But by then the Berkeley YSA was qualitatively stronger than a year before. The former organizer and the rest of the first string rapidly decided they had joined the wrong movement and went on their way. A bolshevik party is not and does not try to be monolithic. It does, however, strive for political homogeneity and common struggle experience to prepare for our inevitable responsibilities. In the crunch, it has had a helluva batting average.
Communists have no schemas or timetables.
But we do know that the tensions inevitably rising from world capitalism's depression conditions and its inexorable march toward fascism and war keep leading not only to unanticipated crises, but also to resistance out of which vanguard workers can build a movement. This space is not seen or registered by anything in bourgeois public opinion. It can only be seen from inside the working class and the unions. It can best be seen by workers who are communists who are using that space to talk politics with other workers, to promote revolutionary literature, to bring co-workers and their unions into fights around social and political issues, and to participate in guerrilla skirmishes around conditions on the job. Without using this political space, the tensions just seem like tensions, the openings are missed, and the space will be diminished over time.