Part 4 — LIFE IN THE PARTY (continued 2)

Once a former member breaks with the Party and testifies or makes a public statement, he can expect a merciless campaign of vilification. On April 10, 1952, the well-known stage and screen director, Elia Kazan, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and testified that he had been in the Party for a year and a half in the 1930’s and quit because of the regimentation and thought control that had been directed at him. Two days later he took a paid advertisement in the New York Times explaining his reasons. Daily Worker writer Samuel Sillen on April 17, 1952, gave Mr. Kazan the full treatment with such vitriolic words as:

We have seen a lot of belly-crawling in this time of the toad, but nothing has quite equaled last week’s command-performance by Hollywood director Elia Kazan.... Not even in Hitler days did renegade intellectuals sink so low.... Kazan is not content with being a toad. He must also be a philosopher of toadyism.

Communist discipline, however, is not blind or without a deceitful purpose. Individuals should not be expelled impulsively but should be shown the error of their ways. Only when he is deemed “unimprovable” is a member to be ousted. For this reason offenders are often compelled to perform special “disciplinary chores” to “earn their way back,” to show through hard work, devotion, and acknowledging the supremacy of the Party that they should be readmitted to favor. In a Northern city, for example, an official in disfavor was placed in charge of arranging a mass meeting. He had to “prove” himself by doing the most menial tasks—running errands, selling tickets, recruiting ushers—he who used to be a keynoter himself. In most instances the more menial the task, the better. In Party eyes, a member who has gone through this self-abasement becomes a better comrade because of it. All thought of resistance is pounded out and he becomes a viable Party tool. He can be reprimanded, criticized, treated in a brutally unfair manner, yet he’ll keep on working. Lash him, and he’ll clench his teeth tighter. That’s the true revolutionary, in communist eyes.

The key is always acknowledging the supremacy of the Party. Hence, one of the fastest ways “back” is to acknowledge it quickly and completely.

In a Midwestern section an old-time organizer was accused of conduct detrimental to the Party. In a report read at an executive committee meeting he admitted his error. His conduct had been atrocious. Everything charged was true. He should have known better. He was ready to accept punishment. He even suggested his own removal as organizer. This attitude was exactly what the Party wanted. The state office did not relieve the organizer, though cautioning him that if his conduct were repeated, more severe action would be taken. The result: public (and mild) reprimand, not suspension or removal from office.

This explains why, in some instances, severe errors receive minor penalties, whereas small mistakes result in expulsion. The test is often not what a member did wrong but his attitude after the error was committed. If the member is willing to admit his mistake, real or fictitious, accept punishment gladly, and still maintain absolute faith in the leadership, he will probably soon be restored to favor. If he tries, however, to defend himself in the light of the evidence, he must be dealt with harshly. On one occasion a member involved in domestic difficulties replied “none of your business” to an inquiry by the Party. He wasn’t long in good standing. In Party language, he showed no “political capabilities,” meaning he was not amenable to discipline.

The Communist Party has a systematic campaign of creating hatred against the expelled member. It is not enough just to expel him; he must be vilified, blackened, and made to appear the scum of the earth.

These individuals become “spies,” “stool pigeons,” “rats,” “Trotskyites,” “renegades,” and “degenerates.” To communists, ordinary curse words have no meaning. They have a vocabulary all their own. Hence, “opportunist,” “deviationist,” and “anti-Party” are their choicest terms of defamation, of characterizing a person as being the meanest, foulest, most black-hearted derelict imaginable.

The higher in Party leadership the ousted member has risen, the greater must be the efforts to defame him. For example, Robert Wood, the Party’s onetime Eastern railroad organizer, was expelled with an explosive statement in the Daily Worker on March 23, 1951, which said:

... various violations of Party discipline, for panic in the face of the fire of the class enemy, for acts endangering the Party, for issuing instructions in the name of the Party which were unauthorized and false, for acts of white chauvinism, and for conduct unbecoming and inconsistent with his post of Party leadership.

From the campaign of vilification there arises a fantastically bitter element of communist discipline and hatred. Every man, woman, and child in the membership must be mobilized against the accused. One Party manual, written by a top leader, recommended:

1. Photograph the spy, and print his picture in the Daily Worker and in leaflets and stickers....

2. Organize systematic agitation among the workers where the spy was discovered.

3. Mobilize the children and women in the block in the part of town where the stool pigeon lives to make his life miserable; let them picket the store where his wife purchases groceries and other necessities; let the children in the street shout after him or after any member of his family that they are spies, rats, stool pigeons.

4. Chalk his home with the slogan: “So-and-So who lives here is a spy.” Let the children boycott his children or child; organize the children not to talk to his children, etc.

This represents the utter depths of depravity, hate, and inhuman venom to which the Party will descend in order to wreak vengeance on an expelled member.

An expellee must have no association with any member of the Party—even though that member be his own father, mother, wife, or husband. “Associating with the enemy” is the usual charge. This means the splitting of families, the tearing apart of friends. In one instance a woman member was expelled. Her husband was instructed to leave her and the children. When he refused, he was expelled. Another member who remained friendly was also ousted. It becomes a dizzy merry-go-round of personal spleen.

Once a communist is expelled and there is a likelihood that he might become a government witness, then the communists go to work to compile such information as is available to discourage the witness from testifying for fear of exposure or of being discredited in cross-examination by a communist lawyer. In one case a woman rose to a prominent position in the Party. When she later left the Party, the communists reportedly compiled a large file of her early indiscretions and weaknesses. Consequently, she has always been most reluctant to testify.

Communist discipline has another facet often difficult for noncommunists to understand. In some instances penalties, expulsions, and exposure are not enough; the culprit must pay with his life. Nothing less is satisfactory. The world has witnessed, both in Russia and in the satellites, highly publicized “purge” trials.

The “crime” was not opposition to the Party, lack of loyalty, or unwillingness to sacrifice everything for communism. Rather, these victims were renowned for their devotion, often having spent their entire lives in the movement. Suddenly, within days, their whole position was overturned. They were accused of trying to destroy the very thing they had labored so long to create. How does this make sense?

Communism is cannibalistic. Its servants are periodically offered as sacrifices on the communist altar. If something goes wrong, the trouble lies, in communist eyes, not in the policy decreed on high but in its human instruments. Whenever the “infallible science” of Marxism-Leninism has been incorrectly applied, disciplinary action must follow.

The purge is characteristic of the communist movement everywhere. Lenin was a firm advocate of purges and urged: “If we really succeed ... in purging our Party from top to bottom, ‘without respect for persons,’ the gains for the revolution will really be enormous.”

William Z. Foster, then Chairman of the Communist Party in the United States, said:

Communist parties, in line with Lenin’s teachings, also constantly strengthen the fiber of their organization by cleansing their ranks of elements that have become confused, corrupted, worn-out, or defeated in the hard and complex struggle to build the forces of socialism in the face of a still powerful and militant capitalism.

A stocky, mustached man stood before the convention of the Communist Political Association in 1945. A few days earlier he had been the undisputed leader of communists in the United States. He was now a “renegade,” an “enemy” of the foulest proportions! Earl Browder was fighting for his Party life.

Browder’s crime was not disloyalty to the Party but obedience to a policy that, in his opinion, was in the best interests of communism. Moscow thought otherwise. Actually, Browder was a pawn of communist tactics and had to pay the penalty.

He was stripped of Party authority, accused of every conceivable Party crime—by the very subordinates who had been his most loyal supporters. He was later expelled ignominiously, becoming a target of vilification for the entire membership.

Here was a “purge trial” grimly reminiscent, except for bodily punishment, of the infamous purges under Stalin. We need not wonder what Browder’s fate might have been if communism had possessed the power of the state.

In our review of life in the Party we have seen how all communist processes are pointed to molding the revolutionary. He is the man who must carry out communist programs such as mass agitation, fronts, and infiltration, to which we now turn. If anywhere he falters, from the Party’s point of view, the communist drive for mastery is weakened.

The ousted member in most instances frees himself from the communist thought-control machine. In him lies hope for regeneration. The deepest tragedy lies in the conscious and voluntary submission, day after day, of thousands of Party members. These fanatical devotees, giving their all for the Party, represent a real danger to our way of life.