Communists ask new name
Browder urges wide discussion on change
New York (UP) –
Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party, recommended last night that the organization at its May convention delete the word “party” from its name, but continue under a title “indicating its character as a communist association for political education.”
The recommendation was in a report by Browder to a meeting of the national committee, which unanimously approved the proposal and others involving policy and party organization changes.
Browder asked that the proposed name change “be thrown open for wide discussion, in which the general public is invited to participate,” before the May convention.
Challenge national policy
He suggested a name:
…more exactly representing its [the party’s] role as a part of a larger unity in the nation, not seeking any partisan advancement – a name, for example, like “American Communist Political Association.”
The committee, which concluded a three-day session today, issued a statement warning that the “Win-the-War” policies of the nation will be challenged in the coming national election.
The statement said:
A rejection by the people of all defeatist attacks on the President’s and the nation’s war policy is an inseparable part of the successful and speedy victorious conclusion of the war. The national election of 1944 is as much a test of the people’s support of the war as was the election of 1864.
Big Three conferences lauded
The statement said it was evident that present political issues “will be decided within the form of the two-party system traditional in our country” and said the party’s contribution in the election:
… will be to aid the struggle for the unity of the people in support of the nation’s war policies, without partisan or class advantages.
The committee lauded the Moscow, Tehran and Cairo agreements and described them as “a program to banish the specter of civil wars and war between nations for several generations,” but warned that the war “is not yet won. The really decisive fighting lies ahead.”