Harrison George
“I would call these expressions ’delirious’,” said Lenin, referring to accusations of Left adventurism against him (April 20, 1917), “had not dozens of years of political fighting taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.” – Little Lenin Library, Vol. 9, p. 36.
SINCE I AM ASKED (albeit as a method of what Stalin calls “factional entrapment”) to express my opinion on “the position” of Vern Smith, and am given his statement of August, 1946, made to the California Security and Review Commission, on which to comment, I shall herein do so. This is difficult to do fairly, however, since his statement contains some 3,500 words, and fairness requires giving copious quotations.
However, the statement falls into three general parts; 1) An accusation against the California Communist Party leadership of unjustly expelling 17 other comrades; 2) a criticism of the so-called “coalition” policy as carried out, primarily in California, and in part, as enunciated by the national leadership; 3) an accusation of “machine” rule in the California Party, which really amounts to an accusation of a factional bureaucracy.
At the present, I shall take up the first part: Smith’s accusation of injustice in the expulsion of other comrades.
It must be remembered that it was on the basis, largely if not exclusively, of his statement, that Smith was, himself, expelled. At least his expulsion directly followed his statement, and took effect without trial. Hence, unless his first point; the injustice of the previous expulsion of other comrades, is to be taken as proven by the fact that his mere claim of injustice was instantly followed by his own expulsion, then the actual circumstances of those previous expulsions must be clarified.
With some exceptions, those expulsions were centered around the Machinist strike, which began on Oct. 29, 1945, and ended around March 12, 1946. Together with the expelled machinist comrades, the leadership holds as also against Smith, that he “supported the adventurist policies of a group of leaders (non-Communist, trade union leaders – HG) strongly influenced by the Trotskyists, whose reckless adventurism in the strike led them into collision with practically the entire labor movement, and resulted in the wrecking of a militant local union of AFL machinists in San Francisco.”
Nowhere in his statement, nor in any verbal argument I ever heard him make, did Smith support “the policies,” adventurist or otherwise, of Hook and Dillon, the elected leaders of AFL Machinist Local 68. He did not, however, as did our Party leadership, evaluate those leaders in the same manner as did the Saturday Evening Post (May 25, 1946) article, entitled “How To Scrub a Union.” While not supporting en toto “the policies” of the union leadership, Smith did, certainly, support the strike of that union. There is a considerable difference. And therefore the claim of “adventurism” must be looked into. Especially so, since Comrade Foster, attempting to defend the California leadership of the Party, declared that it was “a leftist strike.” (Rightists, of course, don’t strike; and Rightist leaders don’t permit strikes if they can help it.)
What was that strike? Was it “adventurist”? And, if so, in what particular? Did it, in fact, “collide” with “the entire labor movement”? Or only some trade union bureaucrats? What are the facts?
The strike embraced, firstly, some 13,000 machinists; about half of them members of AFL Local 68 of the International Association of Machinists, organized in San Francisco; the remainder were members of Local 1304 of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the Oakland area. It was, therefore, a highly commendable united action of AFL and CIO workers, plainly approved of in our Party’s program, and currently being declared by Comrade Foster the one thing we must have “or else... ” True, it was a craft, and not an industrial, strike. But nobody has ever argued that a strike of a single craft is, ipso facto, “adventurist.”
The word “adventurist” has customary been reserved, in Communist terminology, for actions characterized by premature attempts at seizure of state power, and without mass support.
Did, then, the 13,000 machinists of the San Francisco Bay area demand the establishment of Soviets, the immediate introduction of Socialism, or some such aim not consonant with the late Comrade Browder’s “free enterprise” system?
Not at all! On the contrary, the central strike demand of the Machinists was the central economic demand of the whole working class (then faced by reconversion loss of overtime pay), namely: “A 30 per cent raise in wage rates.” Following the CIO (Oh, of course, following the CIO!), our Party, both locally and nationally, had raised and was urging this demand. Hence, both in regard to the size of the wage demand raised, and in the AFL-CIO unity of action to win that demand, the strike was not “adventurist,” but strictly in accord with Communist Party policy.
Perhaps, however, that strike demand could be called “adventurist” if the workers concerned, the machinists, did not support that demand. Was that the case? Not at all. The entire membership of both the AFL and the CIO locals struck solidly, voting democratically to do so.
And, what is more, when the machinists struck, some 40,000 to 50,000 workers, members of other unions, both AFL and CIO, scrupulously refused to scab by crossing the machinist picket lines, and in one of the noblest demonstrations of class solidarity seen in many years, continued to respect the machinist picket lines for a whole four-and-a-half months! And this, in the face, not only of their own loss of wages during that period, but of constant efforts of AFL officials to get AFL workers to cross the CIO machinist picket lines, and of CIO officials to get CIO workers to cross AFL machinist picket lines.[11]
The charge, then, that the “adventurism” of the AFL Machinist Union leaders led to “collision with practically the entire labor movement” is false.
To whom, then, and in what respect, was the Machinist strike “adventurist”?
1. To the upper, corrupt bureaucracy of the AFL, specifically of the metal trades unions and such notorious labor fakers as Harvey Brown, mis-leader of the International Association of Machinists, whose chief charge against the leaders of Local 68 of the IAM, was that it had taken united action with the CIO local of machinists. In short, the charge made by this IAM bureaucrat against the leaders of Local 68, was that they had followed Communist Party policy calling for united action between AFL and CIO. The Party leadership, however, after a period of Party membership protest against Party leadership failure to halt strike-breaking by certain comrades in the CIO, thought up a belated “explanation,” by advancing the assertion that the leaders of Local 68 were acting under “Trotskyite influence.” This lame reply presumably was supposed to excuse breaking the strike of thousands of workers and defeating their demands on their employers. Obviously, such an excuse would be no excuse for strike-breaking, even if Trotsky himself had been an official of Local 68.
2. The Machinist strike was also “adventurist” to certain CIO leaders (who, at its very beginning, widely circulated among CIO workers their own characterization of it as being “a phony strike”), who sought to defeat the strike in every way possible, in direct conflict with the publicly declared policy of the local Communist Party, which issued a call for “all labor” to support and help win the strike.[12]
Why did that Right Opportunist faction do everything to defeat the Machinist strike?
The basic, the political reason, was that these comrades among the CIO officials had no liking for class struggle after the war years of class collaboration and their saturation with Browder’s “Teheranism.”
In the early days of the strike, one CIO official made a speech marked by its high approval of arbitration in labor disputes. Another, after publicly endorsing the then popular demand for “a thirty per cent wage raise,” began negotiation with employers for his union with a demand for a twenty-five per cent raise, and settled, without a strike (in a time when a great strike movement was just beginning), for sixteen per cent, gaining editorial applause from the capitalist press for his “labor statemanship.”
And here were those “adventurist” AFL officials of Machinist Local 68, joining together with a CIO Machinist Union leader – with whom these CIO comrades were engaged in inner-CIO factional rivalry – daring to lead a great local strike movement for thirty per cent, and getting the support, not only of the 13,000 machinists in the San Francisco Bay area, but also the solidarity of some 40,000 to 50,000 other workers, who had no Teheranist illusions to lose.
This would never do! A victory of the Machinists’ strike would dim the prestige of these CIO leaders by comparison with the machinist leaders, even prejudice their standing – and their jobs – within the CIO. So they made up a policy of their own, directly contrary to the publicly declared policy of the Party, to discredit and isolate the strike, and, objectively, to aid the employers and government to resist and defeat the strike demand.
That they carried on such a policy for month after month, publicly, and visibly to all workers, is undeniable. That they could do this for so long a period without the connivance of the Party leadership is simply incredible. And this is prima facie evidence that the Party leadership, mainly if not entirely, became in this period what it always had been potentially, a part and parcel of this Right Opportunist faction within the Party, using Party authority as a club over heads of those Party members (especially at that time the comrade machinists who were on strike), who kept demanding that “comrades” who persisted in trying to break the strike be stopped and punished.
This protest against strike-breaking was the “leftism” of these machinist comrades, and the charge invented against them, that in their protest at strike-breaking they had “supported Hook and Dillon” (Local 68 officials), and that this was “leftism,” because, in sequence, Hook and Dillon were “influenced by Trotskyism,” was a happy after-thought. There was, in fact, but one real Trotskyite among the thousands of members of Local 68 (one Julius B. Nathan), who neither had any support among the union rank and file, nor enjoyed any confidence of the union leadership. During the strike, Nathan spoke at the union meetings only a few times, and on every occasion he spoke in extremely antagonistic opposition to the leadership of Hook and Dillon.
On the other hand, the most notorious Trotskyite on the Pacific coast, Harry Lundeberg of the AFL Sailors’ Union, entered the fight against Hook and Dillon when they, ousted from union office by the capitalist courts on the petition of the red-baiting, reactionary leader of the International Association of Machinists, Harvey Brown, fought back and finally took a part of Local 68 into the CIO.
That the Party leadership, seeking to justify their own position by unjustly accusing the striking machinist comrades, dug up, months after the strike, an old copy of a Trotskyite paper, published years before the strike, in which a writer for that paper gave an account of an interview with Hook and Dillon on an entirely different matter, is obviously no evidence of “Trotskyite influence” on Hook and Dillon’s conduct during the strike, still less of such influence on the machinist comrades who were expelled on such trumped up excuse.
The People’s World published many interviews with Hook and Dillon, without those worthies being “influenced” by the Communist Party. Certain comrades who, as CIO officials, were frequently interviewed by capitalist newspapers, were never accused, on that account, by the Party leadership, of being “influenced” by the capitalist class. Such interviews establish absolutely nothing as to the political tendency of trade union officials, who, as public figures, are always being interviewed by all kinds of papers.
It may seem unbelievable that union officials who are Party members could participate in strike-breaking. But one such “comrade” not only led his union members in demonstration against machinist picket lines repeatedly, but on one occasion nearly came to blows with another Party member, Levon Mosgovian, who, as picket captain for the striking machinists, defended the picket line against such assault. The result: Mosgovian was expelled from the Party, while the CIO comrade remains in the Party – unrebuked before the proletariat which observed his strike-breaking.
True, after the strike was broken, the Party membership was informed, though the non-Party masses were never even informed, that these “CIO comrades” had “admitted their mistakes” (the “mistake” of strike-breaking!), and, according to Oleta Yates’s article in the December, 1946, issue of Political Affairs, had “proceeded to correct them (their mistakes).” But, just how a broken strike can be “corrected” by those who broke it, Comrade Yates didn’t explain.
To lend a particularly cynical touch to this artistry of class treason, the Party leadership, in its “analysis” of the Machinist strike, bethought itself of its duty of “self-criticism,” and admitted its fault. It had, so this “self-criticism” stated, been “weak.” Not in permitting strike-breaking. Oh, no! The Party leadership confessed that it had been “weak” in not having expelled, sooner than it did, the comrades who protested against the strike-breaking![13]
These are the facts about the Machinist strike in the San Francisco Bay area. They show the State and County Party leadership as not only factional, politically bankrupt, dishonest and tailist, but sectarian on a grand scale.
For by its habitual subservience to and connivance with the Right Opportunist faction of “Communist” officials in the CIO, it failed to build a United Front of labor for economic aims in 1945, and hence it could not build a “democratic coalition” between the CIO and AFL rank and file in the 1946 “crucial” state elections, for political aims.
To the membership of the AFL, the Communist Party is known as a party which supports the CIO leadership, right or wrong. Therefore, without ties of proletarian sensitivity within the AFL, the Party was so totally ignorant of what was going on in the AFL that the Oakland general strike exploded beneath its feet while the Party leadership was declaiming about “leftist adventurists” not taking the “relationship of forces” into account in the matter of general strikes.
The “leftist factionalists” and “adventurists” remain expelled, of course. And, as Vern Smith contended in the first point of his statement, without just cause. As to his position on the policy of “democratic coalitions,” I shall speak further.
[11] Author’s note: The names of certain trade union officials and of certain unions which are contracting agencies, which were included in this thesis originally, have been taken out of this published copy, because of the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Law.
That CIO officials who were, at the time, members of the Communist Party, tried to get CIO workers to cross the picket lines of striking AFL machinists, may be denied. But the machinists well know that, on their picket lines, they were confronted repeatedly by hostile demonstrations of large numbers of CIO members, brought there by their officials, who hotly demanded that the pickets be removed and the CIO members be allowed to report for work at establishments struck by machinists.
And, of course, they had “arguments” for this. They wanted these CIO workers to qualify for unemployment compensation by reporting for work – after passing the machinist picket lines. That’s what they said. But such arguments ignored the fact that workers on strike also have arguments why nobody should pass their picket lines, and on picket lines the pickets’ arguments have priority. Otherwise, any scab can find “reasons” for scabbing under any condition; he “needs the money,” etc., forgetting the basic slogan of the working class, that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” and that the first duty of every worker is to aid fellow workers who are in battle against the employing class, without regard to his own gain or convenience.
Otherwise, class solidarity becomes a mockery. And, as a matter of fact, in this machinist strike, these demonstrations by the CIO against the strikers’ picket lines could, and did, only encourage the employers to hold out; and could and did help them break the machinist strike by finally isolating the strikers from the support that they would otherwise have gotten from all other unions, officially and unitedly, as a matter of class solidarity.
All these hostile mass demonstrations against the machinist picket lines were, later, after having aided in breaking the strike, “explained” by the Party leadership as being part of a “policy,” never so explained publicly during the strike, to induce the rank and file machinists to bring pressure on their leaders to force them to alter their strike tactics. As could well have been expected from any strikers in such a situation, the rank and file of the striking machinists simply regarded such assaults on their picket lines as so much strike-breaking, and, instead of putting pressure on their own leaders, supported them as firmly as before, in repeated, secret voting in union strike meetings.
Therefore, the tactic was wrong –utterly stupid, even if the alleged ”policy” aim of getting the machinist leaders to change their strike tactics was correct. No one with any class consciousness would ever imagine that the way to get a change in strike tactics is to make physical demonstrations against picket lines by members of another union which is not striking.
The same may be said of the inexcusable conduct of one CIO leader, who declared through the capitalist press – after conferring with the employers’ association – that the employers’ wage offer to the striking machinists was very good and should be accepted. This, after the striking machinists had rejected that offer overwhelmingly by secret ballot, because the wage offer was tied up with utterly unacceptable union-busting conditions allowing the employers to reclassify the worker, and so on. Only those who know nothing of strikes and who have no class consciousness could construe such conduct as differing in any essential from strike-breaking.
[12] In my written statement to the State Secretariat of the Party on May 18, 1946, I charged that this behavior was importing factionalism into the Party. While the Party leadership, in its attacks upon “leftism,” has frequently alleged that such “leftism” is due to “petty bourgeois influence,” it conveniently forgot the teachings of Marx and Lenin which emphasize the fact that the main avenue of petty-bourgeois influence on the labor movement is through the corruption of trade union officials and their consequent Right Opportunist conduct. This opportunist corruption is even visible in the social life of those referred to here.
My statement pointed out that, for “long years” certain comrades had, as a special category or group, held themselves as exempt from party discipline, had shown contempt for the Party – through whose support they had attained and maintained position – had accepted Party policy only when it suited them, and had patronized Party officials, who, to their discredit, had almost invariably fawned upon them and, in violation of party organizational principles, never really tried to subordinate them to the Party.
These trade union comrades were “in politics,” as labor leaders in contact with “progressive” politicians, and some not so progressive, while the leaders of the Party, dazzled by the “influence” they imagined they thus indirectly exerted upon bourgeois political alignments, willingly subordinated Party policy to the requirements of this group – and thereby subjected the Party to “petty bourgeois influence.”
Hence the growing sectarian character of the Party became visible to all but those responsible for it, because ordinary workers regarded the Party as a “CIO party,” permitting the AFL leadership to convince the AFL workers – who far out-number the CIO membership in California – that the Communist Party is interested, factionally, in helping the CIO as against the AFL. More, the unorganized workers, far out-numbering both AFL and CIO – and particularly the important agricultural proletariat – are neglected by this sectarian practice. Here again, is proof that sectarianism can follow from Right Opportunism, and is no monopoly of Leftism.
This factional grouping, long visible to everybody as a grouping even when not recognized as factional in character, was never criticized by the Party leadership, individually or collectively, for any offense, error or indiscipline. My charges of Right Opportunist factionalism against it, therefore, found no place in the inner-Party bulletin of December 11, 1946, which used only my statement against the “leftism” which developed as against the CMU (Committee for Maritime Unity) settlement of June 15, 1946; a “leftism” rooted in the resentment of the Party membership at the Right Opportunist behavior of CIO comrades in the machinist strike.
My written charges of the existence, and specific offenses, of this Right Opportunist faction were never denied. Not one word of denial or refutation was ever spoken to me or – to my knowledge – printed or spoken anywhere. Facts, conclusive and well-known, supported my charges. They could not be denied. But they could be, and were, suppressed. No one of this Right Opportunist faction was ever summoned before any Party committee or disciplinary commission, tried before any Party Club, or otherwise required to refute the charges I had made in writing to the State Secretariat, censured or expelled or publicly criticized for offenses publicly committed against the machinist strike.
Instead of such disciplinary action against the Right Opportunist faction, the party leadership supported it, apologized for it, identified itself with it, attacked, harassed, persecuted and expelled those who exposed or opposed the faction. In short, the Party leadership and the Right Opportunist faction of trade union officials became one group; one faction. Only the “left,” real or imaginary, felt the wrath of official disapproval; only “leftists” were hailed before the Review Commissions, hostilely questioned, accused of every imaginable offense, slandered as “enemies of the working class,” as “moral degenerates,” “irresponsible elements,” expelled and lied about without limit.
[13] While as yet this double dealing was apparently only a confusion in policy, I tried to aid the Party in correcting it by proposing, in writing, to the State Board, on November 23, 1945:
“1. Preparations should begin at once for the calling of a united or joint conference of all trade unions, perhaps on a state scale, or at least locally, for two issues:
“a) The maintenance of take-home pay, and /or the standard of living.
“b) Federal legislation guaranteeing full employment.
“2. Immediate preliminary work must be done to organize a public opinion to support these issues.”
As written arguments for such action, I briefly specified:
“1. Only by such a move can the factional and inter-union and intra-union rows now current, be robbed of at least some of their dangers.
“2. Ill-led, ill-timed strikes can be held back.
“3. The strike movement can be organized far better, contributing to victory or at least minimizing losses.
“4. Phonies who are in the union leadership will be exposed whether they come into the conference or refuse to come in.
“5. The present misleadership of the machinist strike can be ’enveloped’ and either forced to agree to common action or suffer loss of leadership over their own members. (This was in reference to the typical AFL craft isolation policy of the Machinist officials.)
“6. Whether the Machinists’ strike, or any developing Metal Trades strike or other strike is ’win, lose or draw,’ the Party, and the CIO trade union comrades, who should initiate the preparations for such a joint conference as a continuing organ, and initiate it HONESTLY and not as a gesture will win influence and prestige, in effect, leadership over the workers.”
The fighting temper of the whole working class at that time was such as to make such a United Front, for the economic aims cited, extremely popular and highly successful. It would have served not only to win the maximum of economic demands, but would, more importantly, have served as the only sound basis for a political United Front (or “coalition”) in the then approaching 1946 elections. It would have made it next to impossible for the California AFL bureaucracy to have rejected a “coalition” (united front) of labor against Warren (for Governor) and for Robert W. Kenny.
However, such was not to be. On Dec. 15, 1945, I was called before the State Board of the Party, and in a two and a half hour meeting berated and censured by unanimous vote as being “the center of leftist opposition” and condemned on the highly fantastic charge that I had “called for a general strike” to aid the machinists, in an editorial written in the People’s World of November 17, 1945.
This was delirious nonsense, because, for one reason, no “general strike” to aid the machinists was necessary at all. Although only one craft was on strike, the metal industry was tightly tied up, since the 40,-000 or 50,000 other workers of the metal trades were solidly supporting the “adventurists.”
What I had written on Nov. 17, 1945, was an editorial against the nation-wide open shop drive then beginning, and it never even mentioned the Machinist strike. The editorial was directed against the claim by columnist Walter Lippmann, that reconversion unemployment would break reconversion strikes, and also the unions which struck. To which I replied that the unions were “gathering their forces for a general counter-offensive” and that no “really general strike movement ever failed merely because of unemployment.”
Obviously, I was not “calling” any “general strike,” but was referring to a fact, in an editorial analysis of facts; the fact that there was arising a strike “Movement” of “really general” proportions, such as, in fact, occurred, nation-wide and lasting for nearly two years. A strike movement which, in fact, also was not defeated by unemployment. Life itself has borne out the correctness of that editorial.
However, in the State Board meeting of Dec. 15, 1945, the mere juxtaposition of the word “general” and the word “strike” was made into a distorted picture. I was accused of “calling for a general strike” to “aid the Machinists.” My proposals for a United Front of labor, quoted above, were totally ignored, although the proposals were strictly in accord with Party policy. Indeed, the National Board in early December, 1945, issued a call for an identical policy, a call published in the People’s World of Dec. 13, 1945.
Instead of considering my proposals for a United Front, an orgy of angry accusations and hysterical alarm over “general strikes” held such an astonishing sway with the State Board of the Communist Party, that one could well imagine that I had, by error, wandered into a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. Although I have never had the honor of “calling a general strike,” I also was never so dishonored as I was then, listening to a leading committee of the Communist Party rail and rant against general strikes.
As a postscript to all this, history played which a cruel trick upon the leader of the San Francisco Party, Oleta Yates, in that, when writing her article for the Political Affairs of December, 1946, she polemicized against advocates of “general strikes” as “not taking into account” that hoary refuge of all opportunist apologists, “the relationship of forces.” Yet so plainly had she, herself, not taken the real relationship of forces into account that, before her article was printed and circulated in the area of all this dispute, a general strike occurred in Oakland, taking the entire Party leadership completely by surprise! The Oakland general strike was, as is known, called by the AFL unions (without any editorial assistance by me!) and without the help of the CIO unions of Oakland, which, however, responded to the situation by sending a telegram pledging their “moral support.”
Somewhere, we have heard of tailism. Nowhere have we ever heard of a more pitiable example of tailism than in the California Communist Party!