The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-02-20
How Alive is the Party?
BY JAY LovEsToNE.

- n
BY JAY LoVEsToNE.
"Those to whom the work is dull
'uninterestins,' 'incomprehensible,'
who turn up their noses and are
liable to panic, or who intoxicate
themselves with declarations regard
ing the absence Of the 'oId spirit
the former enthusiasms' had better
be released form work and retire so
that they may not harm the cause,
for they do not want TO understand
or are incapable of understanding
the peculiarities Of the present stage
of the struggle. Lenin: The
New Times and Old Errors in New
Form.
THE party is now finishing the reor-
4 ganization campaign. Except for
certain isolated sections, the whole
party has been recognized on the
basis of shop and street nuclei. Of
course, it would be foolhardy for any
one to claim that every one of these
nuclei is already functioning well. 1t
would be ridiculous for any one to con-
tend that each one of these new units
is a vigorous, energetic and active,
living unit Of the party. Nor would
any one honestly dare make such a
claim for the old territorial language
units of our party.
Our Party Healthier.
MO doubt much effort and consider
~ able energy will have to be ex-
pended to make of these units living
units of the party. But we already see
many increasing signs that the reor-
ganized party is much more virile and
much more healthy at bottom. This
is true, not only organizationally. but
also politically. We now have not only
a more effective apparatus in the class
struggle, but we have sloughed off
many dead elements which weighed
down the whole party life, not only
the membership books OF the past.
Unquestionably we have lost some
of the old members. We may have
lost some members because of the
fact that we have made errors in our
reorganization campaign. Our cam
naign was far from perfect. We were
confronted with the most difficult task
of any section in the Comintern inso-
far as party reorganization is con-
cerned. Comrades speaking eighteen
languages were to be welded into one
party. Previously we, in reality, tho
not in form, actually had eighteen par
ties. Every federation was a party
unto itself in many respects.
The Communist international is
quite satisfied with the progress of
reorganization made by the Workers
(Communist) Party of America. 1t is
particularly satisfied with the energy
and system with which we went about
the whole campaign. This is true de-
spite the fact that we have unques-
honably made numerous errors in our
reorganization efforts.
It win take a little while yet until
the party hquidates the reorganization
crisis and other difficulties in which
we have found ourselves for the last
months. Still it is only the petty
bourgeois skeptics and opportunist
pessimists who fail to see the upward
trend in the development OF the party,
who fail to see that despite all its
difficulties the party has been moving
forward and is now on a much more
sound, much firmer basis politically
and organizationally than it has been
before.
Pessimism-An opportunist MaIady
CfOMRADE Lenin's quotation men,
~ toned above certainly character
ICES the attitude of these pessimists
and cynics, most of them fortunately
out Of the party by this time. Instead
of participating actively in party work
when they We're in the party. these
opportunists, these skeptics who have
no faith in hha ryi..iIftxr 90 A. T,,4ow...