Part IV Life in the Party
10 — How the Party Is Organized
Look in for a minute on a typical secret meeting of a communist “club” or cell “somewhere in the United States.” This particular meeting is selected because it is typical of hundreds of such meetings.
The house is frame, painted gray with green shutters. A wire fence runs around the trim yard. The owner works as a draftsman in a downtown company, his wife keeps house. They have lived in the neighborhood for many years.
It is now dark, a little after eight o’clock on a winter evening. The downstairs light is on, the blinds are drawn. A man comes to the front door, raps lightly, and is admitted. Soon another man, walking at a leisurely pace, rounds the corner and enters. He has parked his car on another street.
Ten minutes pass. A third man knocks. He has come by bus from downtown. To make certain nobody was following him, he had ridden two stops past his correct destination, then walked back. Five minutes later a fourth person, a woman in a dark coat, arrives. Everything is quiet: no loud voices, no cars parked in front, no reasons for the neighbors to suspect that a Communist Party meeting is in progress.
Communist Party groups like this are small, containing three, four, or five people—a security precaution. In that way fewer members know each other and detection is less likely. Meeting places are frequently changed: this evening a private home, next time a public library or an automobile. Members have been known to sit on park benches, in bus terminals, even in hospital waiting rooms, hatching their plots in casual, conversational tones.
The third man is the Party organizer, a paid official who serves as the group’s leader. He sits in a chair in the corner; the others form a rough semicircle. He speaks quietly but in a commanding tone, acting the dictator that he actually is.
“Joe,” he says, addressing the first man to arrive, “you remember the last time we met you were given an assignment to collect three to five thousand sheets of paper, a Mimeograph machine, and some ink. How did things go?”
“Fine,” Joe replies. “I bought four thousand sheets of paper. Got them at three different stores.”
“Good,” says the organizer, “that’s using your head.”
“I also bought a Mimeograph machine and plenty of ink. Everything’s safe now in the right place.” (The “right place” refers to an apartment in another section of the city occupied by a concealed communist, which the Party uses as a secret hide-out.)
“One thing more,” Joe says. “I’ve made inquiries about a portable printing press. It’s pretty old, but it’ll work.”
“Fine,” the organizer says, obviously pleased. “Follow that through. You took the serial numbers off the Mimeograph, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t,” stammers the comrade. “I forgot....”
“Forgot!” explodes the organizer. “What’s wrong with you? That’s just plain stupid. Joe, this is serious business. You’ve got to keep alert. Someday this machine may be used to print secret Party instructions. We can’t afford to have it traced. Take off all identification marks at once.”
Then turning to another man, the one who had parked his car around the corner, the organizer says, “Phil, how are things coming at the plant? Making any progress on getting Bill installed as shop steward?”
“No, not much. Things look pretty bad.” The man shifts his legs. He is a big fellow, weighing over two hundred pounds. “Looks like we’re blocked.”
“Nonsense,” snaps the organizer, “we’ve gone over that before. There’s always a way. Communists never give up. You’ve got things good. You’re at home enjoying life. Remember Lenin, exiled from Russia, going from town to town. He didn’t quit, and look what he did. He was a genius. What’s the big problem, Phil?”
“It’s Red, the union president. He knows Bill is a communist and he’s fighting him. Red is smart, he knows the ropes. He’s always been a hard worker for labor unions. He’s got a clean record and he’s liked by the members. As long as Red is president, we’re in a bad fix.”
“That’s the wrong attitude, Phil. If one thing won’t work, try another. Can’t we accuse him of something? Have you gone over his past life? Hasn’t he ever done anything wrong?”
“If he has, we can’t find it. He’s a straight shooter from ’way back and he really hates communists.”
“Phil, this is your Number One assignment,” the organizer says. “You get something on Red. He’s got to be discredited. Maybe we can make up some letters, mail them in another city, accuse him of working against the union. You figure out the details.”
The organizer goes around the circle to the other members. Are they carrying out their assignments? Ethel, the draftsman’s wife, thinks she will soon be elected an officer in a downtown women’s group.
“Wonderful,” says the organizer. “Don’t rush things too fast but try to get some of the women to write letters to Washington. Let them say the FBI is a Gestapo; that they’re violating civil liberties by arresting Party leaders. That’s good, Ethel.”
“They haven’t the slightest idea I’m a communist.” She laughs. “I’m working hard at it.” The other woman, the last one to arrive, reports her activities as secretary of a communist-front organization.
The organizer, wanting the meeting to be short, speaks a few words about “new things” in the Party: A pamphlet from national headquarters has just been received and should be bought by all; finances are not in good shape; a new Party school is going to be held next month. Ethel should attend.
Shortly after nine o’clock the meeting is over, and as quietly as they have come the members slip out into the night.
This Communist Party club is representative of many hundreds throughout the nation. Night after night, week after week, these men and women are plotting against America, working out smears, seeking to discredit free government, and planning for revolution. They form the base of a gigantic pyramid of treason, stretching from the little gray house with green shutters to the towers of the Kremlin.
The Communist Constitution (18th Version, 1957)
At least in theory the Communist Party, USA, is based on a “constitution,” which sets forth the group’s organizational structure. That constitution, being a public document, is filled with typical Aesopian language. The Party member, for example, isn’t fooled when the constitution proclaims, “The Communist Party upholds the achievements of American democracy and defends the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights....” He knows better. His Marxist training enables him to recognize the Party’s real aim:
The Communist Party seeks to advance the understanding of the working class in its day-to-day struggles for its historic mission, the establishment of socialism. (Preamble)
Here is the key, “historic mission.” What does it mean? Not something traditional, respectable, or patriotic, but the overthrow of this government by force and violence. Engels talked about the “historic mission” of “the proletariat,” which “can only free itself by doing away once for all with class dominion, subjugation, and exploitation.” That, in communist terminology, means revolution. The Communist International spoke of the Party’s “historic mission of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Today’s communists, with deceitful double talk, are attempting to camouflage the true meaning of this old and well-defined revolutionary term. Comrades in the early 1920’s weren’t quite so squeamish about their intentions. The Party’s constitution (1921) proclaimed the communist purpose:
... to destroy the bourgeois state machinery; to establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the form of Soviet power; to abolish the capitalist system and to introduce the Communist Society. (Article I, Section 2)
Regardless of current communist claims, “historic mission” is the Party’s linguistic description of its revolutionary intent.
The National Convention, according to the constitution, is the highest authority in the Party. This convention, normally held every two years, is composed of delegates “elected” by state or district conventions. The National Convention, after hearing “discussions” of the various issues, is authorized to make decisions binding upon the entire membership.
These affairs have the trappings of big-time conventions. Various committees are chosen, resolutions adopted, and speeches given. Proceedings are secret, although communists say they have nothing to hide. Members of the legitimate press are excluded. Exploiting this blackout of news, the communists often issue slanted press releases in an effort to influence public opinion. Another tactic is to allow the attendance of selected noncommunists, persons carefully hand-picked wherever possible, who the Party hopes will later make favorable reports.
Extensive preparations are made for the National Convention. Party officials as a general rule work up a “draft program,” a summary of proposed Party aims on current issues, national and international. This “draft program” is widely circulated, with members being asked to discuss indicated approaches. Then, theoretically, the convention, based on the opinions developed, adopts a final program. Actually, in practice, the draft program represents a technique whereby the leadership “sells” the membership the ideas it wants to stress. Frequently, convention reports, resolutions, and speeches, properly edited, are later published. They serve as policy guides for the membership.
Never forgotten are Soviet trimmings. Proudly read on the floor of the Sixteenth National Convention (February 9-12, 1957) were greetings from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Other Communist Parties in China, Canada, Italy, Japan, and Czechoslovakia also sent “best wishes.” From these, members gain a sense of communist solidarity, or, in Party language, proletarian internationalism, the feeling that they are integral parts of the world-wide communist movement. This is one of the driving forces of modern-day communism: the Party-promoted idea that no member is alone, that he is part of a vast movement which, in communist eyes, is destined to conquer the world. Singing the “Internationale,” the communist marching song, also engenders this feeling.
The Three Levels of Power
The Party’s organizational structure may be likened to layers in a pyramid, one placed on top of the other.
1. The top level centers around national headquarters and contains the Party’s policy-making organs (1) National Committee; (2) National Executive Committee; and (3) National Administrative Committee. With ruthless hand this echelon rules the Communist Party, USA. The designation given here is the current arrangement, which is always subject to change. The Party never hesitates to reshuffle its top administrative bodies, changing their names and sizes. For many years, for example, it had national officers: National Chairman, William Z. Foster, and General Secretary, Earl Browder and, later, Eugene Dennis. The power remains, however, in the hands of a small minority.
2. The second or middle level contains the many administrative organs that implement the decisions of the inner hierarchy: (1) various commissions and departments; (2) special organizers; and (3) front groups.
3. The bottom or third level is broad and extensive and contains all the subordinate regional and local units in the Party: that is, district organizations, and, in turn, various state, county, city, section, and club setups. This level encompasses the entire nation.
National headquarters is located in a three-story, twenty-foot-wide, brownstone building at 23 West 26th Street, New York City, just off Broadway. A pygmy amid Manhattan’s towering skyscrapers, with iron bars shielding the bottom-floor windows, this American Kremlin is the symbol of communist power in our country. Here meetings are held and important decisions made. The national office occupies the third floor and penthouse; the New York State Communist Party is on the first and second floors. However, the 1957 Party convention authorized shifting national offices to Chicago.
Level 1: The High Command
The real power of the Party rests in the National Committee. This committee, “elected” by the national and state conventions, is responsible for running the Party between conventions as provided by the constitution:
Between National Conventions, the National Committee is the highest authority of the Party, representing the Party as a whole, and as such has the authority to make decisions and take actions necessary and incidental to the good and welfare of the entire Party, and to act upon all problems and developments occurring between Conventions. (Article V, Section 9)
This provision covers a multitude of possibilities and forms the basis for the dictatorship of a few leaders, in typical communist style. The National Committee is America’s Politburo, a small group of some sixty individuals directing war against noncommunist institutions.
Minority control is strengthened still more by clever manipulation. The current National Committee elected a twenty-member National Executive Committee, which in turn selected administrative officials. In actual practice, the latter group is the dominant power, making day-to-day decisions. There is no free election of the membership. With members of the National Committee spread throughout the country, “on-the-spot” New York comrades tend to monopolize control of Party affairs.
This atmosphere of almost unlimited authority often produces a repugnant type of person. Many of the top leaders are haughty, swaggering, overbearing. They feel that they are better than “little” comrades. They are the “experts” in Marxism-Leninism. Their job is to teach the “less informed.”
William Z. Foster went to Seattle, Washington, a few years ago to make a speech. “We’re glad you’ve come,” the welcoming local official commented. “Many of our comrades are looking forward to meeting you.”
“Not so fast,” warned Foster. “I’m not going to see any of them. I’m too busy. These little Party people just sit down and pour out their personal problems. It wears me out and you can’t get rid of them.”
“But,” protested the local organizer, “they’ve been busy for weeks, working to make the meeting a success. They want....”
“Nonsense,” snapped Foster. “You decide which ones are worth my time and I’ll see them. Make appointments. I can’t solve everybody’s problems.”
Later the local leader told Foster that the comrades wanted to give him a present, perhaps a traveling bag.
“Oh, no,” Foster interrupted. “I’ve already looked at traveling bags, and I didn’t find any costing less than seventy-five dollars which would be suitable. I don’t think the members want to spend that much.”
Right he was. The organizer had probably browbeaten all “volunteers” to collect twenty to thirty dollars.
“What about a watch?” inquired the local leader, intent on pleasing the high-ranking visitor.
“I already have one,” replied Foster. “It cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars. I don’t think it’s advisable to buy a more expensive one, and I wouldn’t wear a cheaper one.”
That settled it. This “proletarian” leader, the “champion of the poor and downtrodden,” acting like a miniature Hitler, was indeed difficult to please.
Level 2: The Special Units
The attack weapons of the Communist Party are contained in the middle layer, the commissions and departments to carry out the decisions of the inner clique.
Communist leaders view American life not as a vast, uniform whole but as a series of different segments, each, in its own way, open to the appeal of communism. There are, for instance, farmers with their special problems, trade-union members, and groups with special interests related to nationality, youth, and race. Communists realize that a single program, slanted to appeal to all groups at once, will not work. To be effective, communist propaganda must be tailored to fit specific problems. What are a group’s dissatisfactions, desires, and aims? How can communism most effectively appeal to this group? The fact that programs designed for different groups are often mutually contradictory makes no difference to communists. The main point is to attract followers and stir up discontent in as many areas as possible.
This is the task of various commissions and departments, each headed by a national Party leader. Merely to list some of them will give an idea of the scope of the Communist Party’s appeal: Veterans’ Commission, Women’s Commission, Education Department, Cultural Commission, Negro Commission, Labor Department, Nationality Groups Commission, Youth Commission.
In addition, there are related organs dealing with the internal administration of the Party. The National Organization Department, for example, handles the placement of Party officials throughout the nation, while the National Review (Control) Commission (also known as the Appeals Commission) is in charge of security and disciplinary matters.
These commissions and departments are little dynamos attempting to spark enthusiasm for the communist cause in their special fields. They prepare literature, arrange speaking tours, organize fronts. Their job is to work out the practical details of implementing the Party line.
This task is accomplished largely through the employment of “experts,” men and women trained in special fields. There are experts of all kinds, on both local and national levels: waterfront organizers specializing in seamen’s groups; labor organizers interested in penetrating labor unions; organizers in virtually every other field, such as aircraft, mining, steel, agriculture, youth, nationality groups. Then there are fund raisers, recruiters, Marxist teachers, organizational experts.
If a Party district is planning, let us say, a special organizing drive, an expert from national headquarters or another district may arrive to assume charge. He may deal with top officials or descend to club levels. He may stay a few hours, a week, or even months. John Williamson for many years was considered one of the Party’s top labor experts. Henry Winston was an authority on organizational problems. Both Williamson and Winston were convicted under the Smith Act; Williamson later accepted voluntary deportation to Great Britain and has since been reported to have served as liaison between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the United States Party.
If the visitor is a high national officer, special arrangements are usually made to receive him with “extreme cordiality.” If his schedule is crowded, a rank-and-filer may be assigned as a chauffeur. Never must the Party be regarded as a “desk-type” organization, operating only through letters, telegrams, and phone calls. It is a fast, hard-hitting, mobile organization, based primarily on personal contacts, with its officials traveling thousands of miles a year by auto, train, and air to pursue subversive activities.
Level 3: Regional and Local Units
This layer provides the broad base for the pyramid and includes the remainder of the Party structure. The United States is divided into Communist Party districts, some of which have jurisdiction over more than one state. The Ohio State Communist Party, directed principally from Cleveland, Ohio, for example, includes the states of Ohio and Kentucky and West Virginia’s four northern “panhandle” counties.
Communist membership is strongest in the Northeast section of the United States. The greatest concentration of Communist Party members is in the area of New York City. Other states having large numbers of communists are California, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, Connecticut, Michigan, and Massachusetts. Few members, relatively speaking, reside in Southern and Rocky Mountain states.
District (or state) organizations, patterned on the national structure, hold periodic conventions, “elect” state committees, and have officers. Hence there is a Chairman, New York State Communist Party, or Secretary, Ohio State Communist Party. Sometimes state conventions are held in “split sessions”: the first, before the National Convention when selected topics, such as those proposed in the “draft program,” are “discussed”; the second, after the national meeting when the state convention reassembles to ratify the decisions of the national body. State leaders take no chances, they stay on the Party line.
Many states and districts have open headquarters. In recent years most were closed, but the Party realizes that an open headquarters is essential in carrying out its day-to-day agitational work. These Party offices are usually located downtown in a dingy room or suite in an old building. Battered desks, with typewriter, Mimeograph machine (the good right arm of the Party), and perhaps a literature rack are standard equipment. Here are the offices of the state chairman, state secretary, and other officers. An old-time communist, usually a woman, will “triple” as receptionist, stenographer, and Mimeograph operator. Knowing all the members, she’s a good “lookout” and can answer most questions: Has Oscar come back from vacation? Where does Joyce work? Is Ruth a club chairman?
Normally, headquarters is a busy place, with people going in and out all day long. Here special state, county, and city meetings are held as well as personal conferences. The busiest items in the place are chairs; they seldom have a rest until after midnight.
The local organizational structure, under state (or district) headquarters, varies from area to area. The city (or county) sections in turn are subdivided. Intracity sections may encompass several wards, each, like the county, having its own set of officers. Each section, of course, is rigidly controlled from the top.
The basic unit, at the bottom of the whole structure, is the club, formerly known as the cell, like the one described at the beginning of this chapter. Clubs are of various types: community clubs, comprising members who live in a certain geographical area; shop clubs, composed of members who work at a certain company; industrial clubs, which include members employed in the same basic industry, such as steel, automobile, aluminum, though working for different industrial firms; and specialized clubs, appealing to professions or other natural groupings. In the latter category, for example, there may be a professional section (often called white-collar), comprising clubs of teachers, doctors, or lawyers. A few members, especially the deeply concealed communists, do not belong to any club but are considered as members-at-large, subject to control only from headquarters.
Determining which club a member should join is simple: where can he do the most good for the Party? If he is employed in the aluminum industry, for instance, he would probably be instructed to join an aluminum club (made up of members employed in the aluminum industry). If he is a union officer, he might join a shop or industrial club. Or, again, if his membership should be carefully concealed, he would be a member-at-large. The organizational structure is always in a state of flux, members being frequently shifted from club to club, while headquarters organizes and reorganizes sections and clubs, tearing down one, establishing another, always hoping to gain greater efficiency.
Each club is required to have a chairman, a financial secretary, and an educational director. A well-run club has many more officers: literature director, press chairman, dues secretary, membership chairman, and so on. The same is true of county, city, and section groups; the communists have plenty of officers. Moreover, a definite chain of command is always in effect. Everybody knows his relative position: who are his Party “inferior” and Party “boss.” Instructions are quickly carried out, and in the event of an emergency a commanding officer is always available.
Communist clubs are often named after famous American historical figures such as Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman. Other clubs bear the names of communist “heroes” such as John Reed.
The Principle of “Democratic Centralism”
This is a complicated structure, you might say. How does it work? The point is: it does work, efficiently, effectively, and all too often to the detriment of this nation. The whole Party organization, regardless of its structural shape, is based on strict discipline, a rigid hierarchy, and a unified structure.
The cement that holds it together is a principle called democratic centralism. That sounds like a contradiction in terms; it is. But communists like fancy words to fool their opponents and, perhaps, to satisfy themselves. Democratic centralism is the basic principle of communist organizational structure—a term meaning, in actual practice, simple, naked, and unadulterated dictatorship.
According to communists, Party members have a right to participate in formulating policy and electing officers. That is, to them, democracy in action.
An issue has arisen. The city is planning to close a play-ground. What stand will the Party take? All members are encouraged to express opinions. There may be different points of view.
Then a decision is made—the communists say by an “election,” but actually it is by the leader clique. The city’s action will be opposed. From that moment, “centralism” takes over and “democratic” falls away. All members, regardless of their previous opinions, are required to support the Party’s stand. No minority can exist.
Democratic centralism, communist leaders claim, combines the “strictest discipline with the widest initiative and independent activity of the Party membership.” It is “democratic” because of the preliminary “free discussion of issues” and “right of election”; it is “centralism” because once a decision is made, the discipline of the Party enforces the decision. This is the ideal type of organizational structure, say the communists.
The tyranny and dictatorship that are part and parcel of the Communist Party are laid down by the rule: all lower Party organizations are subordinated to the higher bodies, and the highest of all are the Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which are run by the Kremlin.
A practical demonstration of democratic centralism at work recently occurred in New York City. As we have mentioned, a campaign was launched to circulate a petition to put Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a member of the National Committee, on the ballot as candidate for the New York City Council. Although the 1957 National Convention of the Party emphasized that Party members could dissent from official Party policy, William Weinstone, another member of the National Committee, issued the order that “Those members who may not agree with this campaign should nevertheless understand that it is their duty to participate in signature getting.”
We in the FBI, through confidential sources of information, know what goes on in hundreds of these meetings. We know who the speakers are, what they say (and don’t say), what decisions are made. These “free discussions” would be amusing but for the deadly malady they highlight: a ruthless thought control.
Communist members learn what to think, how to vote, what to say by a process of “automatic osmosis”—the seeping of predigested thoughts along the Party line into all subordinate minds, disciplined to accept. The members become ideological sleepwalkers, drugged into complete obedience by an unconscious discipline.
Sometimes, absurd as it may seem, secret ballots are used. Members go through all the motions of argument, taking a vote, nominating and electing officers. They become excited, waving their arms, pounding desks, shaking their fists. You would think there was open opposition. But that is merely part of the show. Communist thought control, operating through Party ranks, is a terrifying spectacle, freezing into fixed rigidity the mental processes of thousands.
Seen in its true light, democratic centralism is a deceptive cloak dropped over a ruthless dictatorship.
Sometimes a member, somehow or other, does not fathom the Party line. He says something out of step. He is simply “ill-informed” and needs more “education.” A Party school or a conference will probably bring him back to his “right senses.”
Occasionally a stubborn member will persist in criticism. That takes courage. He is made of metal the communist thought-control machine has not yet melted. He carries the fight to higher Party bodies. But he can’t win and out he goes.
In one instance a member was accused of falling down on the job. The section organizer recommended that he be removed from both his Party office and the county executive committee.
“He’s irresponsible,” stormed one old-time comrade, “and in the Soviet Union irresponsibles are not voted out of office—they are shot!”
That’s democratic centralism, the organizational principle that has welded the Communist Party, USA, into a terrible instrument poised and eager to destroy this country if given the opportunity.
11 — This Is the Party!
What about life in the Party, how members live, who they are, how they earn their money, what they do with their time, and how they get their orders? The following are accounts of day-to-day activities of Party life.
Eleanor is washing the dishes. Her husband, Henry, has just gone to work. The two children are scurrying around the house, ready to leave for school.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door. It is Ruth, who lives across the street. Ruth is chairman of the East Side Communist Club. Her husband, Robert, is state secretary of the Communist Party and a full-time paid functionary.
“Starting the day out just right,” smiles Ruth. “The kitchen is all cleaned up. You can come and help us.”
Ruth outlines her plans. The state office needs some typing done this morning. Eleanor was a stenographer before she married and often helps on a part-time basis at headquarters. She is a trusted member. But that is not all. In the afternoon Eleanor is to make “some calls”; that is, visit some comrades. She must pass out word that the next meeting of the county executive committee will be held on Friday evening. This message cannot be given over the telephone. Then tonight will be the regular meeting of the East Side Club. Eleanor probably won’t get home in time to fix supper. If she doesn’t, Henry and the kids can make some cold meat sandwiches. Besides, Henry is scheduled to meet with the state education secretary tonight and he won’t have time to eat supper anyway.
Life in the Party! For good members nothing is left for life outside the Party. The housewife is doing typing, running errands, Mimeographing, arranging meetings, collecting dues; her husband, even while working at the grocery store, in the shoe factory, or at the service station, is thinking of his Party assignment that night, distributing literature, soliciting money, serving as a courier. The Party is the most important force in their lives.
If anybody joins the Communist Party expecting to lead an easy life, perhaps read Marx and Engels, buy some literature, and not exert much effort, he is completely misguided. Party work is hard, tough work, and the Party is a ruthless task-master. The member is always on the run, doing this and doing that. He has no spare time, energy, or money for himself. His whole life becomes dominated. The Party is his school, source of friends, and recreation, his substitute for God. Communism wants the total man, hence it is totalitarian. That is part of its indoctrination policy: by concentrating everything on the Party, all other interests are squeezed out.
Day and night the Party structure is buzzing with action: fund drives, registration of members, collection of dues, sale of literature. Leaflets must be passed out on Olive Street, a picket line formed at city hall, a meeting attended. Workers, not playboys, are wanted; or as one Party spokesman expressed it, we must rid ourselves of the member who “makes noises like an eager beaver but accomplishes little.” A major characteristic of the Communist Party is perpetual motion.
The man who keeps this subversive beehive of activity going is the paid Party functionary. He is the key to the whole apparatus. Working on national, state, and local levels, he pumps in energy, gives orders, coaxes, cajoles, threatens, smiles, scowls, pleads, anything to keep the Party bustling.
Most communist functionaries are old-timers with ten, fifteen, or twenty years of service. Some have been trained abroad, possibly in the Lenin School in Moscow. They are transferred at frequent intervals, depending on the needs of the Party. One may serve as an organizer in California, as a section secretary in Rhode Island, or as a fund-raiser in Florida. Their full-time job is to advance the communist cause. The Party employs women functionaries, especially on the lower levels. During World War II, when many male comrades were drafted, a number of Party offices were run by women.
Salaries vary, depending on the size and location of assignment, but they average fifty to seventy dollars weekly. As a general rule, officials are paid by the local organization, although the national office, in case of a deficit, may step in with cash. Some functionaries operate on an expense account, especially if they travel.
The communist official will probably live in a modest neighborhood. His wife will patronize the corner grocery store, his children attend the local school. If a shoe store or a butcher shop is operated by a Party member, the official will probably get a discount on his purchases.
Most Party officials drive cars, usually older models. They are generally out late at night attending meetings. A car is essential for transportation and carrying literature. Except for special affairs, communist activity is slight early in the morning. The organizer, coming in around midnight or one o’clock, will sleep late. But that doesn’t mean all day. One Southern official was severely censured for sleeping too late; to solve the problem the Party bought him an electric alarm clock.
Functionaries eat away from home a great deal. They generally are well versed on “cozy” places where they can talk with a minimum of observation. Much Party business is conducted at luncheon appointments. Their wives are also engaged in Party work, and often both are away from home night after night. “Home,” to the communist organizer, is more a place to sleep than to enjoy restful relaxation.
If a Party convention is to be held, and many out-of-town delegates are coming in, the organizer may turn his apartment into a temporary hotel. He will pull out all the spare cots, beds, and blankets and “put up” a half-dozen visitors.
The paid official’s job is to keep the Party going, to see that everybody has something to do, that meetings are scheduled, that money is collected, that the Party’s program is carried out. He may start his day around ten-thirty or eleven o’clock with a “staff” conference at headquarters. There he will discuss the day’s agenda with other officials, give or receive orders, and get squared away for the day’s work.
The organizer must be a fairly intelligent man with an ability to get along with people. He is always asking for something: Can you deliver papers, how about attending this class, making a speech? He must know how to overcome fears, suspicions, and laziness, and encourage members to work. He may, for example, approach a member for a donation: “We need five hundred dollars. Sell your car and donate the money.” Communists come up with all kinds of schemes. The organizer must go out and “sell” the idea.
He also spends a great deal of time smoothing out personal problems. In one case a communist “love triangle” erupted. A young Party member, even though married, decided that she loved another member’s husband. The man’s wife, however, was determined to fight. The problem reached such bitterness that the trio’s Party work began to suffer. There was little hope of solving it by themselves. So the state chairman stepped in.
He talked to them personally. They poured out their inner feelings. The young woman and her “lover” requested Party approval for a divorce. A few days later the wife, with fire in her eyes, told the state chairman she wanted three months’ leave of absence from the Party to regain the love of her husband. A regular free-for-all was brewing. The Party, however, exerted pressure and the situation was settled. No divorce was approved. The organizer must be ready at any hour to settle everything, from a hair-pulling contest to the distribution of an estate.
For most members the Party is their whole life. If any problems arise, changing jobs, adopting a child, lawsuits, etc., they solve them with the Party’s advice. If a member has a case of ulcers, the organizer will recommend a “Party doctor”; if somebody is threatening suit, he will suggest a “Party lawyer”; if one has lost his job, he might know somebody in the Party, perhaps the owner of a store, a union-shop steward, or an industrial executive, who will help out.
The Party, in many respects, is a vast paternalistic system. Not that it is humanitarian, full of mercy, or interested in the members’ welfare. Nothing like that. The Party’s interests come first. If a member is sick, tied up with a lawsuit, or unemployed, his Party work will suffer. Each member should be in top working shape at all times. The Party functionary’s job is to seek out and solve these problems. He is an administrator, expediter, and nursemaid.
Also, any activity that might injure the Party must be prevented. The discipline of the Party, exercised through the functionary, extends to the most intimate details of personal life. Here are a few actual cases:
A member in Ohio desired to adopt a child whose parents were members of the Catholic Church, and the member had taken steps to join the Church. The state chairman was furious and said no. Finally the member asserted his independence and left the Party.
Another member, in the Party’s eyes, manifested “bourgeois” tendencies. He spent too much time working on his house! He was removed from his Party position.
One member in the state of Washington went to Alaska, without permission, to secure a job. He was suspended on the ground that he would attract the FBI’s attention in Alaska.
A member in New York City, age thirty-five, was dropped from the rolls. Why? In the Party’s eyes he was too much dominated by his mother.
Sometimes the functionary will order the member to take an affirmative step:
A strawberry farmer was visited in Everett, Washington, by a Party fund-raiser who demanded one hundred dollars, which the farmer did not have. The farmer was ordered to mortgage his house. He refused and was expelled for failure to abide by Communist Party discipline.
In Philadelphia the district organizer called at the residence of a couple with a long record of devoted Party activity. The organizer announced that the wife was being dropped from the Party because she was anticommunist. When pressed for an explanation, the organizer stated he had concluded that the wife had written critical letters regarding the Party leaders, which she vigorously denied. The organizer then advanced a further reason. A news account had appeared in the papers recounting that her brother, an Air Force Reservist, had been killed in a plane crash and she had failed to advise the Party that he had been called to active duty. The wife then made the futile complaint that, since she was being dropped from the Party and not expelled, she had no way to appeal the decision or to defend herself. Then the organizer told the husband that he had to either leave his wife and children or be dropped from the Party. When he elected to remain with his wife, he was ousted from the Party, as was a former Party organizer who continued to associate with the wife.
A promising young communist was attending a Communist Party training school in New York. He was called out of class and advised that the Party had decided that he was to marry a young lady who had just arrived from Hungary on a student visa. The Party felt the girl was promising Party material. The communist went to City Hall accompanied by a fellow student, the bride-to-be, and her sister. The ceremony was performed, which enabled the girl to stay in the United States since she was now married to an American citizen. The marriage was in form only, and three years later the girl secured a divorce. In the meantime the young communist was sent to West Virginia as a functionary and started living with another girl. She also had a citizenship problem. This was met when the two were called to New York for a meeting. In passing through Elkton, Maryland, they secured a marriage license and returned after the New York meeting for the ceremony. The girl then went on to Chicago. When the communist finally met the lady of his choice, he went to a communist lawyer who arranged for an annulment of the second marriage on the ground that a prenuptial agreement to join the church had been violated.
The Party functionary can order members to resign from one job and accept another, to move from one town to another, to stop seeing their families and friends, to lie, cheat, or steal.
Then there is the problem of money. The functionary is always prodding. First, members must pay dues. They are collected monthly from each member and give the Party a substantial source of revenue. Payments of dues are based on regular schedules, depending on a member’s income. Here is a sample schedule:
| Income Per Week | Dues Per Month |
|---|---|
| Housewives | .50 |
| Students | .50 |
| Unemployed | .50 |
| To $80 | $1.00 |
| To $110 | $2.50 |
| Over $110 | $5.00 |
Dues also serve another purpose: to control the member. The Party official can keep track of him, see if his interest is waning (if he doesn’t want to pay), and also, if possible, determine how much money he actually has (which the Party can later extract). If he falls behind in payments, the financial secretary will be right after him.
Another related obligation is to donate money (besides paying dues). Every member must pay, and pay until it hurts. The Party conducts an annual fund drive, involving the whole membership. Goals are set for clubs, sections, regions, and on a national basis. A big celebration, perhaps a dance or a dinner, marks the “kick-off,” and a definite conclusion date is established. During this period, say September 1 to October 15, a white heat of intensity is reached. The theme: “Money, money, money.” No member, regardless of excuse, is spared. If the amount isn’t reached, the campaign is extended.
How much should a member give? Usually a week’s wages is the accepted minimum. If a comrade has extra sources of income, the amount will be higher.
The Party raises money, lots of it. In one fund drive alone, for example, national headquarters announced a collection of over 165,000 dollars. And the campaign was still not complete. The nickels and dimes (although communists say they like “folding money” best) soon add up. With the effectiveness of a vacuum cleaner, the Party pulls money from everywhere.
Laggards, renegers, and backsliders are pushed hard. “That’s not enough. You’re a piker,” the Party organizer will scoff. Sections and clubs vie for “collection honors.” The first state or district to reach its quota is enthusiastically hailed.
But that is not the end of “donations.” Time after time there are assessments or special fund drives. They come like snowflakes in a winter storm. Party leaders have been arrested, they need help! (Defense Fund). The Daily Worker needs money—urgently! (Press Fund). The Party must have 100,000 dollars in thirty days! (Emergency Fund). An “emergency” is always stalking the Communist Party. The best way to solve it is money. The only thing better is more money. The cost to members: at least a day’s pay for each special fund.
Fund drives do not exhaust the financial wizardry of the communists. Money is obtained in still other ways, such as Hallowe’en parties, dances, waffle parties, going-away affairs, testimonial dinners, anniversaries (such as of the October Revolution in Russia or the birthday of Lenin). In most instances tickets are sold and, in addition, a collection may be taken up. Everything you have belongs to the Party. That’s the philosophy.
One top leader explained how to obtain contributions. Visit the prospective victim. Take along an out-of-town comrade (he’s the high-pressure expert) and a local member. The latter should have plenty of money with him. The prospective victim might say, “Yes, I’d like to contribute, but I haven’t any money now”—the easy way out. If so, the local comrade would interrupt and say, “Fine, I’ll lend you the money. Would a hundred dollars be enough?” This squeeze always works, the leader said. Blank checks are also carried.
To show how far money-raising can go, one member dreamed up the idea that bodies of deceased comrades should be sold for medical experimentation. The Party would gain doubly: first it demanded the fee for the cadaver and then the money ordinarily spent for the burial. Another member suggested that gifts no longer be given at “stork” showers for expectant mothers. This money should be donated to the Party.
Then there are extra revenue sources. At the end of World War II, Party officials requested comrades returning from military service to donate part of their bonus money. In many instances they set the actual amount. If the member didn’t comply, he might be disciplined.
Estates are also juicy morsels. If members, or maybe sympathizers, have any extra money, the Party urges that wills be executed naming the Party or certain functionaries as beneficiaries. Large sums are thus often gained.
Some years ago a former Episcopal bishop died in Ohio. Years before, during an illness, he had started reading Marx and other communist books. Then he turned author and wrote a book entitled Communism and Christianism, wherein he expressed doubt that Christ had ever lived, and asserted that he had “found Christ via Karl Marx.” The bishop was given a trial by his church and deposed. Following his death, his will provided that the residue of his estate, valued at between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars, was to go to a corporation whose trustees were to devote all or any part of it to the cause of communism as “propagated by Karl Marx.”
Another communist sympathizer in Oregon a few years ago received more than 100,000 dollars upon the death of a son. A communist friend persuaded the sympathizer to bequeath a part of his estate to two West Coast communists.
A Party member died in Massachusetts in 1953, leaving a 14,000-dollar bank account and real estate to the Party, naming three Party officials as executors of his will.
Over the years the Party has been blessed by angels and foundations whose money was made through the American free enterprise system and is then used in an attempt to destroy the system that made wealth and affluence possible.
In years past, each member was given a membership card or book (which was numbered) on which he could paste his “dues stamps,” showing that he was current on this obligation. But today, for security reasons, this practice is no longer followed. Membership records, if kept, are carefully concealed, and only a trusted few know their whereabouts. Sometimes elaborate code, color, and tab combinations are used on such records to indicate the name, occupation, sex, length of Party service, etc., of the members.
To join the Communist Party does not automatically mean life tenure. Memberships must be renewed every year or, in communist language, members are “reregistered.” This represents another means of control. If a member is delinquent in dues or donations, he’ll have to pay a penalty, perhaps contribute ten dollars, or be disciplined. These annual registration drives are important events in Party life. Each member is personally contacted. Clubs and sections compete for speed and percentage of successful registration. The drives usually start in October and often extend well past the December 31 deadline.
A member moves. His district organization will send details concerning him to his new area: name, Party history, whether dues are paid, along with any other remarks. A member may be given half of a dollar bill and the other half forwarded to the new district. When the member arrives, the halves are matched. Identity is thus established.
So it goes, a constant round of rushing, driving, pushing, paying, never time to stop. The member is regimented from life to death. His chief obligation: to follow instructions eagerly, energetically, obediently. He is a mere wisp of living matter, born, as a Daily Worker birth announcement proclaimed, “for swelling our ranks.”
This complete absorption in the Party creates an exhilaration that warps judgment. One comrade became so wrought up over the supposed superiority of communist culture that he cited statistics that the Soviet soldier in World War II was an inch taller and had a chest one and a half inches larger than his Czarist counterpart!
Such fervor sounds laughable, but it is symptomatic of paranoiac behavior. To an individual like this, any communist achievement surpasses anything American. This bigoted communist fanaticism drives members to mortgage their homes, spend years in underground shelters, and betray their native land.
Even in death a member may become a pawn to enhance the Party. The passing of a prominent comrade invariably is the occasion for a “state funeral.” The departed member is now a valuable showpiece and his passing is exploited to the fullest extent. On such occasions the deceased lies in state on the day of the funeral, with “mourners” passing the bier. A large, blown-up photograph of the deceased, draped in black, hangs at the rear of the stage. An honor guard of from two to four comrades stands at attention wearing red armbands.
There is seldom a religious quality to the music, eulogies, or the “mourners’” conduct. At the “state funeral” of Mother Ella Reeve Bloor in 1951 the “mourners” talked, laughed, and smoked.
The eulogies are numerous and recount the contributions made by the deceased to the Communist Party, to the advancement of socialism, and state how the Party can learn from the life of the departed. At Mother Bloor’s funeral in New York City, for example, Pettis Perry, a member of the National Committee, said:
This is not farewell to you, Mother Bloor. We pledge to follow in your footsteps.... We will build your Party and our Party and some day we will have a nation and a society built on the brotherhood of man....
At the funeral of Peter V. Cacchione, an elected member of the New York City Council, nineteen speakers delivered eulogies. Gilbert Green, then chairman of the Party in Illinois, speaking for the National Committee, observed that the deceased fell in the struggle as “a soldier in the cause of human freedom,” and vowed that the remaining comrades would take “the banner from his hands.”
After such services a cortege of automobiles laden with mourners journeys from the funeral hall to the cemetery. As Mother Bloor was lowered into her grave at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey, Walter Lowenfels, then the Philadelphia correspondent of the Daily Worker, read Walt Whitman’s poem, “The Mystic Trumpeter.”
At the Cacchione interment Henry Winston, a member of the National Committee, delivered these parting words, “We are confident, as you were, dear Pete, in ultimate victory.... We will carry out your heritage.”
Through it all runs the hope, not of life everlasting, but of communism everlasting—if the members can be stirred up to work harder.
12 — Making Communist Man
In the last chapter we examined life in the Party—the constant hustle, collecting of dues, registration of members, holding of conferences, issuing of instructions.
These activities, however, have a meaning more sinister than just keeping the Party going, a meaning that we over-look at our peril. It is this: the Party is a vast workshop where the member is polished and shined, his impurities melted out, his loyalty to communism strengthened. He is made into communist man.
The revolution requires, as Lenin taught, that the fanatical believer be a man who, if so instructed, will give his life to the cause. He’s the paid functionary we met in the last chapter, the agitator and propaganda agent we’ll see in future pages. Without him communism would be just another “ism.”
This type of man doesn’t just grow; he must be created. To understand fully how this happens, we must now briefly examine the Party’s educational, press, literature, and cultural programs, its chief weapons of indoctrination.
Suppose one joined the Party. How would these techniques of regimentation affect the new member? We can best consider this question under several headings.
Back to School
One of the first things a new member does is to go to a school. He’ll receive his instructions soon after joining, probably from his club chairman. And as long as he stays in the Party, he’ll continue to go to school. Even the grizzled veterans go. There’s a diabolical reason behind this, which we’ll soon see.
Most people don’t think of the Communist Party as an educational institution. Yet year after year the Party operates a school system of vast proportions: theory schools; orientation schools; specialized schools in current events, history, economics, social problems; schools in Party techniques: how to collect dues, recruit new members, serve as a club chairman, be a better public speaker; and, of course, schools on revolutionary tactics and procedure. In recent years the Party has been extremely subtle in teaching its doctrines of revolution, always remembering federal laws such as the Smith Act, which prohibits advocating the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence.
Education, in the communist scheme, means indoctrination, imbuing the member with qualities desired by the Party. The pertinent question always is: How can the member be trained to serve the Party better?
Classes are held on all levels—local, state, regional, and national, varying in length from an hour to several weeks. For security reasons members meet in an isolated building, a home, or even in an automobile or a public park. The teacher is usually a paid functionary or someone from the county or state educational commission. Class consists of an extended lecture, perhaps for an hour or so, followed by discussion. As a general rule, no note-taking is allowed. The class over, each student leaves, careful not to attract attention.
After the beginning, or orientation, school (where members are soaked with Aesopian double talk) is over, the member is ready for a more advanced class. Never is he told at the outset that he is being changed into a Bolshevik, that his loyalty is being shifted to Soviet Russia, and that the American government must be overthrown. That would scare him away. The Party’s indoctrination process is slow and gradual. The member himself seldom realizes that bit by bit his precommunist training is being extracted and replaced by Party ideology.
Most important, he is grounded in love of the Party. This is a cardinal duty of the communist teacher.
... the cause of Communism is the greatest and most arduous cause in the history of mankind.
To sacrifice one’s personal interests and even one’s life without the slightest hesitation and even with a feeling of happiness, for the cause of the Party... is the highest manifestation of Communist ethics.
The true Communist... must feel that the Party does not owe him a thing; it is he who owes everything... to the Party.
Party schools make extensive use of study outlines and lesson aids supplied by national, state, and local educational commissions. They are written in a simple style and slanted to the average reader. Many contain suggested readings, illustrative examples, and review questions. Usually Mimeographed, they deal with all phases of the Party’s program. Sample titles are “Lenin and Our Party,” “World Significance of the Events in China,” “New Members Session and Introduction in the Communist Party,” and “Farmers in the Coalition.”
Amazing attention is shown to detail. In advanced classes members will have homework and examinations. As part of the instruction, classes often are given practical “field work.” Students in one Midwestern school were dismissed, divided into teams, and sent to industrial plants to distribute Party literature. That evening they reassembled to discuss their experiences and receive ideas on how better to do the job.
The longer one stays in the Party, the more specialized are the classes he attends. The goal, of course, is to be selected to attend a national leadership school. This means going to New York City or a Party camp and staying several weeks. Students probably will not know the true names of their fellow students; they’ll remember them as Sam (an alias), the man with the crooked arm, the redheaded girl who talked so much, the old man with the green shirt. That’s part of the Party’s security program.
The communist educational system is extremely practical: training members to do what the Party needs. Perhaps more Mimeograph operators are needed; then there’ll be a Mimeograph school. Maybe more dues secretaries are needed; then there’ll be a dues secretaries’ school. All the time, through training, the member is being pulled more closely under Party discipline.
Home Study
Another indoctrination technique is self- or home study. Going to school is important, but at best it can be for only an hour a day or several weeks a year. More study is needed to bind the member to the Party.
One Party directive puts it this way:
Every Communist must read and study the classics of our literature, past and present. Everyone must rigorously enforce the slogan, “One night a week for Marxist study.”
Communists may be busy or deeply involved in other Party work. But they must also carry on self-study or, as the communists call it, ideological self-cultivation or raising the ideological level of the member. This means daily readings in the communist bible—the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. (Following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the late dictator’s works were appreciably de-emphasized in Party study programs.) This is not something optional; it is an absolute requirement. To study the communist “masters,” says the Party, is to be made “perfect” as they were “perfect”—and incidentally to make members work harder selling papers, collecting dues, and handing out leaflets.
In the final analysis this communist education, like all phases of the Party’s program, is geared to revolutionary action. “It is for the Party and for the victory of the revolution that we study.” The Party isn’t training its members just for fun. Each one must be steeled, hardened, and purified of his capitalist “scum,” “filth,” and “dirt.” The new member was born and reared under capitalism and, in communist eyes, therefore he is infected with “selfishness,” “intrigue,” “class attitudes.” “Is it anything strange,” one communist writer asks, “that there are muddy stains on a person who crawls out of the mud...?”
These stains must be washed off. It’s a lifetime job. Non-Party or “capitalist” attitudes keep cropping out. Some have been inherited, others newly acquired from capitalist contamination. That’s why even old-time members keep attending school. It’s like cleaning a skillet that tarnishes. Constant scrubbing (more indoctrination) is needed to make and keep the member ideologically pure.
Communist education is constantly seeking to destroy the “remnants of bourgeois ideology,” the undigested lumps of independence not yet crushed by communist thought control. That is the gnawing fear of all communist regimes: that an undigested lump will be missed, that somewhere lying undetected is a member who has not been completely indoctrinated. This individual is a potential enemy who may someday rise against his masters.
The Party has a term, political maturity, to signify the member who has been so indoctrinated that, as a matter of sixth sense, he will always know the Party line.
Party Literature
The Party’s literature program (comprising newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and books) is a companion to Party schools and self-study in helping to create communist man.
These publications, regardless of their form, tell but one story, the Party’s story. The member must believe no other. For this purpose the Party is operating a multihundred-thousand-dollar propaganda machine.
Inside the Party the refrain is constantly heard: Buy our literature. “Got a nickel, mister? Try this pamphlet.” “You don’t want to miss our paper.” “Here, subscribe to Political Affairs” (the Party’s monthly theoretical magazine). The pressure is terrific. Party-operated bookstores and newspaper carrier routes distribute a steady stream of Party literature, as do the clubs themselves.
“We probably circulate more literature per member of our organization by ten times,” one former Party leader said, “than any other organization in existence.”
The Party’s chief newspaper is the Daily Worker (and its week-end edition, The Worker), published in New York City. On the West Coast it’s the People’s World (a weekly published in San Francisco).
Don’t think of the Daily Worker in terms of your own daily newspaper. It is strictly a propaganda organ. A tabloid with bold, black headlines, its “news” stories, editorials, book reviews, even its sports columns, are slanted to promote the Party’s views.
For example, Daily Worker sports writer Lester Rodney, in his column “On the Scoreboard,” praises “the phenomenal and growing successes of the Soviet Union in the world of sports.” He says, “... the answer is socialism. If Russians were just so all-fired hot as Russians, where were all their champion teams and athletes under the Czar?”
In obvious glee Rodney writes: “So fellow sports lovers, this socialism deserves a little open-minded study, at least, that’s clear. (There’s a fine school over on Sixth Ave. and 16th St. where you can study it if you’re lucky enough to be a New Yorker.)” The Jefferson School of Social Science, a front school, was then located at this address.
And Rodney couldn’t miss the chance for another propaganda plug:
Just one more thing and really the most important for today with all the “Soviet menace” hogwash. No matter what you may or may not think of their socialism, it is self-evident that a nation which loves to play and is turning out fine athletes in increasing numbers and building more and more sports fields is a nation which is thinking about peace and not war.
The Daily Worker serves as a unifier of policy, an organizer of action, and a Party builder. It is a public document. Hence, don’t expect to find there Party secrets, such as the identities of underground officials or decisions of confidential meetings. However, for those who understand its double talk it provides a quick means to communicate the Party line. Moreover, it does not let the membership forget the identity of the Party’s enemies and sometimes its friends. Like a vast searchlight, it gives direction to members, wherever they may be.
Day after day the Daily Worker drills a central theme into its readers: that life in the United States is terrible; that only in communist countries, especially in the Soviet Union, is life worth living at all.
The day’s news is scanned for some incident to distort and use to browbeat the United States. Any action of the American government is always, somehow or other, part of a conspiracy to engulf the world in World War III. One rat in a tenement house becomes an army of rats devouring thousands of people. Pick out every weakness, real or imaginary. Stir up dissension. Try to weaken morale.
After Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the Daily Worker carried some criticism of Soviet Russia, for the most part pertaining to anti-Semitism and illegal arrests. Certain aspects of Russia’s intervention in Hungary were also criticized. Highly novel for the Daily Worker, this criticism apparently reflected the personal views of John Gates, the editor. Gates, of all the top Party leaders, appeared to have been most affected by Khrushchev’s revelations. He was severely attacked, however, by other Party officials, including William Z. Foster, and his resignation was demanded. Nevertheless, despite this limited criticism, the Daily Worker remained loyal to the over-all aims of Soviet Russia and continues to belittle, mock, and criticize American life.
This loyalty to things Russian has caused the Daily Worker to perform some interesting gymnastics. A good example was the famous “Doctors’ Plot,” early in 1953, just before Stalin’s death. Moscow reported the arrest of nine doctors charged with plotting to kill high-ranking Soviet officials. “Moscow Nips Plot to Kill Army Chiefs,” headlined The Worker (January 18, 1953), obviously happy. Then the doctors were suddenly released. Back-flipped The Worker with the greatest of ease: “The Case of the Soviet Doctors, How a Socialist State Protects Its Citizens” (April 12, 1953).
In March, 1953, The Worker reported Stalin’s death. “Stalin: Man of Peace,” “The Cobbler’s Son Who Built a New World,” “‘His Name and His Work Will Endure Through the Ages,’” “Stalin—Architect of a Working People’s World.” In 1956 the headlines shifted: “Lenin’s Principles Abandoned by Stalin,” “Minorities Were Exiled and Mistreated,” “Says Stalin Unleashed Mass Terror 1936-1937.” One writer headed his column: “Stalin Wasn’t God—And We Weren’t Angels.”
Communists regard themselves as “apostles” of a new order living in “enemy-controlled” territory. Communists claim that the Daily Worker cuts through the “capitalist press” and its smog of “lies,” “distortions,” and “fakes,” bringing “truthful information.” This is the highest principle of a “free press.”
The communist press, with its bigoted, perverted, single point of view, is a disturbing reality. It seeks the definite, systematic, and mass indoctrination of the minds of men to trust only the Party. Truth becomes what a group of men say it is.
Here’s an example of how “freedom of the press” works for the communists:
A Party leader hurried toward the building where a convention was being held. Just outside the door he paused. An individual was handing out leaflets urging the election of a slate opposed by the Party.
“That guy ought to be thrown out,” the Party boss remarked to a companion. “He’s nothing but a Trotskyite. He shouldn’t be allowed around here.”
Some time later the same two men were again attending a meeting. This time the Daily Worker was being sold outside. The companion objected, saying this wasn’t a communist meeting.
“Uh,” retorted the Party member. “This is a free country. You can’t stop him from passing it out.”
No wonder communism can operate only in the glow of book burnings. No opposite view can be tolerated. “Down with non-party writers!” Lenin demanded.
As an example, after Browder’s “fall from power” in 1945, many of his books were burned. Shifts in the Party line also cause book burnings. One New England headquarters, caught in a Party shift, destroyed three barrels of literature. What is “true” today in the Party may not be “true” tomorrow.
Modern-day techniques of literature dissemination extend the tyranny of communist indoctrination. The Party wants mass readership. Always remember that the communists are practical, everyday agitators. Why publish something at a high price that few will buy? There are few fancy bindings, engravings, or pictures. Communist publishing firms have exploited the publication of pamphlet-form editions and paper-backed volumes, anything to gain circulation and spread the communist message.
Prices are now higher, but communist literature is today being sold for five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty-five cents. Even these prices are considered too high. “I do not consider a five-cent pamphlet mass literature. We have to go back to mass penny literature...,” one Party leader commented. Amazing circulations have been achieved. Editions of Lenin’s Imperialism and State and Revolution, totaling 100,000 copies each and costing ten cents a copy, were issued. Other pamphlets were printed in editions totaling 307,000; 275,000; 350,000; 440,000.
Everything possible has been done to make available in English the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. A twelve-volume series of Lenin’s Selected Works, over 6000 pages, sells for twenty-five dollars. Marx’s The Civil War in France is offered for a dollar and fifty cents (cloth); paper-bound, twenty-five cents. The most important writings of Lenin are made available in the “Little Lenin Library” (for Marx it’s the “Little Marx Library”), with prices ranging from five to ninety cents. Many foreign communist writings are also printed. During the period 1948-55, according to a report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the writings of Lenin were more widely translated than the Bible, with Stalin’s writings ranking third. Mention should also be made of communist-shop leaflets, neighborhood papers, and throwaways that are placed on doorsteps, thrown into parked cars, or scattered in buildings. Generally Mimeographed, they represent an easy, cheap, and effective method of stirring up trouble.
The pressure is terrific—buy, buy, buy. Widely publicized campaigns to sell the Daily Worker are regular features of Party life. The more communist material a member reads, the less time he has for reading “capitalist propaganda.”
Cultural Indoctrination
Even if a member faithfully went to school, studied at home, and read Party literature, he would still have spare time during which non-Party thoughts might seep in. That would never do.
Every facet of the member’s life, even when he plays the piano, sings, goes to a movie, sees a painting, or reads a book, must be saturated with communism. Art doesn’t exist for art’s sake. Art, as Lenin taught, is a weapon of the class struggle. “Culture” becomes an indoctrinal spray seeking to control every part of the member’s heart, mind, and soul.
The member is subjected to a barrage of Russian, satellite, and native communist “cultural” propaganda. There are art exhibits, folk dances, theater groups, nationality bazaars. Many of these are carried on through front groups and hence not labeled as communist. The Daily Worker advertises Soviet movies, which are often shipped to Party units across the country. Short stories, novels, and poetry come in steady streams. Forums extol the virtue of Soviet life. Here, the communists say, is the new “people’s culture,” bringing the “real truth.”
The theme is always the same: Russia and communism represent a new world of “hope,” “promise,” and “achievement,” creating “communist man” in all his “remarkable spiritual qualities.” The United States is a “weak,” “decadent,” and “sick” country, dominated by vulgar tastes, thievery, and debauched living. No wonder, according to the Daily Worker, the Soviet soldier in World War II spent his time reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy while the “uncultured” GI read assorted inferior trash!
The member is urged to read Soviet literature and see the “glorious” communist “hero” working his heart out for the regime. This “hero”—usually just an ordinary, plain fellow (like the member)—can repair a blast furnace in one day instead of the usual six to eight weeks. Why? For the glory of communism. Another “hero” is sad and disheartened. He has bungled his factory job. He wasn’t doing his share. But a strong arm is around his shoulders, the arm of an experienced worker. He’ll show the worker “hero” how to break production records, for communism—when in real life he might be headed for a slave labor camp.
Day after day this propaganda is dinned into the member.
Children are included. The Party feels that the basic responsibility of indoctrinating the child lies with the communist parents. A member in Buffalo announced, for instance, that a class for children, aged five to seven, would be held in the basement of her home. Ironically, it was called “Sunday school” because it was held on Sunday. But, the member added, this school was not to teach “the word of God or in any way teach religion.” The instruction obviously would be directed to the fundamentals of Marxism.
Books are published for children. One, Our Lenin, is a story of Lenin’s life, translated and adapted “for American children.” In this an American worker is quoted: “‘It [the Soviet Union] will last forever, and we here will follow its example.’” It’s a steady diet of propaganda.
Suppose the member wants to write, paint, or compose music? He, too, must follow the Party line. His work must promote communism.
Some of the writings are very crude, but they get across the Party line. Here’s a poem that appeared in the Daily Worker shortly after Stalin’s death, eulogizing the Soviet dictator:
He was melted in the open hearth of feudal czarist oppression
He was forged in the fire of revolution
His chemistry was the chemistry of struggle
And left him as pure as the hope of liberation of the working class
He was alloyed with large masses of the Soviet peoples and heaping shovelfuls
of international brotherhood with just the right amount of love
for humanity to finally make—
A man of steel....
An artist wants to paint a flock of birds in a tree. That’s silly, the Party says. There’s no communist message. Here’s how his idea can be improved.
Make one bird a white dove and, presto, you’re right in line with the communist “peace” offensive. Another improvement: Put a mean-looking capitalist “warmonger” under the tree taking aim at the peaceful dove.
Just the name of the picture often gives a communist twist. A drawing of a sleeping child, cuddling her baby bear, couldn’t be labeled “Slumber.” No propaganda there. “Too Hungry to Stay Awake” would be better, to show how people are starving in the United States. A young lady walking down the street smiling and confident isn’t “Girl on a Stroll” but “Battler for Peace.” The beauty and power of any work of art must be measured by “the degree to which it is permeated with the ideas of Communism.” This is the way, the communists say, that the masses can be directed.
The Party, in the final analysis, has an interpretation for the whole of human life. Nothing is untouched: science, psychology, sex, love, care of children, literature, history, the origin and end of life. Everything must be absorbed. Communism is a unitary, all-embracing, and absolute system.
Not only the present but also the past must be controlled. Communist writers have already reinterpreted American history, claiming that the Party is today the true inheritor of the traditions of 1776. They seek to associate themselves with such men as Paine, Jefferson, and Lincoln, whom they identify as “advanced fighters” for the ideals that the communists claim they now represent. For example, the Daily Worker on Lincoln’s Birthday in 1953 said, “Lincoln’s heritage is carried forward mainly by the working class and its Marxist party.”
In literature they seek to pervert such writers as Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, claiming, for instance, that Whitman’s love of freedom is the story of their own aims. “... poet and prophet of a people’s democracy” was the Daily Worker’s salute.
The Party conducts an annual pilgrimage to Whitman’s tomb in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey. Mother Bloor, the “old mother” of communism, made a fetish of her alleged friendship with Whitman.
Twain’s life, a Worker article asserted, was an inspiration to fight against “imperialism and war.”
Carried to its logical conclusion, this attitude creates different holidays, customs, and habits for the communists. Christmas, for example, is exploited for propaganda purposes; it is a time to send out cards for “peace,” to urge amnesty for communists in jail, to appeal for funds. It holds no religious significance for Party members. A communist America would celebrate the birth of Karl Marx rather than the birth of Christendom.
This constant saturation with communism, through Party education, literature, the press, and “culture,” has had its effect in shaping communist man. A comrade writing in Party Voice, organ of the New York State Communist Party, frankly admitted what is happening:
I have no doubt that there are comrades in our movement who have not read a single American book outside of progressive literature in many moons but who can discuss in detail the latest Soviet book or periodical from China.... we have many comrades who have been brought up on Soviet culture and who are not familiar with the cultural life of our own people.
There are some comrades who never see an American film but confine their movie-going to nothing but foreign films. There are others who see only the decline and fall of American culture but fail to see what is new and growing.
So far has the creation of communist man gone that, in some instances, Party members are embarrassed to salute the American flag. The Party Voice comrade tells how embarrassed he felt as he hesitantly saluted the flag at a Memorial Day parade. “At times I looked up and down the street and hoped, inwardly, that none of my ’left’ friends were looking at me.” So great is the erosion of patriotism that the author even poses this question: “Should Communists know the verses of the Star-Spangled Banner?”
This is how communism is working to promote an alien way of life in America. The whole story, however, is still not told. How are all these facets of Party life held together? What gives a ruthless uniformity to Party actions? We must now turn to a study of Party discipline, a system of terror that holds Party members in the grip of an unbelievable tyranny.
13 — Communist Discipline
In communist eyes the processes of education, the press, and “culture,” which we considered in the last chapter, are not enough for molding the revolutionary. Important as they are, they must be supplemented by communist discipline, a discipline that enforces uniformity, ensures Party supremacy, and files fanaticism to a sharp cutting edge.
Modern-day communism, in all its many ramifications, simply cannot be understood without a knowledge of communist discipline: how it is engendered, how it operates, how it tears out man’s soul and makes him a tool of the Party. The very core of communism is discipline. Without it communism would lose much of its momentum, terror, and striking power.
The Party’s constitution provides for disciplinary action. An elaborate “appeals” framework is provided whereby a series of “courts” is available to hear “charges,” with the National Convention being the “court” of final resort. Generally speaking, disciplinary problems are handled, on all levels of the Party, by Review and Control Commissions (often called Security Commissions). They serve as the “courts” to discipline any member who might be hostile to the Party.
These “courts” must not be confused with courts as we know them in the American judicial system. Run by hardened, old-time comrades, they are weapons of Party discipline. “Sentences” are meted out on the basis of expediency, not justice. Rules of evidence, the fair balancing of opinions, and the seeking of truth play no role. Communist discipline is a repugnant totalitarianism.
Here is the account of one victim of communist discipline. John Lautner had been a member of the Communist Party for more than twenty years. He had risen through the ranks until he was a member of the National Review Commission of the Communist Party; he headed the New York Review Commission, was security officer for the Party headquarters building, then at 35 East 12th Street, New York City. He considered himself a dedicated member of the Party.
One day in January, 1950, he was told to proceed to Cleveland, Ohio, to help in perfecting plans for the communist underground in Ohio. Upon arrival he was taken ostensibly to a Party meeting in the basement of a residence. There he was ordered to remove his clothes and for a period of several hours was subjected to the basest of indignities. He was told that he would not leave alive as six other communists, who Lautner said had “butcher knives,” “revolvers,” “rubber hoses,” and a “recording machine,” started questioning him about his knowledge of the underground, his army record, his relationship with Hungarian defectees, and his reports to federal agencies. He was accused of being an enemy agent, a spy, of hiring unreliable people to work in the Communist Party defense office, and protecting government “spies” in the Party. Actually, Lautner was innocent of these charges, and the Party’s injustice inured to the government’s benefit. Finally Lautner had the presence of mind to state that he had left at his hotel the name of one of the communist officials conducting the star-chamber proceedings. He was released and returned to New York, where he read in the Daily Worker that he had been expelled from the Party as an enemy agent.
Lautner even filed an appeal of this expulsion order but never received an answer. Several months later he came to the FBI with his story for the first time and since has testified in several legal proceedings. Such is the way communist “justice” is dispensed in the United States.
In this connection we must distinguish between the discipline that communism can exact when it is in state control, as in Russia, Hungary, and China, and when it is not. Communists in the United States cannot exact the death penalty; they cannot operate slave labor camps; they cannot deport families to isolated areas. Yet the disciplinary actions of the Communist Party, USA, as we shall see in the “purge” of Earl Browder in 1945, show unmistakably that communists in this country think and would like to act in disciplinary matters precisely as do communists behind the Iron Curtain. Moreover, the stronger the Party in this country, the more able it has been to enforce its discipline. Every Party member should realize that, by working to strengthen the Communist Party, he is thereby giving the Party greater power to discipline him in the future. Today, at most he can be expelled and vilified, unless he is subjected to the treatment given John Lautner. We can readily conjecture, however, recalling the purge trials under Stalin, what could happen here if communism ever controlled our government.
Communist discipline is a part of the everyday life of the Party. It is not something that can be developed overnight or learned exclusively from a book. It comes gradually from attending schools, reading, and doing Party work. A “conscience of responsibility,” as one old-time member explained it, is created; a feeling that, whatever your personal desires and responsibilities, the Party’s orders come first; that every task is surrounded by a Party “halo of sanctity,” thereby becoming an emergency urgently demanding instant handling; that a “guilty” feeling arises if the member relaxes for a moment or doesn’t do the job assigned by the Party “boss.”
In the communist system, discipline means conscious and voluntary submission to the will of the Party. To obey Party instructions is regarded as a high ethical duty, to be undertaken joyously and willingly as an honor and privilege, never as bondage. Not to obey is unthinkable and a matter of personal shame and Party irresponsibility. This is the terrifying danger of communist discipline—that in the name of freedom, by appealing to the most noble qualities in man, the human being is pushed into deepest tyranny.
Communist “courts” seek out those who do not “knuckle under” to communist discipline. If a mistake is made from bad judgment, a lapse of memory, or lack of knowledge, that is one thing. This can be corrected by more “education.” But if the member persists in error, that is, doesn’t follow undeviatingly the Party line, he must be “flayed without mercy.” “... an organization of real revolutionaries,” says Lenin, “will stop at nothing to rid itself of an undesirable member.”
Members may be disciplined for many reasons. One of the most serious is being a deviationist, that is, differing from the Party line. This charge has led to wholesale purges in the past, including the ousting of such leaders as Lovestone, Gitlow, Browder, and literally hundreds of lesser members.
The Party claims to be an “advanced” element, teaching the noncommunist masses the “glories” of socialism. As leaders, communists must be “in front” of the less informed yet not too far ahead to be out of sight. Just where to be at any given time is decided by the Party inner clique. Anyone disagreeing is a deviationist, guilty of either left-wing sectarianism or right-wing opportunism.
Some individuals, the communists say, may stray too far to the left. They want the Party to be more militant, to hurry up the revolution. They rush on ahead, forgetting to guide the noncommunists. That’s wrong, says the Party. Such an attitude would isolate the Party, make it an ineffectual sect. These individuals are guilty of left-wing sectarianism. They must turn around and come back.
On the other hand, many members lag behind the correct position. They disregard the Party’s role as an “advanced teacher” and allow it to work too closely with capitalism. They are right-wing opportunists, equally as guilty as left-wing sectarians. They had better rid themselves of this “capitalist complex” and catch up.
These terms sound massive. To communists, however, they are everyday expressions. Time after time in Party meetings the charge will be heard, “He’s an opportunist,” or, “He’s a left-wing sectarian.” To the communists that’s like calling a man a thief or coward.
You can well imagine how these “errors” are corrected. Disciplinary scythes can cut down anyone disliked by the leadership. If you want to get rid of a comrade, accuse him of left-wing sectarianism or right-wing opportunism. He’ll probably then be hauled into Party “court.” Disciplinary vogues sweep the Party: for a while, left-wing sectarianism becomes popular, then right-wing opportunism. After Browder’s removal in 1945 as a right-wing opportunist (also called revisionist), the style was to criticize opportunism. Since the Geneva Conference of 1955 the fashion has been to attack left-wing sectarianism.
Another serious error is chauvinism, applied to a member who supposedly thinks himself superior to others.
Any member can bring charges, no matter how silly, trivial, and stupid. That’s a communist technique: always keep members in fear. Never must a comrade become secure, complacent, or unconcerned. He must constantly be worrying about “what’s coming next.” This prevents the entrenchment of Party bureaucrats and the formation of cliques; it makes discipline easier to impose.
Perhaps, in his Party work or in his personal affairs, a member has given more attention to Mr. A than to Mr. B. If Mr. B’s feelings have been hurt, he may bring formal charges. In one instance, a group of Party comrades made plans to hold a picnic, then invited two additional comrades. The two declined, saying that by being asked at the last minute they had been slighted. Result: they planned to bring charges of chauvinism.
There are different types of chauvinism. White chauvinism, for example, means that a white comrade, through word or deed, has “slighted” or shown that he feels himself better than a Negro comrade. If the reverse is true—that a Negro member considers himself superior to a white comrade—this leads to the error of inverted white chauvinism or Negro nationalism. Then there is male chauvinism, also called male supremacism, when men comrades “look down on” the position of women. In one instance a man was accused of disapproving of his wife’s smoking. He was a male supremacist. If a woman thinks she is superior to a man, that’s commandism.
Still another cause for disciplinary action is the charge of being an informer. Ever since 1949, when FBI informants testified at the first New York Smith Act trial, communists have been terrified of informers. They go all-out to catch “spies.” Member after member, completely innocent of the Party’s charges, has been expelled. “If you have to kick ten guys out to get the right one,” a comrade explained, “that’s the way to do it.” In one instance Party officials without any authority searched the home of a member “under suspicion.” In another instance an anonymous letter was received at national headquarters charging, among other things, that a high Party official was “a big bag of wind.” The Party instantly collected typewriting samples, hoping to catch the culprit.
The Party, as part of its disciplinary program, encourages what is called self-criticism. The communists point to this technique as proof of the democratic nature of their Party. Actually, however, self-criticism plays into the hands of the ruling clique, enabling it to detect discontent and criticism of its leadership. It becomes an effective disciplinary technique to keep the membership in submission.
Members are encouraged to criticize themselves and others. A well-established Party admonition is: “Test your work against Marxist-Leninist principles. Is anything wrong? Why did the registration program fall short? Are the officers of the club doing their duties properly? Why weren’t more pamphlets sold?” The membership is expected to bewail its errors, to say, “We were wrong. Have mercy on us. We will do better.” They prostrate themselves before Party bosses. For those who don’t “confess,” there are others to point out their errors. What else could be asked?
When a comrade confesses, the communist custom is for other members to heap abuse on him, often in the most sarcastic and sneering manner. “You’re a deviationist.” “You’re a chauvinist!” The idea is to drive the member to the lowest depths of humiliation.
When Earl Browder was deposed in 1945, a national officer suggested that he be given a job scrubbing floors at national headquarters. Browder later told the Yonkers, New York, communist club, “If there had been any evidence that there existed a real need for my services in this capacity, I would gladly have given them.”
Members often work themselves into a state of frenzy, tearing apart their best friends. Sometimes self-criticism becomes contagious, with Party sections and committees confessing en masse.
Tongues are sharp, but comrades soon learn whom to criticize. To attack a fellow comrade, especially one you don’t like, is the thing to do. In attacking the club chairman the comrade had better take things a little slowly. If he is a friend of the chairman’s superior and thinks he can get the chairman’s job, then it’s proper. If not, he should be content with self-criticism. Good Party manners would say “no” to disparaging a state or national leader, unless one was assigned as a “hatchet man” for another top official. Communist criticism flows more safely downward than upward.
Criticism is encouraged—but it must be of the right kind. An organizer isn’t doing his job. To criticize him is proper; that’s constructive criticism, designed to make the Party stronger. “But this criticism,” one high official said, “must never depart from the line of the Party....”
That’s the crux: Criticism must be limited to how the Party line can best be advanced. Anything else is destructive criticism. It’s like a house full of furniture. A comrade is permitted to discuss how the furniture can be arranged, whether the blue chair should be in the front room or the bedroom. But as soon as he questions the size of the house, whether a new room should be added, or the entire house destroyed and rebuilt, well, that’s too much. The Party line must not be questioned.
Some members learn the hard way. They push criticism too far and are quickly put in place.
John was highly regarded as a club chairman. He was aggressive and a hard worker. Promotion was his reward. He was sent by the National Committee to another city as a section organizer. Soon things began to hum. He reorganized some clubs. He shifted other Party activities. He was putting his ideas to work.
Then he went one step too far. He suggested that the state organization, headed by his superior, could be improved. John should have known better. An organizer can work out new schemes to sell the Daily Worker, to recruit members, and to reshuffle clubs; in fact, that is Party initiative. But he doesn’t criticize state chairmen and, as John did in this instance, threaten to take up the matter directly with national headquarters.
John quickly became the fellow who “went up fast, down faster.” State headquarters, in a special report, severely criticized him and recommended additional Party training. The result: He was recalled and assigned to an insignificant desk job. He had to learn his lesson.
Destructive criticism may lead to factionalism, which, in Party eyes, is open rebellion. A member holds a critical opinion. Others agree and soon a faction, or group hostile to the Party line, is formed. Every resource of the Party is mobilized to destroy it.
For a show of democracy, the Party’s constitution says:
Every officer and member shall have the right to express a dissenting opinion on any matter of Party policy with respect to which a decision has been made by majority vote of the appropriate Party committee or convention, provided that such dissenting officer or member does not engage in factional or other activity which hinders or impedes the execution of such policy. [Emphasis supplied.]
In other words, in practice any criticism that “hinders” the Party line is called factionalism and is forbidden.
Often, factionalism becomes so pronounced that an entire group is expelled. The Communist Party, with its unreasonable discipline and rigid structure, is peculiarly susceptible to factionalism. There are in America today a number of Marxist factions (called splinters), each small in number and with varying degrees of hostility to the Communist Party.
Noncommunists will have difficulty in understanding the utter inhumanity of communist discipline. It is a discipline that pervades every facet of life, drives wedges between husband and wife, and separates families. The best friends today, because of a Party action, may become the bitterest enemies tomorrow.
A Party member heard that her husband, a high-ranking functionary, had just been expelled. The shock was terrific.
He claimed that he was innocent. “I didn’t do anything,” he stated. And he was right. The charges were completely false. But she refused to believe. She double-checked with Party headquarters. They said he was guilty. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Her eyes grew bitter and her mouth curled with scorn. Finally her decision was made.
“Get out of this house,” she ordered. “I don’t want you around. You’re a traitor. Now, out!”
Without hesitation she accepted the Party’s version, refusing to believe her own husband. The wedge of Party discipline had conquered. The husband was driven away from his own home and his own child. Loyalty to the Party supersedes all emotions of love and mercy and justice.
In California the parents of a young lady were Party members. Both had held high offices in their section. They objected to their daughter’s staying out with another Party member until four and five o’clock in the morning, and claimed it was injuring her health and her progress in school. The daughter’s boy friend complained to a Party functionary that he was being discriminated against because he was a Negro. The girl’s mother, a former section chairman, defended her action. The daughter then took the floor and charged her parents with chauvinism. They were expelled and the daughter then married the complainant.
The Party’s constitution provides a number of specific penalties of increasing severity, including expulsion.
The mildest Party penalty is reprimand, usually designed to assist Party members in correcting their mistakes. This may take the form of private censure, such as, “You had better be on time in the future,” or, “Your work wasn’t well organized.” Somewhat more severe is public censure, whereby through written notice or public announcement a comrade is reprimanded. In this way others know of the Party’s disapproval.
Then there is probation. This may involve a shift from one type of work to another or an assignment to special tasks. If the offender is a paid Party official, he may be demoted (for example, from a state office to a minor position) or transferred to another city. Next is suspension, usually for a specific length of time. This amounts to a temporary relief of assignments. The most severe penalty, next to expulsion, is removal from office. In such instances the comrade may be stripped of all Party assignments and demoted to being a mere rank-and-filer. This is a hard jolt, especially with the whole Party watching. These acts are object lessons to the membership. “Comrade, be careful. Don’t you do the same.” Fear plays an important role in communist discipline.
The most drastic penalty, of course, is expulsion, and thousands of case examples, even of the highest leaders, form mute evidence.
Once the communists turn on a comrade, the treatment is complete. For example:
Earl Browder, onetime General Secretary, was expelled in February, 1946, for
... developing factional activity and for betraying the principles of Marxism-Leninism and deserting to the side of the class enemy—American monopoly capital.
Sam Donchin, Associate Editor, Daily Worker, until shifted to leadership position on the Party’s Education Commission, was also expelled. The Daily Worker on March 12, 1951, in announcing his expulsion, said, “Donchin was expelled for factionalism, anti-Party activities, hostility to the line of the Party and to the Party leadership, and white chauvinism.”
The announcement continued: “Donchin tried to cover up his factionalism in the name of criticism and self-criticism in the Party. He demagogically tried to identify criticism and self-criticism in the ranks of the Party with a right to carry on factional conduct in the Party.”
Once a former member breaks with the Party and testifies or makes a public statement, he can expect a merciless campaign of vilification. On April 10, 1952, the well-known stage and screen director, Elia Kazan, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and testified that he had been in the Party for a year and a half in the 1930’s and quit because of the regimentation and thought control that had been directed at him. Two days later he took a paid advertisement in the New York Times explaining his reasons. Daily Worker writer Samuel Sillen on April 17, 1952, gave Mr. Kazan the full treatment with such vitriolic words as:
We have seen a lot of belly-crawling in this time of the toad, but nothing has quite equaled last week’s command-performance by Hollywood director Elia Kazan.... Not even in Hitler days did renegade intellectuals sink so low.... Kazan is not content with being a toad. He must also be a philosopher of toadyism.
Communist discipline, however, is not blind or without a deceitful purpose. Individuals should not be expelled impulsively but should be shown the error of their ways. Only when he is deemed “unimprovable” is a member to be ousted. For this reason offenders are often compelled to perform special “disciplinary chores” to “earn their way back,” to show through hard work, devotion, and acknowledging the supremacy of the Party that they should be readmitted to favor. In a Northern city, for example, an official in disfavor was placed in charge of arranging a mass meeting. He had to “prove” himself by doing the most menial tasks—running errands, selling tickets, recruiting ushers—he who used to be a keynoter himself. In most instances the more menial the task, the better. In Party eyes, a member who has gone through this self-abasement becomes a better comrade because of it. All thought of resistance is pounded out and he becomes a viable Party tool. He can be reprimanded, criticized, treated in a brutally unfair manner, yet he’ll keep on working. Lash him, and he’ll clench his teeth tighter. That’s the true revolutionary, in communist eyes.
The key is always acknowledging the supremacy of the Party. Hence, one of the fastest ways “back” is to acknowledge it quickly and completely.
In a Midwestern section an old-time organizer was accused of conduct detrimental to the Party. In a report read at an executive committee meeting he admitted his error. His conduct had been atrocious. Everything charged was true. He should have known better. He was ready to accept punishment. He even suggested his own removal as organizer. This attitude was exactly what the Party wanted. The state office did not relieve the organizer, though cautioning him that if his conduct were repeated, more severe action would be taken. The result: public (and mild) reprimand, not suspension or removal from office.
This explains why, in some instances, severe errors receive minor penalties, whereas small mistakes result in expulsion. The test is often not what a member did wrong but his attitude after the error was committed. If the member is willing to admit his mistake, real or fictitious, accept punishment gladly, and still maintain absolute faith in the leadership, he will probably soon be restored to favor. If he tries, however, to defend himself in the light of the evidence, he must be dealt with harshly. On one occasion a member involved in domestic difficulties replied “none of your business” to an inquiry by the Party. He wasn’t long in good standing. In Party language, he showed no “political capabilities,” meaning he was not amenable to discipline.
The Communist Party has a systematic campaign of creating hatred against the expelled member. It is not enough just to expel him; he must be vilified, blackened, and made to appear the scum of the earth.
These individuals become “spies,” “stool pigeons,” “rats,” “Trotskyites,” “renegades,” and “degenerates.” To communists, ordinary curse words have no meaning. They have a vocabulary all their own. Hence, “opportunist,” “deviationist,” and “anti-Party” are their choicest terms of defamation, of characterizing a person as being the meanest, foulest, most black-hearted derelict imaginable.
The higher in Party leadership the ousted member has risen, the greater must be the efforts to defame him. For example, Robert Wood, the Party’s onetime Eastern railroad organizer, was expelled with an explosive statement in the Daily Worker on March 23, 1951, which said:
... various violations of Party discipline, for panic in the face of the fire of the class enemy, for acts endangering the Party, for issuing instructions in the name of the Party which were unauthorized and false, for acts of white chauvinism, and for conduct unbecoming and inconsistent with his post of Party leadership.
From the campaign of vilification there arises a fantastically bitter element of communist discipline and hatred. Every man, woman, and child in the membership must be mobilized against the accused. One Party manual, written by a top leader, recommended:
1. Photograph the spy, and print his picture in the Daily Worker and in leaflets and stickers....
2. Organize systematic agitation among the workers where the spy was discovered.
3. Mobilize the children and women in the block in the part of town where the stool pigeon lives to make his life miserable; let them picket the store where his wife purchases groceries and other necessities; let the children in the street shout after him or after any member of his family that they are spies, rats, stool pigeons.
4. Chalk his home with the slogan: “So-and-So who lives here is a spy.” Let the children boycott his children or child; organize the children not to talk to his children, etc.
This represents the utter depths of depravity, hate, and inhuman venom to which the Party will descend in order to wreak vengeance on an expelled member.
An expellee must have no association with any member of the Party—even though that member be his own father, mother, wife, or husband. “Associating with the enemy” is the usual charge. This means the splitting of families, the tearing apart of friends. In one instance a woman member was expelled. Her husband was instructed to leave her and the children. When he refused, he was expelled. Another member who remained friendly was also ousted. It becomes a dizzy merry-go-round of personal spleen.
Once a communist is expelled and there is a likelihood that he might become a government witness, then the communists go to work to compile such information as is available to discourage the witness from testifying for fear of exposure or of being discredited in cross-examination by a communist lawyer. In one case a woman rose to a prominent position in the Party. When she later left the Party, the communists reportedly compiled a large file of her early indiscretions and weaknesses. Consequently, she has always been most reluctant to testify.
Communist discipline has another facet often difficult for noncommunists to understand. In some instances penalties, expulsions, and exposure are not enough; the culprit must pay with his life. Nothing less is satisfactory. The world has witnessed, both in Russia and in the satellites, highly publicized “purge” trials.
The “crime” was not opposition to the Party, lack of loyalty, or unwillingness to sacrifice everything for communism. Rather, these victims were renowned for their devotion, often having spent their entire lives in the movement. Suddenly, within days, their whole position was overturned. They were accused of trying to destroy the very thing they had labored so long to create. How does this make sense?
Communism is cannibalistic. Its servants are periodically offered as sacrifices on the communist altar. If something goes wrong, the trouble lies, in communist eyes, not in the policy decreed on high but in its human instruments. Whenever the “infallible science” of Marxism-Leninism has been incorrectly applied, disciplinary action must follow.
The purge is characteristic of the communist movement everywhere. Lenin was a firm advocate of purges and urged: “If we really succeed... in purging our Party from top to bottom, ‘without respect for persons,’ the gains for the revolution will really be enormous.”
William Z. Foster, then Chairman of the Communist Party in the United States, said:
Communist parties, in line with Lenin’s teachings, also constantly strengthen the fiber of their organization by cleansing their ranks of elements that have become confused, corrupted, worn-out, or defeated in the hard and complex struggle to build the forces of socialism in the face of a still powerful and militant capitalism.
A stocky, mustached man stood before the convention of the Communist Political Association in 1945. A few days earlier he had been the undisputed leader of communists in the United States. He was now a “renegade,” an “enemy” of the foulest proportions! Earl Browder was fighting for his Party life.
Browder’s crime was not disloyalty to the Party but obedience to a policy that, in his opinion, was in the best interests of communism. Moscow thought otherwise. Actually, Browder was a pawn of communist tactics and had to pay the penalty.
He was stripped of Party authority, accused of every conceivable Party crime—by the very subordinates who had been his most loyal supporters. He was later expelled ignominiously, becoming a target of vilification for the entire membership.
Here was a “purge trial” grimly reminiscent, except for bodily punishment, of the infamous purges under Stalin. We need not wonder what Browder’s fate might have been if communism had possessed the power of the state.
In our review of life in the Party we have seen how all communist processes are pointed to molding the revolutionary. He is the man who must carry out communist programs such as mass agitation, fronts, and infiltration, to which we now turn. If anywhere he falters, from the Party’s point of view, the communist drive for mastery is weakened.
The ousted member in most instances frees himself from the communist thought-control machine. In him lies hope for regeneration. The deepest tragedy lies in the conscious and voluntary submission, day after day, of thousands of Party members. These fanatical devotees, giving their all for the Party, represent a real danger to our way of life.