OCR Text |
Show U. S. Communism Follows Ever-Changing Policies duet. Wobbly and A F L organiser for Samuel Gorapera in World War I. He played the foreLrn-ba , led by the Finnish federation, against the homebreda In the third Communist Com-munist convention In Chicago. When the smoke lifted, the American Amer-ican faction led by Jay Love atone, Ben Qitlow, Charles B. Ruthenberg and others had been routed. Fallowed Moscow Foster rode high, aa head of the executive committee. He followed the Moscow line without deviation, listening respectfully to the "Reps" the emissaries sent from the Kremlin to show the American bourgeoisie how' proletariat rule should be set no. The first foster-dictated effort to "bore from within" came In the By Peter Edsea ' MA Washington Correspondent The chameleon quality of American Amer-ican communism is the principal reason for three decades of war against it without a decision. -' The party's policies veer with the political winds, indicated by Moscow weather vanes. The leadership lead-ership prospers and la purged, ao- ( Third of series) cording to the Kremlin's whims. Today's Communist may be b la tan about his status; tomorrow's msv be underground, hidden from sil but his colleagues and known only by the infiltration he ia able to' manage. f The basis for much of this is to be found in the party's first 10 years, from 191 to 19J, when Moscow's captains m the field followed fol-lowed their orders to hold a line, but waged bitter internecine strife. Between 1819 when the American Amer-ican Communist party emerged m Chicago with a membership of 0.-000 0.-000 (the Communist Labor party claimed 000) and MX, operations opera-tions were entirely underground. In August. 1922, the leadership was called to a secret meeting In a wood near St Joseph, Mich, but the department of justice knew of the meeting and raided it Seised were a barrel of party papers, supposed sup-posed to have been burned but In the hands of U. S. agents before the order could be carried out Mora Furtive The party's furtiveness was then intensified. Three men Professor Pro-fessor Walackl. Polish Intellectual: Joseph Pogany, a Hungarian, and Boris Reinstein, onetime Russian-Socialist Russian-Socialist of Buffalo were sent by Moscow as the new high command. Shortly after their arrival, they were heartened by a more liberal sentiment Pres. Harding par- same year, wnen tne uommiea supported sup-ported a federated Farmer-Labor party. An effort was made to take over the Progressives in the following fol-lowing year, but "Old Bob" LaFol-lette LaFol-lette was a smarter man than they figured him. He disowned any Communist who sought to support him, forcing the leftists to go for themselves In ths national elections elec-tions Foster for president, Oitlow for vice president The results did not seem auspicious auspi-cious to ths public generally the Communists polled nly 300,000 votes against "8,000,000 for the Progressives. But the party chiefs were not unhappy. The vote had been polled la 14 states, a very respectable foot-in-the-door. At the party's 1925 convention, the Ruthenberg-Loveatone-Gitlow bloc pulled a fast one. O. L Ousev was sent from Moscow via Mexico as the Kremlin "Rep" to the U. S, and waa sympathetically listening to the American faction's case before be-fore Foster knew he was here. Gusev persuaded Stalin to make doned Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Social-ist convicted of espionage. - The Luak committee ceased to exist In New York. The raids of Atty. Gen. Palmer were repudiated. So, in 1923, the Communists came out of their holes, renaming themselves the Workers party. The membership waa then In the neighborhood neigh-borhood of 12,000, only 1000 English-specking andor American-born. American-born. To such as William Z. Foster, Fos-ter, who had been Indoctrinated on a-lMl trip to Moscow with Ella ("Mother") Bloor, this offered of-fered rich ground for conquest Foster had been successively a Bryan Democrat Socialist anar traces a political movement's first decade,' in which what happened among the party chiefs waa so involved in-volved with deception and intrigue that the great mass of the American Amer-ican people could not possibly know what it waa It waa supposed te be fighting. Tomorrow: The political growth of U. 8. communism. Lovestone and seven others were expelled and Foster became gen-' era! secretary. Lovestone and Gitlow tried to form an American Communist party free of Sovfet domination, but a bare one per cent followed them out of the old organisation. By 1939 the so-called right-wing was dead, with Lovestone and Gitlow Git-low beginning to taste the bitterness bitter-ness of disillusionment Lovestone is now an adviser to the A. F. of L. garment workers union. Gitlow has made statements against Moscow and this year was Illinois' chief investigator in a Red inquiry. There, in digest Is a story much more confusing In Its detail. It Ruthenberg the boas and Foster found himself virtually on ths sidelines. side-lines. National Policies Under Ruthenberg, ' the party began to develop a few national . policies to place alongside the ine : ported ones. International Publishers Publish-ers was established, to build up a stable of American propagandists: I Ths Negro found organisers at his I doorstep; the army, navy and national na-tional guard were infiltrated; young collegians loyal to this new politics were ordered to take military mili-tary training atudy tactics The Daily Worker, founded la Chicago with an original Investment from , Soviet funds of $35,000, was moved i to New York, together with party I headquarters, and several hundred ; thousand dollars put Into offices and a printing plant j That waa in 192T. Suddenly Ruthenberg died. Foster immediately immedi-ately moved to steal the leader-ship. leader-ship. In his book, "I Confess," Gitlow Git-low aaya the Fost elites faked a deathbed request by Ruthenberg that Loves tons be made titular head. Moat of the leaders were summoned to Moscow, where Love- stone waa made secretary. Foster was given equal status in order that he might be ready to assume control if Lovestone should be ' loath or careless about carrying i out hia orders The ticket for 192S waa Foster-1 Gitlow again. The showing waa terrible, 48,000 votes. Moscow was not amused. The leaden were called "home" again. In May, 1929, in the "throne room of the csar, both Lovestone and Foster were publicly pilloried by Stalin himself as unprincipled opportunists, weak diploma tiste. and poor servants of the new order. All mentioned In : the excoriation were told to sign It ; i aa a confession of guilt Only Foe- j ter end Max Bedacht submitted. |