of its own. The Communist strengths are sometimes too apparent to Americans, so much so that Americans exaggerate Communist power and overlook serious deficiencies in the economies and the political character of the Communist group of nations. The Communists can suppress dissidence with a fanatical party line: the price they pay is the abrupt shifting of that line as international situations change. ”

“ They were retired; they had ceased working daily on a job. Therefore, they had the leisure time to do what they wanted to do in most instances or at least in many instances. The result was that some of these people could go out and peddle leaflets and knock on doors. They constituted an enormous political strength. And the Communist Party conceived the idea that these people certainly would be the most able people to carry on political programs if they could be won to support such a program.
So the Communist Party set about to do exactly that in the pension union. ”

“ When the Communist Party as a matter of party strategy formally expelled alien members en masse, it destroyed any significance that discontinued membership might otherwise have as indication of change of heart by the individual. Congress may have believed that the party tactics threw upon the Government an almost impossible burden if it attempted to separate those who sincerely renounced Communist principles of force and violence from those who left the party the better to serve it. ”

“ We were trying our level best to support the policies which the Communist Party urged upon us, and that pertained especially to the question of war, fighting the program of involvement in war at that time. It involved being very critical of the top leadership of the American Federation of Labor, which many other people criticized as well as we, and by we, I mean the Communists were not the only ones that criticized; many of the rank-and-file members who had no knowledge of Communist Party policy or activity were also critical. ”

“ He continued, same applied to the development of the revolution in this sense the American people will not and cannot make a successful change over from capitalism to socialism by themselves, like the fire underneath the water, the Communist Party teaches and leads them to where when the society reaches that nodule point, the Communist people teaches the people before and then leads them to make that abrupt change into the society of socialism. ”

“ It is perfectly clear that the Communist Parties will not be in a position to organize any mass actions of the Proletariat or mass strikes, or mass street demonstrations, if the Party Committees at sharp moments of struggle lose connection with the factory cells and mass non-Party organizations. ”

“ It is therefore, in their view, the duty of the Communist party in a capitalist country to prepare for armed conflict, and to take all possible measure for disarming the bourgeoisie and arming that part of the proletariat which is willing to support the Communists. ”

“ When the government faced a foreign and domestic crisis, the Communist Party had established a leverage strong enough to threaten civil war. In a period of confusion, the Communist plan unfolded, and the underground organization came to the surface throughout the country in the form chiefly of labor "action committees." Communist officers of the unions took over transportation, and allowed only persons with party permits to travel. Communist printers took over the newspapers and radio, and put out only party-approved versions of events. ”

“ The whole membership of the section should have read the statement of the ECCI in the Daily Worker some two to three weeks ago where the change of policy was explained.
The Communist Party will maintain vigilance against those who attempt to break the United Front and thereby betray the position of the working class by complete and ruthless exposure. But there is a truce existing at the present time between the Communist Parties and the Social Democrats. The Bellamy Club should be included with the Social-Democrats. ”

“ No one is penalized for writing or speaking in favor of the Party or its philosophy. Also, the Act does not require or forbid anything whatever to any person merely because he is a member of, or is affiliated with, the Communist Party. It applies only to one who becomes an officer of a labor union.
I am aware that the oath is resented by many labor leaders of unquestioned loyalty and above suspicion of Communist connections, indeed by some who have themselves taken bold and difficult steps to rid the labor movement of Communists. ”