The truth about the Commies –
Communists scornful of free elections and American democracy
But they suddenly fall in love with U.S. institutions to reelect Roosevelt
By Frederick Woltman, Scripps-Howard staff writer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a series of articles describing how American Communists, by utilizing their technique of infiltration, have burrowed into American unions, kidnaped the American Labor Party in New York, dominated the CIO Political Action Committee and made strong inroads into the New Deal administration.
Washington –
Scorn of free elections, contempt for American democracy and a cynical tolerance for Fascism, when expedient, have marked the serpentine history of the Communists whose American führer, Earl Browder, is throwing his party behind Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee and the fourth-term campaign.
For the purpose of reelecting President Roosevelt, the Browderites have suddenly fallen in love with America’s institutions – or so they say. It wasn’t always so.
Last May 20, Browder, whose four-year federal prison sentence had been commuted by President Roosevelt after 14 months, predicted that Mr. Roosevelt’s retirement at the end of three terms “would be a disaster for our country.”
Constitution too rigid
He deplored “our rigid Constitution” which requires elections “at set intervals.” A presidential election this year, he warned, “would put a dangerous strain on the national unity.” Nevertheless, he manfully surrendered to the fact of free elections and pitched in.
In 1936, however, with the New Deal at its zenith, he yearned not in Roosevelt but for revolution. Then he urged that:
For the workers to win a real democracy for themselves they must organize the dictatorship of the proletariat against the capitalists. Just as the capitalists enjoy democracy among themselves by suppressing the toilers, so can the latter enjoy democracy only by suppressing the capitalist class.
In “this land of bourgeois democracy,” said Browder then, the “ruling class” has “openly declared” it will “abolish all civil liberties and establish a Fascist dictatorship.” He added: “Under the Roosevelt administration, big strides in this direction were taken.”
USSR true ‘democracy’
To Browder then there was no difference between “the cold mask of Hoover… and the professional smile of Roosevelt.”
The Browder party’s three-time presidential candidate, William Z. Foster, let the cat out of the bag less than a year ago. In the Nov. 9, 1943 Daily Worker (Earl Browder, editor), Foster revealed the Communists’ true opinion of America. He said:
The USSR… has always been a democracy, the most advanced one anywhere. The Socialist democracy of the Soviet Union operates upon an altogether higher plane than that of any capitalist country.
Now the Browder brigade is claiming the respectful attention of America’s voters on the grounds the Communists have always been in the forefront of the resistance to fascism.
They hide the fact that in Europe, while the Fascists were pushing into power, the Communists haggled over questions of party regularity while, at the same time, resisting cooperation with sincerely pro-democratic and anti-Fascist parties, lest their own pristine red garments be soiled.
Condoned Italian split
In Italy, as Mussolini neared premiership, the fourth Moscow Congress of the Communist International in December 1922 spoke approvingly of the split which divided the Italian Communist from the democratic parties and helped bewilder the Italian people:
The split… was an absolute necessity… we do not regret the split… because the young, weak Communist Party of Italy has, nevertheless, saved the honor of the revolutionary class.
Their honor untarnished, Mussolini marched to power.
In Germany, with the experience of Italy behind them, the Communists showed even less concern over the threat of Hitler and the rising Nazi Party. They regarded the anti-Nazi Social Democrats as the greater menace.
Aided Hitler’s rise
“The task of the Communist Party of Germany,” the Comintern ordered on Dec. 1, 1932 (less than 60 days before Hitler took power), “remains as before – to direct the chief blow, at the present stage, against Social Democracy.”
At the same time, in his book, Toward Soviet America, William Z. Foster expressed the current Communist denial of any difference between Hitlerism and Democracy: “The Reichstag is only a democratic sham to hide the almost naked Fascist dictatorship.”
He added:
All the capitalist “democracies,” the United States included, are only the dictatorships of the bourgeoisie, marked with hypocritical democratic pretenses.
Policies changed suddenly
After the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis became a threat to Russia in 1936, the Communist parties began to talk about “preserving the democracies.” No one screamed louder for their country to stand up against Germany than the French Communists.
They supported the general mobilization as war threatened and among those called up was Maurice Thorez, general-secretary of the Communist Party and the Earl Browder of France. Appearing in uniform before the Chamber of Deputies, he backed France’s first war moves.
Thereafter, Russia’s non-aggression pact with Germany became public. The Communists everywhere turned anti-war. Thorez deserted. His party demanded that France accept Hitler’s terms.
Thorez fled to Moscow. Last month, Gen. Charles de Gaulle refused him readmittance to French soil.