Originally published online by The Communist, the ideological magazine of the Party of Communists USA. To learn more, visit https://thecommunist.partyofcommunistsusa.net/
The Need of a Policy of Industrial Concentration
In spite of many hardships and difficulties since the Emergency Convention, we were able to make some important advances in the strengthening and building of our Party.
Under Browder the entire Party was organized primarily in 800 community clubs. Now we have approximately 3,000 clubs. In addition to 1,700 community clubs we have 309 shop, 425 industrial clubs as well as 200 professional and 200 student and youth clubs.
Our Party has 300 sections organized in 32 districts, 8 of which are new. The Party is organized in 600 cities, towns, and rural communities. During the three-year period since the Emergency Convention, our Party has grown from a membership of 52,824 to over 60,000. We now have a Party in seven Southern states. Of all the Party Districts, New York, California and Connecticut have shown the most consistent growth.
We all realize that this growth is inadequate. Not only inadequate in general, but above all in the light of the big tasks and responsibilities that our Party faces. This is why we have to examine critically all our work, determine what are the weaknesses and how to overcome them. Central to this task is the thorough examination of the results of our industrial concentration policy in order to draw the necessary lessons from this phase of our work. In this connection we can make the following section of the Main Resolution the starting point for this analysis.
For the American working class to advance to leadership of the developing people’s democratic coalition, and for the coalition itself to become a power for victory, there must be a growing and influential Communist Party.
Only a Communist Party of mass strength and influence, and functioning as an organized and inseparable part of the people’s coalition, can effectively promote the struggle for working-class leadership in the nation. Without such a Communist Party, this struggle cannot be won. In the course of daily and resolute struggle for working-class leadership in the progressive movements of the American people for peace and progress, for the defense of their vital interests, a mass Communist Party of great strength and influence must and will become a reality in the United States.
We must build our Party along these lines—politically, ideologically, and organizationally. It must be built daily in the realization of the Party’s vanguard role in the working class and among the people as a whole. It must be built, in the first place, among the basic industrial workers by a consistent, unflagging policy of concentration. The Party must be built in the struggle for its Marxist-Leninist principles and policies.
In examining the composition of our Party, the following factors must be noted: In the last three years, the industrial composition of our Party has increased only slightly. At present 51 percent of our members are industrial workers, and of these, 11 percent are at present unemployed.
At the same time, our trade-union membership in the last three years shows a decline from 46 percent to 44 percent; 28 percent belong to various C.I.O. unions; 13 1/2 percent are in the A.F. of L. and 24 percent in independent unions. Approximately 7 percent of our industrial workers are not members of any unions.
We get the following picture insofar as the basic industries are concerned: Of our employed membership, 18 1/2 percent are to be found in basic industry. Over the past three years the numerical growth of our Party in basic industry has shown no fundamental change. In the main our Party membership has remained static in such industries as steel, auto, rubber, and maritime. In some industries we have shown a slight growth, even though in some case it is unstable, as in electrical, coal mining, packing, longshore, and the building trades. In certain industries we have suffered a serious loss. In some cases this was due to a decline in production, as in shipbuilding. However, this was not the reason for the decline in the railroad and textile industries.
We must take note at this Convention that in the main industrial concentration states, with the exception of Ohio, we show a decline in membership. This is true of Illinois, Michigan, and Western Pennsylvania.
The mere presentation of this brief picture poses two questions: What is the cause of this situation, and how shall we proceed quickly to overcome it? To avoid repetition, we shall try to answer both questions simultaneously.
The central task before the Party is the fight for shifting the main base of our Party to the working class. This cannot be done unless we turn the face of the entire Party to the workers in the factories. There is already a new awareness in our entire Party of this urgent task. Every single state convention, and scores of comrades in the pre-Convention discussion, have given major attention to this question. We must transform this new awareness into deeds.
How to Apply the Concentration Policy
What is the essence of a concentration policy?
First of all, it requires a fundamental understanding of the role of the workers in the basic industries, in relation to the working class and the life of the country as a whole. It is precisely these workers employed in the huge plants by the tens of thousands who, as Lenin pointed out, become educated to understand the need for unity, collective action and solidarity by the very process of large-scale production itself. One cannot conceive of successfully building the Progressive Party, of organizing an effective fight against the Draft, or in defense of civil liberties, a successful fight against war and fascism, unless this section of the working class is fully mobilized. And, of course, one cannot speak of winning the American workers for Socialism without winning the majority of this section of the working class. It is necessary to permeate the entire Party with this consciousness.
Secondly, such a policy requires the selection of the points of concentration where a base must be secured, if we are to set in motion the entire labor movement. This means knowing which districts must be given major national attention, which industries are key and what plants are decisive. Concretely, while we must strengthen our base in all industrial states, we must above all shift our main emphasis to such states as Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan and to Western Pennsylvania. While we must strengthen the Party in all basic industries, we must particularly select for major concentration such industries as steel, auto, mining, maritime, electrical and railroad. Within these industries we must pursue a policy of concentration in key industrial towns and key plants and departments—with special consideration to the most underpaid sections of the workers, the unskilled and semiskilled. In some districts additional industries may be selected, as for instance textile in the South and New England; in Ohio rubber, in addition to steel and mining, etc.
Thirdly, the full mobilization of the Party is required to achieve the objectives of our concentration policy. Concretely, this means that all Party clubs must have a share in the responsibility for work at the concentration points. Communists in the mass organizations, trade unions, etc., should try to convince these organizations similarly to pursue a concentration policy.
Fourthly, beginning with the national and state leaderships, the entire Party must be involved in planning, guiding, and assuming systematic control and check-up of concentration objectives. All political and organizational problems must be discussed and reviewed from the standpoint of how to realize them in concentration industries. Systematic discussion of the problems in concentration industries must be organized in the top political bodies of the Party. Our leadership must be unsparing in the allocation of capable forces, finances, literature, and other material assistance.
Have we said some of these things before? We have. In fact, at our Emergency Convention three years ago the need for applying a consistent concentration policy was placed as a central objective. Why is it that we did not realize all of the objectives set for ourselves nationally and in the states?
It is not due to the fact that we did not select the key states, industries, shops and towns. In fact, some of our most capable comrades were assigned to these key districts, national coordinators were assigned to key industries, and many leading returned veterans were sent into a number of industrial towns.
We must frankly say that the failure to secure adequate results in our concentration work in the last three years is due, in the main, to an underestimation in practice of the vanguard role of the Party. In practice we concerned ourselves much more with specific policy and tactical questions of the unions, of relationship to top bodies, rather than to questions of building a base below to insure correct policies and tactics. What was incorrect? The separation of the building of the Party from the solution of questions of policy! What must not be forgotten is that it is not enough to have a correct policy in the industries, but in addition the organized strength of the Party must be thrown into the key points of concentration. From now on a drastic change must be made. Questions of policy and tactical line must always be related to the forces required to carry out the policy. This will demand a systematic and constant political check-up of our strength in the concentration areas: first, by the political bodies of the Party; and, secondly, through greater coordination of all departments and, most important, a fusion of the work of trade-union and organizational personnel.
The realization of the objectives of our concentration policy demands:
1. Developing and testing in life a correct policy for each industry.
2. Developing the united front from below to insure the carrying through of such a policy.
3. Drawing constant lessons from the experiences of the workers in the course of their struggles, thus helping to develop their class consciousness.
4. Systematically building the Party, by bringing into its ranks the most militant and advanced workers.
In the period immediately after this Convention the national and state leadership of our Party must work out the specific tasks of concentration which are to be carried out between now and the end of the year, and which should be checked at regular intervals by leading political bodies—a procedure which must be regularized and made a permanent feature of our work. Among these tasks, in addition to those mentioned, should be the following:
1. To review and allocate additional forces to provide leadership to work in the concentration industries.
2. To convince a selected number of comrades now employed in light industries, and from among white-collar and professional workers, veterans, and students—men and women—to secure work in basic industry.
3. To seek to influence key national groups, whose members are employed in concentration points, to direct their main emphasis to these industries.
4. To ensure the more effective utilization of the Daily Worker and the Worker in the concentration industries. In this connection, we must guarantee that the Daily Worker and the Worker secure and print material reflecting problems in these industries, and that the most consistent effort be made to .increase their circulation.
5. To improve the mass propaganda work of the Party in these industries through the medium of leaflets, pamphlets, and shop gate meetings. Especially important is the use of our numerous pamphlets for mass sale and distribution.
6. To institute a consistent policy of training and developing forces at the concentration points through political discussions, lectures, study groups, and schools.
The Party Club and Concentration
If we are to achieve these objectives, our attention has to be turned first of all to the Party clubs, and particularly to the shop and industrial clubs.
These clubs constitute the link between the Party and the basic industrial workers. It is through them that we shall be able to mobilize the workers to resist the drive of monopoly capitalism against their living standards and their trade unions, to resist the drive toward war and fascism. This means that a correct policy of concentration requires that the entire leadership concern itself with the problem of improving qualitatively the work of the shop and industrial clubs in general, and of the individual members in particular.
If these clubs are to be able to play their rightful role, the entire level of our theoretical and political work has to be raised. If these clubs are to reflect in the shops and industries the vanguard role of the Party, we must assist them to become the policy-making bodies within the shops and industries, firmly grounded in the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. It is only in the struggle to realize such an objective that the clubs and individual members will be able to play the leading role in the development of the united front on a departmental, shop and industry level. Through such methods these clubs will be able to work with, and give leadership to, broad sections o£ the workers in the struggle for the defense of their economic needs and to spur the workers to independent political action and class consciousness. More and more workers will thus come to realize the class nature and role of the state, the crisis in the two-party system, the harmful role of Social-Democracy and the reformist trade-union bureaucrats, the need for becoming fully involved in the development of the Progressive Party, etc.
Our Party must take full advantage of every opportunity in the day-to-day struggles to champion and advance the fundamental interests of our class, thus demonstrating that:
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”[1]
Current developments in the labor movement indicate the readiness of the workers for political as well as economic struggle. For example, there is the recent gathering of 500 activists, including presidents and members of Executive Boards of UA.W. locals, which endorsed Wallace and the Progressive Party. Despite the position of the John L. Lewis leadership, important groups of the miners are rallying to Wallace. In the steel industry significant changes are already taking place as the steel workers help to put the new party on the ballot. In Gary, thousands of steel workers turned out to hear Wallace.
Our Party must help to develop further this new initiative, and boldly promote united struggles to speed all positive developments which can bring about a new relationship of forces among the workers; we must build our Party as a force that can help bring about this change in the shortest time.
While we must struggle for this Marxist-Leninist concept of the role of the Party shop club, unfortunately only 25 percent of our industrial members are in shop and industrial clubs. While we have successfully established shop clubs in many of the large plants, there are still too many decisive plants where we have no shop clubs. Even in some of the large plants where we have established shop clubs, we find that in some of the key departments we are still isolated from the workers. The industrial clubs, which were established in most places to serve as a form of organization transitional to the establishment of shop clubs, have instead become a frozen form of organization. There is a reluctance in too many places to release comrades who are now attached to community clubs, but who rightfully belong in shop branches, the argument being given that this would weaken the community club. While we appreciate the needs of, and the problems faced by, our community clubs, once our basic concentration policy becomes clear; we should overcome all hesitations to shifting every comrade who should be in it to a shop club. At the same time, we must find the methods whereby the comrades in the shop clubs can play an important role in the struggles of the communities in which they live.
Unfortunately, due to unclarity on the role of the shop clubs and inadequate attention to them, we find that many have a tendency to concern themselves almost exclusively with trade union questions—and this, on a trade-union level—failing to grasp their role of vanguard political organization. Under such conditions, harmful tendencies develop; expressed in a reliance on the spontaneity of the workers, a failure to promote the class consciousness of the workers, and an inadequate building of our press. All this results in a situation in which our Party in many instances tail-ends behind the workers.
An Example of Correct Work
Let me give an example of the correct work of an individual Communist and his club, whose very fruitful experiences are worthy of study by this Convention:
I want to relate the experiences of Nick Migas, a steel worker from Indiana Harbor, a member of the National Committee of our Party.
Nick works in a plant employing 10,000 workers. Because of his role and leadership in the fight for the defense of the workers’ needs in his department, he was elected as the Department Grievance Committeeman, in spite of the most vicious Red-baiting threats, and intimidation by the leadership of this Right-wing union.
Comrade Nick accepted the challenge in true Communist fashion. He attends his Party club meetings, he discusses his problems at the club meetings, and the entire club works out collectively how he and other members can conduct a more effective struggle in the interests of the workers. Through his effort, together with that of other progressives in his local union, and despite many obstacles and difficulties, thirteen out of fifteen progressives, including Nick, were elected to the local’s Executive Committee. Nick and other progressives while defending the economic interests of the workers, helped also to create a Wallace Committee which hundreds of workers from the plant joined.
During the recent round of wage struggles the international leadership of the steelworkers’ union said that it was impossible to obtain wage increases in 1948. But Nick Migas, by applying a correct policy of the united front from below, raised this issue in his local and was elected with other progressives to his international union convention. You all know what happened at that convention and of the brave and honorable role that Nick played. After the convention, the workers in basic steel were granted wage increases. In all modesty we can say that Nick and his colleagues played no small role in winning an increase in wages of $450,000 a day for the workers in basic steel. This means an annual increase of $135,000,000. No wonder that the big trusts hate the Communists! Just imagine what it would mean for the American working class and our Party if in one hundred key plants in the country, we could train our shop clubs and individual members to become Nick Migases. This can be done! It must be done! Therefore, we must undertake in all seriousness to strengthen existing shop clubs and build new ones in the light of this example. There are undoubtedly other examples, and I hope that the comrades will relate them in the discussion.