Saturday, December 14, 1929 THE MILITANT Page Party Defeated in Stalinist Policy in Independent Workmen Circle Ends in Bad Retreat BOSTON Weinbergs to fight against for influence.
The logical outcome of the Communist But here, as we pointed out in our last Party desperate policy in the Independ issue, a couple of stumbling blocks were ent Workmen Circle has now been encountered. Firstly, the Left wing masses reached The dispute betwen the Right in the did not understand this brilwing and the Left, hanging fire in the cap llant maneuver, which came virtually like italist courts for weeks, has been temporara bolt from the blue. The result was that ily settled by an agreement reached between an insignificancant few thousand Party representatives of the National Executive members and very closest sympathizers Committee (controlled by the Stalinites)
followed the Party call to leave the and the Board of Appeals (composed of Secondly, the Right wing, of Right wingers. The agreement, signed by which the Party thought itself rid when it quit both sides, is an unmistakable defeat for the bobbed up in the most unexthe Party whole line in the Jewish fraterpected place in the and began nal labor orders and marks a retreat far to put obstacles in the way of the Stalinbeyond positions which the left wing, led ists cunning strategy. So ruthlessly did by the Party, had long ago won in the organization.
the Party carry through its bolshevization of the that the Right wing, The magnitude of the defeat marked by which has never had much influence or say the agreement can only be visualized if the in the councils of the organization, sudrecent strategy of the Stalinists is brietdenly took shape and formidable prooutlined.
portions, and taking advantage of the situaProgress in the Past tion created by the Party, opened an attack upon it.
For years the Party and the Left wing has been making substantial and steady The Latest Agreement progress in the Workmen Circle, containThe details of the struggle were pubing some 70, 000 members, the majority of lished by us in our last issues. It is sufficient whom are workers. At times, the struggle to say here that the Party was unable to for influence between the Left wing and mobilize the membership of the order to the Right wing became so violent that the its banner. All the claims to the contrary Right sought to drive out the Left with fade into pitiful bombast in face of the the basest provocations which were so sucagreement which has now been made. The cessfully resisted and overcome by the Left that it succeeded in remaining on the inagreement provides that: All members who left the Workmen side and consolidating its position Circle at the Party call to afiliate with At the same time, the Left wing made the who have taken their medical great strides forward in the Independent examination and those to take it in the next Workmen Circle, a smaller organization few weeks, are to be accepted into the of some five to seven thousand members But not a single one of these is with a membership concentrated largely in the New England and Eastern states. In permitted to vote in the coming elections for the emergency convention of the order fact, the progress of the Left wing in the to be held in Boston on January 12, or in had gone so far that by and large the referendum on convention decisions to the was considered a Left orfollow.
ganization in the contradistinction to The convention is to consider only two the controlled as the latter was points: Whether the order shall endorse. and is, by the most reactionary elements of the socialist party. Baskin, Weinany political party, any labor union (Left or Right) or any official organ. The Right berg, and the rest of the Forward gang. The and particularly its branches, wing naturally opposes such endorsements now, and there is every indication that their supported all Left wing institutions and viewpoint will carry in the convention as campaigns pretty systematically. It was an excellent recruiting ground for the Comwell as in the subsequent referendum. That is the extent to which the Party has alienmunist movement and the Party was steadated the sympathies of hundreds of memily becoming the dominant factor ideologically as well as organizationally in the bers! Should this point carry, it can be reversed in the future only by a vote of order.
seven eights of the membership. new All this was before the advent of the new line and the third period which are the tattered banners under which every idiocy marches, Not satisfied with its slow progress in both organizations, the Party conceived the grandiose maneuver whereby it was to kill at least two birds with a The situation in the Comunist Party, pointed out in the Militant a few issues single shot. The entire line of attack by the Party generals was conceived after the exago, has not been improved; it has become pulsion of the Communist Opposition in worse. The two features of its internal orOctober 1928, and jointly approved, as we ganization, which reflect its political line now learn from an article by Olgin and in turn react upon it, remain the sharpin recent issue of the Morning Freiheit, by ening of the clique struggle which does not both the Lovestone and the Foster factions even pretend to principles, and the financial in the Political Committee. The plan of crisis. The latter has become extremely campaign was as follows: severe. The suspension of Labor Unity for a few weeks is only one sign of it. Another The Punitive Expedition!
is the fantastic money collecting campaign First trench: Capture the Chicago confor the Daily Worker, vention of the at all costs.
Add to all this the general disgust of This was done in typical Stalinist style the Party membership, the fact that they by flooding the convention with delegates have been mulcted until their bones are from small, recently formed branches, all dry in order to maintain an enormously out of proportion to their strength or retop heavy bureaucratic apparatus, the presentation in the membership. One failure of the present conglomeration that hundred percent Communist resolutions calls itself the Party leadership to inspire were mechanically and arbitrarily foisted any confidence, and a faint idea of the upon the convention. water tight, Partyfinancial straits of the Party may be had.
dominated national executive committee The radical remedy for the situation the elected. The Party, its unions and its ofdrastic slicing down of the Party and ficial organs were all endorsed, and the auxiliary apparatus is not even thought order officially bolshevized.
of; all the apparatus men are in a cohesive Second trench: Withdraw the Left wing faction on that point.
from the Workmen Circle at all costs and We hope soon to complete a survey, affiliate them to the now Party controlled which we are now conducting, of the actual thereby having a fraternal order number of Party and auxiliary paid funcof a larger size with a stronger Party tionaries, to be printed in detail in a coming control and no Right wing, no Baskir, and Issue of The Militant. Preliminary figures already indicate that there is practically one paid functionary out of every five members CHICAGO!
in the Party! For the moment, it will suffice to say that the Russian Party, which CABARET DANCE runs a State, trade unions, cooperatives, industry, etc. etc. has a lower proportion at Suska Hall of paid functionaries and Party members 4021 Drake Ave. 3535 West) employed outside of industry than the SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER American Party! Party financial crises are 14, 1929 inevitably permanent under such conditions, Excellent Music Refreshments As for the factional situation in the Admission: Men 50e Ladies 350 Party, It has not been eliminated, except in the records for public consumption. The Wardrobe Free. Doors Open cliques are in existence and striving for Auspices: Communist League of America power, Jockeying for position, carrving on Chicago branch a whispered agitation. Not a sing comrade of the Party can be national executive committee and a board Boston is to be blessed with Roy of appeals are to be elected at the emer Stephens of Kansas City, who replaces Carl gency convention. Here too, there is every Hacker. Hacker made such a noble mens indication that the Party will lose control of things in Boston that he has been sent of the order again due to its martinet to cool his heels again in his native habmethods and its brutal disregard for proper itat of Cleveland. In passing, a tip to any relations of a revolutionary party to the clique that wants it: Stephens support can non partisan organizations of the masses. be won by a promise of a trip to Moscow.
The previous agreement made between It is his life ambition. Stephens place in the national executive committee (Party has been taken by the noted master controlled) and the national committee of of arts (Lenin School degree. Dave Gorman, the Left wing branches (also Party who was run out of the anthracite district controlled) is nullified and so is the by Lovestone hatchet men. How these Party third period strategy.
Stalin school boys vanish from the scene. The net result of the Party series of In turn, Gorman place has been taken in coup Etats is a big setback for Com the anthracite by the inveterate, incurable munism and the Left wing movement and a letter writer, Phil Frankfeld.
great impetus to the Right wing. The Party called upon the workers to quit the To cap the list is the appointment of on the basis of its having become social the Great Bimba (not to be confused with fascist i, e. controlled by the Right the Great Gabbo) as district organizer in wing. What will the Party do now if the Cleveland. As Bimba looks back from the same stripe of Right wingers gain control days of his former splendor as spokesman of the emergency convention, for which for the Bolshevik leadership of Lovestone there is every likelihood? Will the Party and company to his present golgotha he proceed to form a brand new organization?
must surely reflect that there really is no That is the logic of its present position.
god. Well, what Amter didn finish off in Where are now the brave, the notoriousCleveland, Bimba will. But the district will ly brave words of Olgin, who recentbe made safe for Bedacht or so he hopes.
ly poured wormwood and gall upon our Foster has taken the opportunity to heads for opposing the Party inane pol skip off to the Profintern for a while, so icy? Where are now his mouthy claims of that his hands are washed of any bungling the great victories for the Party policy or collapses in his absence. He may be exin and C? In the face of the pected back with a new trade union line.
dark realitites, of the humility of the Stal And while the cat is away, Browdr builds inists now, all the frothings and rantings his fences from his seat in the national ofof these people who only discredit the fice, where he acts as watchdog over Because of Communism in the eyes of the dacht and vice versa. Browder is bending masses are revealed in all their political efforts to put a political basis under the and intellectual poverty.
coming open fight by finding differences Against Fake Impartiality which should not be a difficult task for Neverthless, it is precisely in this Browder, with Bedacht, Minor and their difficult period that it must be made clear crew of dejected, if reformed Lovestoneites. new shift has put Minor into a controlling that the Right Wing in the is playing a reactionary game. Its proposals position in the Daily Worker, and those who against endorsements of any political parwould give much more than a fig to replace ties mean in real life, a free hand for the him, fume and fret at the lifeless, stupid, Socialist Party and its capitalist allies, blundering sheet he gets out. But fuming and lamentation never moved even a heap just as the cry of No politics in the unions! on the lips of the labor fakers has of mud.
always meant No politics in the unions And the Party as a whole? It is steadexcept capitalist politics! The present ily crumbling. The members are imbued Stalinist machine is destroying the name with the greatest passivity and disillusionand cause of Communism. The members ment. But they have not yet found the way of the however, must not fall out. The clique struggle most certainly ofvictims to the plan of the Right wing fers them none.
and reject Communism and the Communist movement. Not a fight against Communism and a Communist Party is required, but a relentless struggle against the false Report on the Russian Situation by and ruinous policies of Stalinism and a total rejection of the Right wing. The the Moscow Correspondent conscious militants in the will purof the Daily Worker sue this course at all times. Moscow, November 26. The recantation of their right heresy by Rykoff, Tomski and Bucharin, its three leading exponents, has great political importance at the present juncture. Although no one has maintain that the Party situation is anywhere questiones the trio good faith or personal near to what it should be. Complaints, dis devotion to the Bolshevist cause, their aposatisfaction, grumbling, plans over the stacy, as isvestia and Pravda editorials coffee cup, schemes for clique control today make abundantly clear, was more these are the order of the day in the Party.
Mass work is just a pretense, kept up to than a mere divergence of opinion, but, in satisfy the demands of the and the final instance, an expression right in what is left of the membership.
the heart of the Communist Party itself of bourgeois anti Communist sentiment arousNew Shift of Functionaries ed by the administration sternly socializing Only a few weeks ago we recorded a policy in town and country. It is this fact big shift of district organizers, with each which explains the immense, and it often clique (Bedacht Stachel; Browder Johnseems to outsiders, unnecessary stress laid stone, etc. etc. aiming to insert its funcfionaries into strategic positions in the event by Joseph Stalin and the party majority on of the coming convention, for which, by the danger of the Right heresy. Their the way, no one of the cliques is yet prepar recantation, the sincerity of which, be it ed. In the brief period that has intervennoted, neither Pravda nor Isvestla questions ed, a new shift of functionaries has taken as it questioned similar declarations by place unannounced in the Party press.
Trotsky and his followers, is therefore moving in on their respective districts like infinitely more important than a victory wraiths in the night only to disappear in of the opinions of the major ty over the a few weeks and leave the masses leader minority. Etc. etc.
less! Through Bedacht maneuvers, his Dispatch from Moscow to the New old crony Amter has been made in York Times by comrade Walter DuNew York, taking the place of Weinstone ranty, unofficial member of the Politwho made such a splendid showing in the ical Committee of the Communist New York elections and the Party organizaParty of the United States.
tion.
To strengthen Amter, Benjamin has been yanked out of Philadelphia and made PROSPERITY AS USUAL organizational secretary, in place of Pasternak who, alas! is off to represents the report from Chattanooga, Tennessee, American Communist movement in the informs us that 1, 000 children in the city Comintern organization department. To are so raggedly dressed that they can no counterbalance the two Bedacht men, one longer attend school. drive has been of the old Foster wheel horses, George opened among the workers, of courseSiskind, has been moved in as industrial or to raise sufficient funds to clothe these ganizer. The trio watch each other like children. Mr. Hoover Tennessean discione eyed men.
ples conveniently forget that it is preciseIn Benjamin place as District Organ ly because the workers in the city are izer of Philadelphia, Bedacht succeeded in in bitter straits that their children are shifting one of the professional Party without decent clothing. Additional signs wreckers, Emil Gardos, who recently bol of Hooverian prosperity in this city are sherized the California district into a the discharge of 1, 500 out of the total of quivering wreck. His place, in turn, is being 3, 000 workers employed in the large marble taken by William Simons, erstwhile head plant. The small business man has been of the erstwhile All America Anti Imperial hit between the eyes also. Numerous two1. League, who now goes to sun himself in by four shops and stores are shutting (9. of fruits and nuts, down.
The Party Cliques Are Still Busy.