Waldman: Communist menace hides behind claim of numerical weakness
Movement dropped party identification rather than expose itself by registration
By Louis Waldman, written for the Scripps-Howard newspapers
EDITOR’S NOTE: Louis Waldman, for many years a leader in the Socialist movement, was one of the Socialist assemblymen expelled from the New York Legislature after the last war despite the backing of such eminent Americans as former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Born in the Ukraine in 1892, he came to America in 1909, received an engineering degree at Cooper Union and later a law degree at New York University. He was New York state chairman of the Socialist Party and twice its candidate for the New York governorship. After leaving the Socialist Party, he helped found the American Labor Party. Attorney for labor unions, Mr. Waldman recently published his autobiography, Labor Lawyer.
New York –
“The Bolshevik bogey is a creation of Dr. Goebbels,” Earl Browder scoffs, assuring us that the American Communist Party has been dissolved and that the Communists no longer advocate revolutionary socialism – that, in fact, their influence is so slight that they cannot be considered a menace. Besides, they now lend their influence to the furtherance of “free enterprise.”
Why this sudden conversion and why the indulgence in self-ridicule? Well, to prove that the Communist issue in this campaign is spurious.
It has become customary, and even fashionable, in some liberal and labor circles, to denounce any criticism of totalitarian personalities and tendencies as “Red-baiting.” Further, ‘the idea that such an anti-democratic organization as the “numerically small” Communist Party can constitute a threat is laughed at. And to expose as Communist-controlled the various fronts through which they extend their influence, is damned as “playing into the hands of the reactionaries.”
Fraud on people
In my opinion, the question of the position and power of the Communists in America today is one of public welfare, not a question of partisan politics.
No greater fraud has ever been perpetrated on the American people than that of selling them the idea that the number of Communists is so small and their influence so slight as to be insignificant.
As evidence supporting their confession of weakness, the Communists and their apologists frequently point to the fact that in the New York State elections in 1942, their candidate for governor, Israel Amter, failed to get the 50,000 votes required by law to keep the name of the party on the ballot.
Feared registration
Is this portrait true end realistic? In 1938, Amter, as Communist candidate for Congressman-at-large, received well over 100,000 votes in the state. In 1941, the Communist, Peter Cacchione, was elected councilman from BrookIyn. His vote in that single borough was large enough to give the party legal standing were that vote recorded for their candidate for governor.
But they did not want to continue as an independent political party because that would have meant that the Communists, or, at least some of them, would have had to register. Registration leaves a record, and they want no record. Their identities were now to be concealed in order to hide their penetration into trade unions, into government, into high bureaucratic positions, into the American Labor Party, into the school system and into the various front organizations, including the CIO-Political Action Committee.
The Communist Political Association prefers to be the holding company of its many political, cultural and fraternal subsidiaries. By interlocking directorates and management arrangements through so-called “research” and other services, the holding company can wield control and shape policy, without tipping its hand.
Public entitled to facts
The American public is entitled, to know the facts about the Communist holding company, and the fronts created to attain power.
And is its influence insignificant when in the largest city in the country, the Communists control nearly one-fifth of the members of the city council?
In spite of Sidney Hillman’s denials, the Communists control the American Labor Party, which polled over 400,000 votes in New York State. Two hundred trade union leaders and liberals who know the makeup of this party because they were formerly in control of it, in a statement on March 29 last, declared:
It appears quite evident that the Browder-Marcantonio-Hillman vote in the primary equals the full Communist strength polled in former elections… The Communists have feverishly sought a new party front. With the aid of Mr. Hillman, they have it now in the captured American Labor Party. It is now the Communist-Labor Party.
Many unions captured
Many labor unions, national in scope, have been captured by the Communists, and they dominate a large number of locals within international unions not under their control.
The actual number of members of the Communist Party is no criterion of their future power. When the civil war began in Spain in 1936, there were far fewer Communists there than in the United States in 1944. But in one year of crisis, the Communists gained dominance over all the other parties in the Loyalist government. The tactic through which they achieved this power was the popular front.
That is not likely to happen in the United States – not yet – because our democratic traditions, our love of freedom, are too deeply rooted. But complacency has its price. The infiltration of Communists into our trade unions and into political and cultural organizations brings in its train an acceptance of a totalitarian way of thinking that is more alarming than their numerical growth.
Dangerous trends defended
We are urged to accept as “inevitable” certain trends and tendencies which, in the view of many honest liberals, are a threat to our American democracy and to our fundamental values:
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The contempt for the parliamentary process of social change; the attack by impatient liberals on our “reactionary” Congress – elected by the people.
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The easy acceptance of the “leadership principle” in all our institutions.
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The alarming increase of government by executive order, by decree and directive.
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The trend toward trial by administrative tribunals.
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The vesting of wider and wider discretionary powers in administrative agencies and bureaus.
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The gradual but continuing entrenchment of a bureaucratic elite heading an all-powerful state.
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The complacency of liberals toward the use of the “emergency” legislative device, the appeal to panic, to fear, as a means of inducing acceptance of emergency measures.
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The mislabeling of political and intellectual wares in the public marketplace of ideas: concealment. behind “democratic fronts,” of ideas and groups that are in essence totalitarian.
Threaten political setup
These trends, accelerated by the war, create a social “climate” alien to democracy in which totalitarian policies, tactics and organizations get themselves accepted and defended. Unless they are recognized for what they are, and checked or reversed, they will come to dominate the American political scene.
Domestic affairs are inseparable from foreign affairs. American Communists are interested mainly in foreign affairs. Their primary concern is not to fight for the interests of American labor, but for the national interests of Russia. The Communists hope that they can use their influence here for a more pro-Soviet foreign policy.