861.00 Congress, Communist International, VII/27: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State

316. Speech of Comrade Browder, United States of America, [Title,] “In the Ascent”:

Comrades: The Sixth All World Congress49 has placed before the Communist Party of the United States the task of the decisive liquidation of the factional struggle and the strengthening of the tie with the masses. For that purpose our Party was obliged to go through two cleansings. The first cleansing in 1928 concerned the Trotskyists. The Party quickly gave them a rebuff, isolated and excluded them. The second cleansing concerning the right opportunists Lovestone [Page 230] faction was more difficult but was nevertheless completely carried out. The Seventh Congress of our Party in 1930 was able to report definitely the complete liquidation of the factions in our Party.

We can characterize our work beginning with 1930 as paving the way for the expansion of Bolshevist mass work and strengthening the position of the Party with the masses. The Party has increased its membership by more than 3 times and numbers more than 30,000 members. The Party has trained large cadres for mass work moving the center of gravity more and more from immigrants to native American workers. In 1930 native American-born citizens constituted less than 10 percent of the Party, now they constitute more than 40 percent. In 1930 there were less than 100 negroes in the ranks of our Party, now there are over 2,500. The number of active working factory cells totals more than 500 and numbers 4,000 members (that is, about one-third of all working members of the Party). Moreover, the cells are functioning in enterprises embracing more than 1,000,000 workers.

The Party took upon itself the responsibility of directing the creation of mass organization of the unemployed. It began the fight for the uniting of all organizations of unemployed in the United States.

The Party began seriously the work of expanding its leadership in the nonproletarian layers of the population—among the farmers, the students, the laboring elements of the city including people in free professions and the intelligentsia.

Our Party was the moving force in a wide revolutionary cultural movement.

We developed the movement against war and Fascism, drawing into the struggle more and more of the wide masses. During the past half year we developed and brought into prominence agitational and organizational work for the creation of a wide workers party in the United States.

The influence of our Party on the masses brought forth a cleavage within the Socialist Party and American Federation of Labor and even penetrated into those movements which up to now have continued to exist within the framework of the bourgeois parties, as for example the creation by Upton Sinclair of the EPIC movement (End Poverty in California), the movement of the Utopists, the Technocrats, et cetera.

In what manner was our Party able to come out of its sectional isolation and penetrate to the masses? A tremendous role was played by our leadership of the strike movement and the work of the Party among the unemployed.

In a few of the more important strike battles, particularly in the general strike of workers in San Francisco, to the Communist Party belonged the leadership, the decisive influence.

We pushed forward the demand for unemployment insurance and introduced it into Congress in the form of a law project. This law project was printed in millions of copies and was distributed among workers’ organizations throughout all parts of the country. We won over a colossal support for this project although the American Federation of Labor fought against it together with the leaders of the Socialist Party.

The Party actively led the movement of youth. We established the united front of the Union of Communist Youth and Socialist Youth in a number of progressive youth organizations. This united front gave [Page 231] battle to the Fascist elements on the most simple question—the question of the right of the Congress of Youth to electa chairman in its own discretion. The Fascists attempted to name their chairman but were defeated.

The Communist International must give serious attention to the work among youth of all parties in capitalist countries. Without this a serious fight against Fascism is impossible.

A few words concerning the work among the negro population of the United States. The most important thing is the fight for the freedom of the prisoners of Scottsboro. We have been able to prevent the “legal” murder of those nine negroes.

The second fight was the Herndon affair: a young negro Communist was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for organizing a meeting of white and black workers in the State of Georgia. We carried on a long mass campaign throughout the whole country drawing into it wide masses of the population and aroused around this affair a fight for the rights of the negroes.

We adopted the revolutionary traditions of 1776 and 1863 and came forward as the successors of those revolutionary movements out of which was born the United States.

In the United States there are present all the grounds for a fast growth of Fascism. This closely approaching danger is not properly evaluated even by the Communists in view of its specific American peculiarities at this particular stage: American Fascism does not only try to keep aloof from European Fascism but even puts forward anti-Fascist slogan similar to the following “down with the entry into America of Fascism and Communism,” the Hoover Republicans decry the regime of Roosevelt for its Fascist tendencies. The followers of Roosevelt in their turn decry Huey Long and the priest Coughlin as demagogues leading the country on the road of Fascism, and altogether consider the Liberty League—the coalition of right Republicans and Democrats—as the guide of Fascism in the United States.

The Fascist demagogy of the bourgeoisie can find for itself many victims in the masses. When a great people unexpectedly finds itself brought to the abyss of the most desperate poverty there is created a basis not only for the fight of the masses against capitalism but for Fascist demagogy among the masses.

Before the American Communist Party stand the problems of mobilization and organization of the millions of the masses of the people.

Bullitt
  1. Held in Moscow, August 17–September 1, 1928.