ON GUARD AGAINST BROWDERISM, TITOISM, TROTSKYISM
INTRODUCTION
The speech published in this pamphlet was delivered in December, 1950. Since then, its thesis concerning Earl Browder has been further confirmed by events.
The attempt of Browder, and of his well-wishers in the capitalist press, to re-establish an aura of “radicalism” around himself through his contempt citation backfired in the course of the trial that took place.
Browder’s defense was that he was a “cooperative witness” before the Tydings investigating committee. The pro-fascist Senator McCarthy was his sole witness; and, although it was McCarthy who had originally insisted that Browder be cited for contempt, he testified that Browder had fully cooperated with the committee and the committee with Browder.
No one should be surprised at this farce. Is not Browder the apostle of cooperation between labor and capital?
Some people may have been misled into thinking that Browder’s refusal to invoke the ground of self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment as the reason for refusal to answer questions was a sign of “militancy” on his part.
The fact is, as borne out by the record, that Browder did not want to refuse to answer questions but wanted to answer and give as much information as he could. He wanted to cooperate. He was a perfectly cooperative witness.
Some thought I exaggerated when I said, in December, that Browder had proved to be indistinguishable from a Budenz.
Although the prosecution at the Foley Square trial never put Browder on the stand as they did Budenz, they placed their main ideological reliance on Browderism as the best weapon with which to attack and frame the Communist Party and its peace policies.
To this fact has now been added the following interesting colloquy that took place at the trial of Frederick V. Field.
The prosecutor Hitz’ first witness against Field was Morgan, who had been Chief Counsel for the Tydings committee.
Hitz asked Morgan:
“Tell us what the committee learned from Prof. Budenz and Earl Browder concerning Field’s Communist activities.”
Morgan answered that Budenz testified about Field’s Communist activities and that Field had allegedly mentioned Lattimore as a Communist and that “Mr. Browder testified that he assumed Field to be a Communist and that he worked closely with him.”
What is the difference between such testimony and the fingering of any common stool-pigeon?
Is it not clear that Browder’s refusal to invoke the Fifth Amendment was because he wanted to be free to answer questions of such a type?
The only difference between Browder and Budenz is in the different way they serve reaction – one as an open stool-pigeon and renegade, the other masking himself as a so-called independent Marxist.
Progressives should take note of the regular platform that is provided for Browder in the New York Compass. Why has the Compass become so fond of Browder recently?
Is it not possibly tied up with the fact that the Compass placed the responsibility for the Korean war on North Korea and the U.S.S.R. and that the Compass agrees with the condemnation of China as the aggressor? May it not be connected with the friendliness of the Compass toward Titoism and all of its manifestations? These policies of the Compass do not help, but hinder, its position for peace. The Compass cannot espouse the cause of Browderism and Titoism and still pretend to be a friend of peace.
Browderism claims that war-making, fascist-minded Wall Street imperialism has a progressive character. It counsels the labor movement to cooperate with imperialism. As such, Browderism disarms the American people in their life and death struggle to defend peace against the war-makers. All friends of peace should beware of Browder. His pretensions to Marxism are fraudulent and only serve to mask his service to Wall Street.
John Gates
ON GUARD
against Browderism, Titoism, Trotskyism
All the reports and discussion at this Convention have pointed up the vital need of our Party to strengthen its ideological work. The weaknesses of our Party in the fight for peace; in our concentration policy; in the struggle against white chauvinism and against liquidationist tendencies, in our struggle against Right and “Left” tendencies in all fields of work, in the last analysis flow from our inadequate mastery of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. This is especially true of the fight to protect the security of our Party against the attacks of the enemy, and the need to heighten our vigilance against the penetration of enemy ideology and agents into our ranks.
My brief report will be confined to an elaboration of that section of our Resolution which deals with the need to intensify the struggle against all manifestations of Browderism, Titoism, and Trotskyism. The failure of the Party to conduct a systematic enough exposure of these enemies of the working- class movement has resulted in the growth of rotten liberal attitudes, which, to a certain extent, has disarmed us and dulled our vigilance against enemy penetration. Neither Political Affairs nor the Daily Worker has conducted a consistent enough campaign on this front.
History proves that the continued struggle of the renegades from Marxism against the Communist Party inevitably and logically leads to struggle against the Soviet Union and to becoming outright agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie. This is the story of Browder.
BROWDER’S ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION
In his latest writings and diatribes, Browder has become indistinguishable from a Budenz. So degenerate are these recent outpourings of filth that there would be no need to deal with them were it not for the fact that the capitalist propaganda agencies are working so hard to rehabilitate the discredited Browder, and to win for him a new sympathy and influence. Witness the recent crocodile tears they shed over the alleged inability of Browder to get bail. Because, in our movement, there is a lack of knowledge of Browder’s latest activities on behalf of Wall Street imperialism, some misguided people have been taken in by this.
In a recently published pamphlet, dealing with Stalin’s brilliant articles on linguistics, in which Stalin further enriched historical materialism, the science of society, Browder passes from struggle against the Communist Party of the United States to struggle against the Soviet Union. He claims that Stalin was not really dealing with advancing the science of linguistics but was using a kind of Aesopian language to deal with something much more serious, that is, “with the more central political questions [where] these problems are so sharp and deep that answers must be carefully prepared in a more remote field, the approach must be indirect, in order to avoid shocks and upheavals which might weaken the Soviet Power.” And, he states further, “Stalin is evidently not beginning a super purge but rather is calling a halt to the continuous, almost permanent, purges which feed upon themselves and lead nowhere but to chaos.”
Thus, Browder, the troubadour of American imperialism, sees in Stalin’s great contribution to Marxist theory, the sign of a “crisis” in the Soviet Union. He says that “Stalin intervened in linguistics not because its problem was special and unique but because it was typical of the central problem of Soviet public life in general.” And what is this central problem? That “authoritarianism” is a “permanent danger in the building of Socialism in general and of Soviet development in particular.” He goes on to claim that counter-revolutionary Trotskyism in the U.S.S.R. was “defeated but not destroyed. It crept back and entrenched itself in World War II more and more.”
He claims to see a connection between Stalin’s articles which first appeared on June 20 and the start of the Korean War on June 25. He says that Stalin in dealing with linguistics really “rejected the path of immediate military solution of the rivalry between socialism and capitalism, he has placed himself squarely in opposition to the conception that now is the historical moment for socialism to be carried over the world on Soviet bayonets ... a revival of Trotskyism.... Stalin’s article is therefore the guarantee that a curb will be and is being placed upon those who may have dreamed of a military shortcut to world socialism.”
It doesn’t take any great effort to understand that what Browder is saying here is that Trotskyism has taken over a good part of the C.P.S.U.; that the Korean war was instigated, not by American imperialism, but by the so-called war party in the Soviet Union, and that the world Communist movement does not stand for peace but for war.
Today, when the Soviet Union, in transition from Socialism to Communism, is giving historic leadership to the world peace camp, Browder seeks to cover up the real crisis in the world of capitalism and the crisis of Wall Street’s policy. He resorts to slanderous lies about the spread of “authoritarianism” in the U.S.S.R. and invents a “war-minded trend” in the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement. This is exactly what Tito says today.
Yes, there is a connection between Stalin’s work on linguistics and the Korean War, but not the one Browder sees. While Truman and other capitalist rulers pass from war preparation to actual wars of aggression, Stalin advances science, builds the foundations of world peace, leads the Soviet Union in its magnificent plans for the conquest of nature!
The fact that the Communist Parties have rid themselves of the Browders and Titos, the fact that Communists have won leadership of 800,000,000 people, is not a sign of “crisis” in the world Communist movement, but evidence of its unparalleled consolidation and strength. It is this signal fact which has further sharpened the crisis of imperialism and of its Browderite apologists.
Browder does not explain why Stalin should have to resort to “indirect” and “remote” methods to propagate peace when he, and the entire Soviet Union, have always placed the fight for peace in the very center of all their work. That is because Browder is not interested in explaining, but in distorting and slandering, the peace policy of the Soviet Union and the world Communist movement. The Soviet Union stands for the peaceful co-existence of capitalist and Socialist countries; it has pointed out, however, that there must be a will for peace on both sides to make that possible. The Soviet Union strictly adheres to a policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. Its Socialist foreign policy is an affirmation of the Marxist-Leninist truth that revolutions cannot be “exported.” But this does not mean that the Soviet Union will not act vigorously on behalf of world peace and defend itself with arms against the aggressive acts of the imperialist powers led by Wall Street.
BROWDER AGAIN “ELIMINATES” THE NEGRO QUESTION
It is not accidental that this slander against Stalin, against the Soviet Union, against the world Communist movement, is accompanied by utter degeneration of Browder on the Negro question. This Convention has had to note that our Party has not yet succeeded in eradicating all the effects of Browder’s criminal revision of our Party’s Marxist understanding of the Negro question as a national question. As is well known, Browder during the war arbitrarily decided that the Negro people had “made their choice,” had taken the path of “integration” in American life. Now he has gone further and, with a mere stroke of the pen, has eliminated the Negro question altogether; it just doesn’t exist any more!
In another recent pamphlet which purports to trace the history of the United States from 1700 to the present time he claims that when the Civil War abolished chattel slavery it completed the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the United States. He says that in the U.S.A. there has taken place “the completion of the basic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and its chief characteristics were: the rapid wiping out of feudal survivals in America (completed with the abolition of slavery), the development of universal suffrage, the establishment of a unified single federal Republic with a high degree of local self-government, and a domestic market based upon widespread land distribution at nominal prices (analogous to nationalization of the land).”
All this will be news to many people. Someone ought to spread the word in the South that there are no semi-feudal survivals left there; that the Negro people have universal suffrage, a high degree of local self-government and that the land has been nationalized and distributed at nominal prices. Thus has Browder “integrated” the Negro people into American life.
With his usual dishonesty and misquotation Browder tries to ascribe to the founders of Marxism-Leninism, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, his own cynical perversion of American history and present reality, to the effect that the United States has wiped out all semi-feudal survivals. Let me quote what Lenin really had to say on this subject:
“‘The United States of America,’ writes Mr. Himmer [and now one could add: writes Mr. Browder – J.G.] ‘is a country that never knew feudalism and has none of its economic survivals.’ This assertion is diametrically opposite to the truth; for the economic survivals of slavery differ in no way from similar survivals of feudalism; and in the formerly slave- owning South of the United States these survivals are very strong to this day…. That the Negroes are in a state of servitude goes without saying; in this respect the American bourgeoisie is no better than the bourgeoisie of other countries. Having ‘emancipated’ the Negroes, it took good care, on the basis of ‘free’ and republican-democratic capitalism, to restore all that possibly could be restored and to do all it possibly could to oppress the Negroes in the most shameful and despicable manner.... Segregated, hidebound, a stifling atmosphere, a sort of prison for the ‘emancipated’ Negroes – this is what the American South is like.”[*]
It is characteristic of Browder that in this pamphlet on American history, which is 93 pages long, the word Negro is not even mentioned once. Neither is the revolutionary Reconstruction period, nor its betrayal by the United States ruling class, dealt with in Browder’s history. At a time when this Convention is demanding that we raise to new heights the struggle against Negro oppression and white chauvinism, when the National Chairman of our Party, Comrade Foster, has just completed a monumental work in which he brings into the light of day the real history of oppressed nations and peoples – the Negro and Indian peoples in the Western Hemisphere – a history which the bourgeois historians have buried, Browder sinks deeper into the mire of white chauvinism.
BROWDER’S AID TO STOOL-PIGEON
In his recent writings which pour out of Browder like pus from gangrene, Browder adds his share to the lying testimony of the stoolpigeon Budenz. He speaks of “the seizure of leadership over the Communist Party by William Z. Foster in 1945. The American Marxists accepted Foster’s leadership after having kept it in a subordinate position for 15 years only upon the strongest urging of the European Marxist leaders. Foster’s moral authority to seize the leadership of the C.P.U.S.A. in 1945 came entirely from the European Marxists, not from his influence nor from any initiative arising in the American movement itself. American Marxists accepted Foster as their supreme leader only as an act of faith in European Marxism, as an acceptance of European leadership without question and regardless of consequence.”
Not only is this a vile and contemptible slander against our Party, against Comrade Foster and against European Marxists, not only is this another expression of the contempt which Browder has always had for the membership of our Party, but it is completely indistinguishable from the lies of McGohey and Budenz at Foley Square. The only difference is that Browder has not yet reached the stage of doing his provocative work in a courtroom.
Foster became the head of the Party in 1945 because of the universal demand in our Party ranks that he assume this post of leadership, because of his correct Marxist-Leninist analysis of the perspectives in our country and in the world, because Browder’s line was proved wrong both in theory and practice and was contrary to the interests of the American working class and the cause of Socialism. The initiative in the struggle against Browder revisionism came, not from European Marxists, but from Comrade Foster. The fact that European Marxists supported Comrade Foster’s initiative helped our Party to arrive at a correct Communist understanding. It was our Party, and none other, who elected Comrade Foster our National Chairman and acclaimed him as our foremost leader. Our Party was able to do this because of its increased understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory, to the growth of which Comrade Foster above all contributed, as did also our comrades in other lands.
The struggle of the Peoples Democracies in Europe against the espionage and fifth-column activities of American imperialism has thrown new light on the role of Browderism in this respect. In the Rajk trial in Hungary it was brought out: “Then the instrument of ideological deception also appeared. Exploiting the personal connections established, the American secret service smuggled among them the books of the renegade of the working class, the ex-Communist Browder. The agent of the Yugoslav Tito group – who was incidentally an American spy, yet of course disguised as a soldier of revolutionary Yugoslavia, also joined. Through the intervention of all there, they succeeded first in inducing the petty bourgeois group to accept American imperialist policy and to make it the basis of their political activity, to become its accomplices, its spies.”
Browder’s line in Teheran to the effect that: “It is the most stupid mistake to suppose that any American interest, even that of American monopoly capital, is incompatible with this necessary people’s revolution in Europe,” thus became an instrument for dulling the vigilance of the Parties and the working class of Europe to the menace of aggressive American monopoly capital. It created a favorable atmosphere for the penetration into their ranks of imperialist spies and provocateurs. Only recently it was revealed that the notorious American spy Noel Field penetrated into the ranks of the Socialist Unity Party of the German People’s Democratic Republic with the help of the ideological atmosphere created by Browderism. Browderism is thus seen to be a valuable instrument in the hands of U.S. imperialism in its plans for world war and counter-revolution.
Wall Street is consciously fostering Browderism; they have in mind the creation of a State Department-endorsed “Marxism,” similar to that of Titoism. We should be alert to all such moves. It is known, for example, that the renegade, Bella Dodd, has contacted certain trade unionists and others, trying to enlist support for a so-called new “party” to be headed by Browder. Browder seeks to take advantage of the attacks of reaction against our Party to try to split our Party. He is doomed to disappointment and failure.
Rarely in history has life itself exposed so rapidly the reactionary character of a counter-revolutionary gang, parading under the mask of Marxism, as in the case of the Titoites. It was only three years ago in 1948 that the Communist Information Bureau first exposed Titoism. To many people this seemed far-fetched then. But today this fascist clique has become openly a part of the imperialist war camp.
It is important to review the technique of these anti-working class conspirators. They began by appearing to be redder than the rose, as the most “revolutionary” of all. Then, when they were exposed, they tried to play off the C.P.S.U. against the other Communist Parties of Europe. When this failed, they attacked the C.P.S.U. and “defended” Stalin, just as Browder is doing now. Then they came out openly against Stalin but “for” Mao Tse-tung. Now they have reached the end of the road. Now they proclaim, like any other American imperialist stooge, that the war danger comes from the Soviet Union, China and the Korean people, and that the peace camp is headed, not by the Soviet Union, but by the Wall Street imperialists!
THE FASCIST TITOIST CLIQUE
The whole world can now see that Tito Yugoslavia is the advanced military outpost of the American warmakers and the would-be shock troops of Wall Street’s plan for war against the People’s Democracies and the Soviet Union.
Some ideologists of the American bourgeoisie are beginning to be fearful that Tito is losing his value because he has been exposed too quickly. The Nation carries a very frank article by Prof. H. Stuart Hughes, Assistant Director of the Russian Research Center of Harvard, in which we read:
“As a heretic Communist, Tito is far more valuable to the West than he would be as a late convert to capitalism. Only by remaining ideologically ‘pure,’ only by resisting the blandishments of ‘reactionaries,’ can Tito hope to pursue with success his policy of inspiring dissension in the Communist camp. Indeed, his professions of Marxist orthodoxy are his best weapons in the ideological struggle.
“Too close an overt tie between Tito and the United States would ruin everything. For in the case of Yugoslavia, as in that of India, a full military alliance is both unnecessary and inadvisable. Everyone knows that in the event of a showdown both nations would find themselves on the side of the West.”
But this advice is coming too late.
Here in the United States we have not been alert to the enormous propaganda offensive of Titoism by the State Department. We have information that leading Tito agents such as Kardelj have made direct efforts to influence progressive trade-union leaders, etc. We must do more to isolate the paid Tito-agent O. John Rogge, who is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the accelerated rush of Titoism openly into the front ranks of world reaction and at the same time maintain any influence in the progressive movement. Once again proving that opportunism and white chauvinism are inseparable, Rogge stated at the Warsaw World Peace Conference that he now questions the validity of the American Civil War.
A struggle must also be conducted against such people as I. F. Stone, columnist for the N. Y. Compass, who discovered a “Utopia” in Tito Yugoslavia. He found freedom there, he says, contrary to the Soviet Union. But what is this “freedom” to attack Marxism, freedom for warmongering, the outlawing of the Stockholm Peace Appeal, freedom for the dictators of Yugoslavia? In the Soviet Union however, there is no freedom for people to propagate war, to talk about dropping atom bombs, no freedom for American capitalists to try to overthrow by war the system of Socialism in the Soviet Union. This is “slavery,” according to I. F. Stone.
MERGING OF TITOISM AND TROTSKYISM
Titoism and Trotskyism have joined hands. The Trotskyites here have hailed Tito and have taken him to their bosom. Their only complaint is that Tito does not combine enough demagogy with his furious campaign against the camp of peace and Socialism.
We have been dangerously remiss in our struggle against Trotskyism. Many newer Party members are not aware of the history of this criminal counter-revolutionary clique. In the recent N. Y. elections the Trotskyites increased their vote from 1,600 to 13,000. Part of the reason for this was the fact that the Socialist Party was not on the ballot. But this should not blind us to this dangerous increase of Trotskyite influence. In our struggle against the wage freeze we need to remind the labor movement that it was the Trotskyites who gave the employers the escalator clause which has now become the pattern for the employers’ wage freeze plans. The escalator clause ties wages to prices and not only prevents the workers from raising their standards of living but actually means a steady deterioration in their standards. Higher living standards must be at the expense of the fabulous profits of the bosses and not chained to the price level. We must be alert to the disruptive role of the Trotskyites in the N.A.A.C.P. and their efforts to divide the Negro people from their progressive labor allies.
STRENGTHEN PARTY VIGILANCE
Comrades, our Party is ideologically sound and united. We have long ago defeated Browderism, Titoism and Trotskyism. But we cannot afford to be complacent. This Convention has called attention to the new dangerous tendencies of liquidationism. We need to be alert to the danger of factionalism. Some comrades, for example, sought to take advantage of a number of theoretical errors made by our Party in connection with the trial, not to improve and strengthen the Party, but to undermine confidence in the leadership. Similarly, there are a few comrades today who are trying to do this in connection with our weaknesses in concentration work, adopting a negative and destructive approach to the serious efforts of the whole Party to make a change in this respect. The enemy works feverishly to penetrate our ranks.
Many comrades would be shocked if it were pointed out to them that there was a relationship between opportunist and sectarian tendencies and the enemy ideologies of Browderism and Titoism. But where do petty-bourgeois traits of conceit, vanity and arrogance, characteristic of some trade unionists, lead to, if not corrected? Where do resistance to criticism and self-criticism, complacency and self-satisfaction over past achievements in the fight for Negro rights, lead to, if not corrected? And where do tendencies to consider one’s self wiser than the Party, or the conclusion flowing from this, that the Party organization in industry is unnecessary, lead to, if not corrected? Where, indeed, do such unchecked tendencies lead to, if not inevitably into the enemy camp – the path of Browderism and all renegacy?
Our Party has historically underestimated the need to master Marxist theory. A recent proof of this was when in the interests of greater efficiency and security, we cut down the size of our committees. Which posts were the first to be eliminated? Number one was the press and literature directors. Number two were the educational directors. This would not have been so bad if in eliminating the people we assigned their tasks to others. But in most cases we eliminated both the people and the work they were responsible for. Why is it that in our Party the work that is most expendable is press, literature and educational work, precisely our work in the ideological field? Is it not because, despite all our protests to the contrary, we underestimate the fact that the fundamental prerequisite for improvement in all fields of our work is the study and mastery of the liberating science of Marxism- Leninism?
Let us work seriously to put an end to this neglect. Let us burn the midnight oil, study seriously, not in an abstract, doctrinaire way, but in connection with our immediate tasks and future perspectives. Only in this way can our Party advance and lead the working class to its historic destiny – the establishment of Socialism.
[*] Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. XII, p. 198.
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