How Stands the Party?

COMMUNISTS How Stands the Party?

In 1948, when Whittaker Chambers began to tell in public his story about Alger Hiss, he called his testimony "an act of war." Since its foundation in 1919, the American Communist Party has, in fact, been at war with America, but during most of its existence, the party was allowed to grow and do its work of conspiracy and infiltration with relative impunity; between 1933 and the end of World War II, it was, in fact, often coddled and encouraged. The Hiss case was a turning point. Since 1948, hardly a week has gone by without some bulletin about the battle--a battle which, in a democracy, must be fought slowly and patiently in the courts, in police archives, in the minds of men. What has the U.S. war against the U.S. Communists accomplished so far? The visible party is in worse shape today than it has been in 30 years. Items: P:Virtually the entire known leadership is in trouble with the law. Eleven members of the twelve-man national committee were convicted in 1949, at the marathon trial before Judge Medina, of conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government. Of the eleven, eight are in jail; three jumped bail and are still fugitives. The party's nominal boss, William Z. Foster, 71, is under indictment. Last year 21 members of the Communist second team were indicted, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; 13 of them are now on trial in New York City. Altogether, 85 key Communists have been indicted since 1948 under the Smith Act; in the last six years, 88 alien Communists have been deported.

P:Open membership is down to less than 30,000 compared with some 90,000 (including the Young Communist League) in 1938, some 54,000 in 1950.

P:Finances are strained. The Daily Worker, long in difficulties, this month pub-llished a particularly desperate-sounding appeal for money, last week announced that it got results (see PRESS). Organizations which helped finance the party (e.g., the International Workers Order, an insurance concern headed by Artist Rockwell Kent) are being put out of business.

P:Nearly 150 Communist fronts have lost most of their usefulness, having been labeled subversive by the Government.

P:A decade ago the Communists had heavily penetrated unions representing 20% of organized labor; today, Communists remain strong in unions representing only 2% of organized labor (but some of the unions are important).

P:The invisible party has also suffered some setbacks. The convictions of Alger Hiss, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell, Ethel & Julius Rosenberg have hampered Red espionage operations, although it is impossible to know whether the mainspring of the Red spy apparatus has been broken.

The Party's Mood. The party has always existed in a thick conspiratorial atmosphere, but since 1948 it has become heavily defensive. Keeping of member ship records has been forbidden, and in the last four years no party cards have been issued. Party records have been destroyed or hidden, public meetings held to a mini mum; use of the telephone and the mails is sharply restricted.

Members are instructed to hold cell meetings in cars or restaurants, no longer in private homes. The Communists are somewhat demoralized by recent dis closures of undercover Government agents in their ranks; every "ex-Red" who turns out to be a Government man increases the suspicion that party members have long borne for one another.

The remaining "open" members of the Communist Party are organized, according to J. Edgar Hoover, "in a very elaborate process of Communist clubs, directed by some 30 district headquarters located in strategic areas throughout the U.S. . . .

They extend, with complex ramifications, to literally hundreds of state, county, city section and branch organizations down to the very roots of American society." The Shift Underground. Far more important than the open party is the underground. This has always been so, but is especially true since the Government's heavy attacks on the open party. Of the people who seem to have left the party in recent years, it is estimated that one-third have actually gone underground; present underground membership is estimated to be at least 10,000. The party began special preparations to submerge in 1948. One John Lautner, a former Communist who was expelled in 1950, has testified that he was ordered to draw up an elaborate system for underground operations should the party be outlawed. Lautner drew up a familiar but effective scheme in which underground members were organized in cells of three, with contacts so arranged that each member would know only the members of his own cell and three other members. New identities for -party leaders were created, and it was suggested that party leaders buy and operate small suburban stores. Lautner was asked to draw up a list of 20 trustworthy non-Communists who would each hold $20,000 for party expenses.

The main objectives of Communist underground work in the U.S. are 1) infiltration of industry and military establishments for wartime sabotage; 2) infiltrating nonCommunist, and even right-wing, political, social and civic groups.

Analyzing last November's elections, the New York State Committee of the Communist Party concluded that the Communists had made a serious mistake in concentrating their activities in "left-led and progressive" unions instead of being "active" in (i.e., infiltrating) "right-led labor and people's organizations." A recent handbook for party workers on how to build up a new "united front" says: "We must be ready to join movements and actions initiated by others . . . We must not attempt to include our full program on every issue . . . We must not hog the leadership . . .

We must ... be flexible ..." The New Fronts. Even while they were being harassed, the Communists managed to create scores of'new front organizations not yet listed by the Justice Department. The two main lines are 1) peace, e.g., anything designed to appease Russia, harm NATO and divide the U.S. from its allies; 2) civil liberties, e.g., protest against "McCarthyism." Thousands of liberals and intellectuals are still unable to distinguish between an attack that calls an innocent man a Communist and an attack that calls a Communist a Communist.

Among the newer fronts: the National Committee to Secure Justice for the Rosenbergs, the Citizens' Emergency Defense Conference (for the repeal of the Smith Act), the Committee for Peaceful Alternatives to the Atlantic Pact, the National Labor Conference for Peace, etc.

Communism, wrote the Dutch daily Trouw, has as its ally not only "the fifth column, embodied in the Communist parties devoted to Moscow [but] a sixth column of moral simpletons, ministers, artists and professors who are against Communism but who are also against 'America,' and who walk into every trap, no matter how simple, set up by Moscow." The sixth column has been diminished but not destroyed. The Communist Party seems so weakened today that many Americans have concluded that a pitiful bunch of jailed leaders, with their impoverished newspaper, cannot possibly constitute much of a danger to the U.S.

J. Edgar Hoover says: "The American Communist Party is just as vicious as it ever was." The party will probably not revive as an organization unless and until some major national setback or division causes another great wave of doubt to weaken America's faith in itself and in its way of living. But the party still can, through its fronts and dupes, sow doubt, in smaller but dangerous doses, about U.S. policies and principles. The question today is no longer whether to fight Communism--Americans have made up their minds about that--but how to fight it. The best hope of the party today is that the U.S. will be guided by a kind of empty anti-Communism which misunderstands the enemy ("Marxism is not so bad; it's just Stalinism that's dangerous"), or underestimates him ("The only way to fight Communism is to feed the hungry"), or divides the U.S. from its allies, or denies, in the name of democracy, democracy's right to protect itself. The party can no longer sell Americans on Communism as a faith, but it can still promote weakness, confusion and lack of faith.

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