Barmine: Communists support Roosevelt to push own future program
Democrats warned to fear subversive groups bearing votes – for cost will be heavy
By Alexander Barmine
EDITOR’S NOTE: Alexander Barmine, 44, fought in the Russian Army during the last war, and graduated from the Soviet General Staff College in 1923 as brigadier general. As a foreign trade office representative, he subsequently saw dictatorships supplant democracies in Europe, Asia and Africa. In 1933-34, he was president of Auto-Moto-Export the Soviet Union’s central trust for exporting all products of its auto, aviation and armament industries. While serving as charge d’affaires in Athens in 1937, he broke with the Soviet regime. resigned and found refuge in Paris. He came to the United States in 1940 and worked in a metal factory, entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1942 and subsequently became an American citizen. An article by him on “The New Communist Conspiracy” appears in the current Reader’s Digest.
New York –
**Despite President Roosevelt’s declaration that he does not welcome Communist support, the Communist leaders are continuing to back him for a fourth term in order to advance their long-range plans.
In his speech of Jan. 20 last, Earl Browder, Communist leader, complained:
The American people ae so ill-prepared for any deep-going change in the direction of socialism…
Browder meant ill-prepared for the Russian brand of socialism. He recognized that new means must be found for edging the American people into a state better prepared for totalitarian trends. The “indispensable man” idea – the permanent or semi-permanent leader idea – was made to order for the furtherance of their totalitarian aims.
Their next objective, ambitious though it may seem now, is the capture of the machinery of the Democratic Party.
Strategy described
They are extremely active among Americans of foreign extraction. Through Communist-influenced foreign language papers, they hammer home the idea that anyone exercising his right to vote against the party in power is disrupting American wartime unity.
Capture by a small group of camouflaged Communists of the American Labor Party, representing half a million New York State votes, was a successful test of strength and technique. In the same way they have captured many CIO unions. These captures were essentially tryouts.
Through their ally, Sidney Hillman, the Communists are delivering these captured. votes to the Democratic Party. But the Democrats should beware of this “gift.” The ultimate cost will be heavy.
PAC intends to stay
At first, the CIO Political Action Committee declared that its only purpose was to get out votes for this election, but Sidney Hillman has now announced that the Political Action Committee will be maintained after the elections.
With the key positions in the Political Action Committee occupied by Communists and fellow travelers, there has been established what may become a balance of power in the Democratic Party. If this balance of power can be established and maintained, the Democratic Party will be headed for oblivion or ultimate totalitarian domination.
Since January 1944, the Communists have proclaimed themselves to be enthusiastic supporters of democracy, capitalism and free enterprise, just as in June 1941, they became overnight “patriotic Americans.”
Browder quoted
In his Jan. 10 speech, Browder said:
We may compromise and do, on a hundred other questions, including the basic one of postponing all radical proposals for changing the social and economic system.
Postponing until when? Browder did not say. But Stalin has said. In his Foundations of Leninism, he wrote:
A revolutionist may sponsor a reform because he sees in it a means for linking up constitutional action, because he feels he can make use of it as a screen behind which he can strengthen his clandestine work, whose aim is to educate and prepare the masses for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Stalin’s advice cited
In a speech to the Comintern’s American Commission on May 6, 1929, Stalin said:
The American Communist Party is one of the few Communist parties in the world upon which history has laid tasks of a decisive character from the point of view of the world revolutionary movement… when a revolutionary crisis develops in America, that will be the beginning of the end of world capitalism as a whole. It is essential that the American Communist Party should be capable of meeting that historical moment fully prepared… every effort and every means must be employed in preparing for that, comrades.
In the light of this, it becomes clear that by “postponement” Browder meant until the Communists in America have got enough power to again come out into the open or “until a crisis develops in America.”
‘They stoop to conquer’
The Communists know they are certain to encounter desperate opposition when Americans awaken to the fact that their liberties are being threatened. That is why the Communists are stooping to conquer the respectable old Democratic Party, which they detest as thoroughly as they do the Republican Party.
The plot may sound fantastic to the American voter who takes as a matter of course his political liberty and his right to freedom to vote under a two-party system. But the program is neither fantastic nor impractical to the totalitarian planners.
Europe offers too many examples of what happened to democracies which were contemptuous of warnings such as are now being sounded in America. To ignore them is to flirt with disaster.