COMMUNISTS: Party’s Party

In Moscow last week Joseph Stalin wrote a letter calling upon the working class of the capitalist world to organize for the support of the Russian “working class.” First reply to this appeal came from a U. S. working man who is as comfortably fixed as any Soviet Commissar —little Matthew Woll, vice president of the American Federation of Labor. Cried Matty Woll: “The Soviet regime deserves no more support from organized labor in democratic countries than do the Governments of Hitler and Mussolini. . . .The American Federation of Labor rejects as impudent Stalin’s appeal for support.”

After quitting the International Federation of Trade Unions 17 years ago because of its radical leanings, the A. F. of L. rejoined only last year. Next May, however, Matty Woll is going to the I. F. T. U. meeting in Oslo with a threat that A. F. of L. will quit again if Russian unions are admitted.

Joseph Stalin’s letter contained not only an appeal but also a statement: “The aid of the international proletariat appears to be a force without which the final victory of socialism in one country is not to be decided.” That was not precisely a clarion call for world revolution but it was enough of a hint of old-fashioned Bolshevism to set off speculation on a possible shift in the Communist Party “line.” For the keystone of the “line” has lately been not world revolution but co-operation with the capitalist democracies for a collective stand against fascism.

But if a return to revolutionary principles was at hand, there was no indication of it in the U. S. Communist Party. The Daily Worker appealed to patriotic sentiment by printing a picture of a capitalistic U. S. flag riddled by General Franco’s bombers as it flew over Barcelona’s Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. building. Meantime the two tiptop U. S. Communists, William Z. Foster and Earl Browder, had returned to Manhattan from Moscow, still talking collective security, which means support of Capitalist Franklin Roosevelt. Mr. Browder, who holds down the same official job in the U. S. as Mr. Stalin in Russia—General Secretary of the Party—arrived home just in time to welcome a four-day convention of his “Party Builders.” In capitalist terms the Party Builders are star salesmen who sign up the most new members, a group analogous to a “$1,000,000 Club” in the insurance field.

Since the Party has added 22,000 members in the past four months, the 500 delegates to the Party Builders’ Congress were well rewarded. Like any salesmen’s convention,the Congress started off witha banquet, included group discussions, sightseeing tours, inspection of choice Manhattan slums, luncheons in Chinatown restaurants. Grand finale was a monster rally in Madison Square Garden, with the principal pep talk delivered by Daily Worker Editor Clarence Hathaway, in place of Mr. Browder who was ill with the grippe.