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| 16. Chapter II THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY In the preceding chapter, our concern was with the movement of world Communism, and its reflection in American Communist activity. The picture which would be given by the first chapter taken alone, however, would hardly be accurate. The American Party is something more than a loose group of front organizations, springing up to support the Soviet policy of the moment. World orientation serves to point up the real menace of Communism, but activities so directed constitute but a fraction of Communist efforts. The remain^ chapters will be concerned with the domestic organizations and activity of Communists, with suitable asides where world problems are involved, The Communist Orbit. In the general sphere of Communist activities, / | } four classes of individuals will be observed. First are Communist Party v^~ memberSj currently about 75,000 in number, with about 12,000 in the armed services. These members are enrolled in the Party according to the procedure outlined in the Constitution (see Appendix II). According to the present policy, they would normally belong to small clubs with less than one hundred members. This is a new policy, adopted ostensibly to promote greater effective- ness, but possibily to facilitate underground movement should that be necessary. In industrial regions there are shop sections or, where the plants are small, industrial sections drawn from several plants in the same industry. Above the clubs there exist city, state, and national organizations. Each club should have a chairman, secretary, educational director, press director, labor secre- tary, literature agent, and dues-membership secretary. On the higher levels, the top ruling bodies are the state or national committee, with as many as fifty-five members; the state or national board, consisting of about twelve members selected from the committee; and the state secretary or the national secretariat of four members. As noted in Appendix II, the national secre- tariat currently consists of William Z. Foster, Eugene Dennis, John Williamson, and Robert Thompson. There is also a National Review Commission, for the purpose of preserving the integrity of Communist doctrine and purging un- worthy members. The second major group may be called "fellow travelers* or "Communist sympathizers." Those terms are applied to persons who unswerving^ follow the P^rty Line through all its tortuous twists and turns. Often such persons are concealed Communists. In fact, columnists such as Woltman and Sokolsky will frequently use such terms to characterize individuals whom they know to be Communists, but could not prove to be such in a libel suit. Other terms appropriate for such individuals are "pro-Stalinist," "Party Liner, w "pro- Communist,1* "left-winger," and the like. The Communists themselves used the term "progressive," to identify such individuals. Prominent names which might be placed in the category of fellow traveler would be Lee Pressman and Len De Caux of the National C.I.O., and Harry Bridges, Louis Merrill, Micheal Quill, John Abt, Ruth Young, Herbert March, and Julius Emspak of the various C.I.O. unions. Alger Hiss of the State Department would_fit into this niche. It occasionally happens that an individual in this group is not a Party member, as one publication found to its sorrow in a libel suit brought by Jerome Davis. Nevertheless, it would be sound pojlicy to treat members of this group in the same manner as actual open Party J^r/ibie^s_,_^ince__they never~dev'i^rtre • from the Party Line. 'JZII: "l"-^^ ' |